I asked my friend to be my workout acountabil-a-buddy yesterday. What does that mean? I wanted someone to hold me to a daily workout regiment. What did that get me? Texting him today, and telling him that I did not in fact workout.
His response was simply, “Kill your clone.”
He didn’t explain himself any further. He didn’t wax on poetic. He left me three words.
At first I thought it was another way to say, “Do better than yesterday,” or “Improve a little everyday.” But yesterday is not my clone. If I hit my personal best on a lift yesterday, today I will not be able to beat that lift, as a matter of physiology. Nor should I even try. It wouldn’t be good for my body. If I try to add a mile to a run every day, it would get to an unmanageable amount, or if I try to decrease my time everyday, it would get to a point of diminishing returns. And that is simply putting it in terms of working out. Knowing this friend, he meant it for life in general. I folded a backlog of laundry today. I’m not going to be able to kill that clone tomorrow. There’s no competing with today’s laundry folding clone. He did all the work that could be done on that front.
So if my clone is not yesterday, who is my clone?
My clone is the me who is sitting on the couch right now, and when he was faced with the decision to start typing this, he said “No.” My clone, when faced with something that has any amount of difficulty, when it is not leisure, says “No.” My clone wouldn’t have folded laundry today. My clone would go get ice cream before bed. My clone won’t wake up tomorrow to lift. Every time I say yes to a good decision, the timeline breaks, and the clone is killed. I’m writing this. The clone who would have been scrolling Facebook is now dead, and my ability to write has increased…however much this post is increasing my writing skills. Tomorrow I’ll kill the clone that sleeps in, and doesn’t workout, and therefore be just a little stronger.
Kill your clones.
