All the little actions that make up our health rarely seem important because they’re not urgent.
Second to that is the effects aren’t felt generally until much later. To be very dramatic, no one gets a heart attack after eating one burger. But, cumulatively over 20-30 years, one burger a week, that’s a lot of excess calories that can clog up your arteries.
(For fun, I looked up what that would be – 540,000 calories, 28000g Fat, 46000g carbohydrates, and 25000g of protein!)
Ditto with sleep. We think we get by on 6 or so hours, but realistically we NEED 7-8 for optimal health. And do you really want to “get by” in 2018? What’s more, as humans we’re chronically bad at noticing how sleep impacts our performance and mood as well.
I get it, we’re back to work and there’s loads of demands on our time. A lot of them seem really urgent at the time. A personal example is I missed posting to Instagram and Facebook. Right now it seems urgent, but in the long run upgrading our On-Ramp procedure is way more important as it improves the training everyone gets when starting with us. At home I really want to finish that episode of Mad Men, but I know that going to bed is way more important.
If they seem like frivolous examples, they’re deliberately so. Long term it’s better for me, Sam, Madie, Sean, and Derek if we can improve our On Ramp, help more people and live better lives.
Short term for you there’s probably no drawback if you skip the gym or finish off that box of celebrations, but ultimately doing the important but not easy things are going to improve your live and those you care about much more.