Why Just Knowing Is Not Enough?

Good morning, Sensemakers!

A few weeks ago a post came across my feed with a bold headline:

In other words: the most expensive problem in health is that we don’t follow the prescribed plan.

The headline did its job. It made me think about something I see every single week.

But first…

The ability to get down to the floor and stand back up is often seen as a sign of good mobility, and even as a predictor of longevity. There is real research behind it. In a study of 2,002 adults aged 51 to 80, people who needed more support (a hand or a knee) to sit down on the floor and rise again had a higher risk of dying over about six years of follow up. A later study of 4,282 adults, followed for a median of 12 years, found the same pattern.

This is popular common knowledge. So what? (That damn question again. If you missed that issue, here it is.)

Why, if this is common knowledge, was I not doing anything about it? That question triggered a kind of game with myself. It was the beginning of writing my first book, 401 Fitness: How to Save Fitness for Your Retirement.

The game was simple. When I write, I write in a deep squat. (Like writing in a language that is not my mother tongue was not hard enough already. 🙂)

A silly game that taught me that it is not that simple to turn knowledge (how beneficial it is to keep the ability to squat) into a conscious daily routine. I skipped days. I found excuses. But in the end I was able to follow my minimum, which was to squat and write for an hour each morning. (I wrote only in the mornings back then.)

The photo reminds me how important it is to figure out how to bring knowledge into daily action that means something and changes something. Because today I can squat and stand up way more easily than when I began that game.

So the question is: if you know that something is good for you… so what? What does it matter if you are not applying it? We all consume tons of information, and a huge amount of it is good. But I argue that its value is only revealed and expressed through action.

A couple of years after that photo was taken, I started my book series “This Book Doesn’t Matter,” because I strongly believe that only applied knowledge has the power to change our lives and the lives of the people around us.

1. Why does this matter?

We learn something new every day

A new study. A new podcast. A friend who swears by cold showers.

We hear it, it makes sense, and we decide to do it.

Then life happens. A busy week. A trip. A bad night of sleep.

And quietly, we stop. Usually long before we could see whether it worked.

Then we hear the next new thing. And the cycle starts again.

The doctors who hire a coach

Many of my private clients are doctors.

They know medicine and physiology much better than I do. They know what happens in the body when we sleep, move, eat and recover. They know what they should be doing.

We have joked about this many times.

“Why do you need me, if you already know all of this?”

The honest answer is simple. Knowing was never the hard part.

What they need from me is not more information. It is help turning what they already know into a series of decisions. Day after day. Long enough for the body to respond.

And I don’t think doctors are special here. All of us do this.

We overestimate how much it matters that we know what to do, and how our body works.

That knowledge is valuable. But it is only the first step.

The same story with medications

There is a natural parallel with medications.

A medicine prescribed is not a medicine taken. And a medicine taken for a week is not a medicine taken for as long as it needs to work.

That is what the post was really pointing at. The gap between a good plan and a lived one.

2. Where am I (now)?

This book doesn’t matter

That is why my book series is called “This Book Doesn’t Matter.”

Only the things we do, day after day, for ourselves, really matter. For us. For the people around us. And for the world around us.

A piece of knowledge will not make you healthier.

A title will not make you healthier.

A certificate on the wall will not make you healthier.

Applied knowledge will. Something you acted on, for yourself and for the world.

So yes, this newsletter doesn’t matter either. 🙂

What you do with it might.

How long is “long enough”?

So how long do we need to keep going?

In one study, 96 volunteers each picked one healthy behavior. Something to eat, drink or do, like a walk after breakfast. They did it every day in the same situation for 12 weeks and reported how automatic it felt.

The time it took for the habit to become about as automatic as it would get ranged from 18 to 254 days.

That is a huge range. For some people, a few weeks. For others, most of a year.

And here is the part I love. Missing one day did not really affect the process.

So if you have ever quit something after two weeks because “it’s not working”, you might have stopped right at the beginning.

3. What can I do?

Fewer new things, more of the same things

I would rather you do one thing for three months than ten things for three days.

A few tools that make sense to me:

Pick one. Not the newest thing. The one you already know works for you.

Tie it to something you already do. “After breakfast, I walk for ten minutes.” The same situation every day is what helped the volunteers in that study.

Shrink it. If it is too big for your worst week, it will not survive. Remember the secret power of your minimum? Start there.

Expect it to take a while. Weeks, maybe months. That is normal, not failure.

Don’t let one miss become a stop. A missed day is just a missed day.

Who you spend time with

I think making sense is a bit like having a sense of humor. Even if you are not born with it, you can develop it. Especially if you surround yourself with people who make sense.

Doing what you know works is similar. It is much easier when someone is doing it with you, or at least asking you about it. That is half of what a coach does. A friend can do it too.