What Is The Long-Term Result Of This Behavior?

Exercise is hard on us. It’s no wonder people don’t like it.

Exercise is hard on us. It’s no wonder people don’t like it. When we exercise, we deliberately waste energy. We end up sweating and even sore sometimes, and we often face failure. We can fail to do an exercise properly, can run out of gas hiking up a hill, or can fall down doing a skilled movement such as skiing or skating. With feedback like this, it’s no wonder people quit.

There is a really cool thing that happens, though, if you keep trying something that is hard for you: you get better at it. If you do a couple of pull-ups a couple of times a week, soon you can do three, then four, then five, and so on. If you read, swim, juggle, cook, or stretch, the first few times (the first order) will be frustrating and you might want to quit. 

A first order result is the immediate result of a behavior. It's what we can call "immediate gratification," but it's more than that. It is really our day to day habits and the feedback they deliver. Good habits don't typically have good immediate results. Conversely, things that produce good first-order results frequently have poor long-term results.

Let’s look at drinking alcohol. Man, I love beer. It’s great to open one and feel the end of the day settle in as I drink it. A second one is good, too, sometimes. Some nights, we can go really far into the drinking, and we laugh and chat the night away. The next day, though, we don’t feel so good. We won’t climb well. We realize we spent $60 at the bar. If we do this over the long-term, the problems compound. Three beers a night is +/- $3000 in a year. Lost days. Extra weight. Maybe bigger health problems.

The second order results are more appealing when it comes to good habits. After a month of trying a new task, you’re better. Third-order results are even better. If I strength train, I’ll be stronger next month. If I keep after it, I’ll probably live longer, be less likely to be hurt as a senior citizen, and will be a useful member of society. Things that produce good long term results are things like flossing our teeth, eating leafy vegetables, doing daily exercise, working on our gratitude, meditating, and, of course, hangboarding.

Things that deliver in the first order are rarely good for us. I love Mark Twight’s saying, “If it’s worth having, you can’t have it now.” It's a simple way of filtering our behaviors. "Is this behavior going to make me happy a week from now?" "If I do this behavior repeatedly for the next month, will I like the results?"