The other day I was talking to someone I met recently and he was asking me about what I do for work. I said something like well I write a lot and teach seminars and he asked, “What do you teach?”

Normally I’d say something about fitness, etc. but this time for some reason it made me pause and think about it.

The thing is, I do of course teach specific fitness or training techniques and strategies. I can teach you ways to improve your deadlift, or strategies to tweak your nutrition, how to build the strongest possible bent press, how to improve your run times with less effort, and dozens of other specific, discrete, useful things.

But that’s not what I teach.

What I’m (trying) to teach is an entire operating system for how to approach everything you do.

Take biofeedback for example. I can, and gladly will, teach you how to use biofeedback testing in 30 seconds. The juice isn’t in the technique itself, it’s in the application of the technique. After those 30 seconds, you can ascertain in a moment how useful any one of a million different movements or therapy interventions will be most useful to you in any given moment.

It literally abdicates the entire need for long discussions about when and where to use certain things and how they’re good or bad. There is zero point in wasting that time trying to hash out “the evidence” or other rationalistic approaches to determining efficacy.

You can just test it, for yourself, right now.

That’s just one example of how you can apply a new operating system that changes your approach to fitness and everything else. “What is best for me?” is a much more fundamental, interesting, and useful question than “What is best?”

The latter is a great rabbit hole for academics and people with time to waste. But the former is how you figure out what foods, activities, people, jobs, and environments make you thrive.

The only downside to my approach, if you want to call it that, is that I expect a lot more from you. I’m not going to give you a lot of answers, I’m only going to provide you with better questions to ask. It’s more work for you, but you get out what you put in.

I have been remarkably untouched by tragedy and unwelcome struggle in my life. When I was a teenager my dad went through some health issues that culminated in open heart surgery, but I don’t think I was mature enough to truly appreciate the gravity. That is to the best of my recollection as bad as I’ve ever had it. Really there have been surprisingly few deaths and serious illnesses in people closest to me. I’m incredibly, unspeakably thankful for this.

As a result, by and large I’ve been able to do the work I want to do for my whole life, unhindered by the kinds of things that knock you back on your ass and leave you feeling like it’s an accomplishment just to make it through the day doing basic tasks.

And when I say the work, I’m not talking about the labor you do for a paycheck to pay your bills.

The work might be self-improvement, pursuit of a hobby or skill, playing a sport, daily life tasks like cooking, creative endeavors, getting stronger or any other number of the zillion things the modern human can choose to do. The work is the stuff that matters. Filing your TPS reports or not isn’t the work, that’s bullshit that doesn’t matter. Writing your book, making your art, raising your kids, healing your body, that’s the work.

I’ve been so lucky that I’ve pretty much always gotten to choose the work.

And so, it was quite the punch in the gut when on the same day that one of my very best friends started chemo for an aggressive cancer – one of my dogs, Franklin, became completely paralyzed in all 4 limbs by a sudden neuromuscular disease of unknown origin.

The work that my friend wanted to do for the next several months is not to go through chemotherapy and various other treatments, while spending every waking moment thinking about cancer, learning about cancer, waiting for forks in the road, and making tough decisions.

But it’s the work now.

The work I wanted to do for the next several months is not to carry my dog around the house because he can’t walk, and to put diapers on him because he can’t stand to pee, to say nothing of the possibility of having to say goodbye. If he has a chance at running around wagging his tail again it sounds like lots of physical therapy will be a part of it. It’s not the #project I planned for the summer.

But it’s the work now.

The other day, as I was going to the store to buy some PVC parts to make Franklin a cart, I got a message from someone who had read my deadlift book, Off The Floor. He gave me permission to share a screenshot, but I’ll paraphrase instead for brevity. “David, I herniated S1 and L5 and things were terrible. I’m a paramedic so my job was harder. I stopped lifting and doing jiu-jitsu, my hobby, completely. I heard about your book, bought it, and learned about how to test things. I started doing that and it is fixing me. I’ve found certain deadlifts are the only ones that test well, and how to modify my squat for it to test well. I have days where I forget I have a problem. Soon I’m going to start BJJ again. You’ve completely changed my quality of life, and I don’t even think about drugs or surgery anymore.”

Being in back pain is terrible, I’ve been there. And the impetus is to do nothing. It’s the leading cause of disability worldwide for good reason. You just don’t want to do anything when you’re in that kind of pain. But as best as we can tell doing the right type of movement is one of the few things that is correlated with resolving back pain, and from all of my experience what I can tell is using biofeedback testing is the best way to figure out what the right movement is.

The thing to me that’s remarkable about his story is that he did the work. He did the work, I’m going to do the work, and my friend is going to do the work.

There are two sides of this coin I call the work. It’s like a 2×2 matrix of choice. It can choose you or you can choose it, and you can choose to do it or not to do it. Man, when you can, do as much of the work you choose as you possibly can. Make your time count. Don’t waste it.

When the work chooses you, well, you don’t have to do it. You can choose not to.

But, you can be sure of one thing, there’s nothing on the other side.

Doing things, taking action, moving forward is important if you want to accomplish and create things, no doubt about it. And I think it’s worthwhile and important to talk about all the things that might hold someone back like fear of failure, not knowing where to start, or not knowing what steps to take.

But what about the other side of the coin?

What about not doing things?

Everyone has things they find themselves having to do that don’t feel worth it, maybe don’t feel ethical, or are actually making you worse.

What if you just… didn’t?

Job makes you produce a lot of TPS reports?

What if you didn’t?

School making you learn something you know is whitewashed ethnocentric​ bullshit?

What if you didn’t?

Gym makes you do a part of the programming you know will leave you hurting?

What if you didn’t?

Certainly not doing some things has a greater cost than others. Maybe if you don’t produce all your TPS reports on time you’ll lose your job. Then again, maybe you won’t and the value of those reports will be questioned and you’ll be a catalyst for change.

But often times not doing one thing is what you have to do to make room for doing something else. Quitting and not doing things never gets any of the glory though. Nobody makes memes about not persevering.

Personally I think what you don’t do might be, in some ways, more important than what you do.

It might be worth thinking about what if you just… didn’t?