Cost/Benefit Only Works If I Don't Assume Everything Should Be Free

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The other day, I stood on the threshold of my front door and looked at my watch.

Start.

I closed the door behind me, got in my car, buckled in, and turned on the engine. Off to the gym I went. Once there, I parked, checked in at the front desk, arranged my clothes and shampoo in the locker, and walked to the Stairmaster. Right before starting the machine to begin my workout, I looked at my watch.

Stop.

It had taken 27 minutes from the time I walked out my front door to the moment I began my workout. This I noted on a small piece of notepaper I’d brought with me.

I was measuring the cost of the commute it took to gain a workout at the gym. This is because the only hurdle between me and working out at the gym is the gargantuan commute time I let live inside my brain, which tells me every day that going to the gym isn’t worth it.

What I wanted to know, once and for all: Was I wrong?

Our brains do this kind of analysis constantly, under the radar with fleeting speed, or more intentionally with conscious measurement and rationalization. We need to know at any given moment whether the effort we might expend will be worth it. This is how it conserves valuable resources rather than wastes them without thinking.

By “worth it” I don’t necessarily mean in a long-term, big-goal sense, but in whatever sense our brains yearn for in the moment. For example, will it be worth it to switch our attention from the work we need to do, over to the hilarious reel of the cat talking to the dog on our phones?

I like to exercise. It makes me feel better afterwards and delivers a long-term return on investment. What I don’t like to do is spend valuable time on what I feel has no return — i.e., dead time driving in my car to get to the gym. Unfortunately, the benefit of the gym comes with the cost of this dead time. I can’t get around that, unless, of course, I was able to sleep in the locker room at the gym, in which case, life would be seamless, though my bed might not be so comfy.

The thing about our brain is that it analyzes in the throes of its biases, with the help of its memories, and guided by what it believes is true about the metrics of the costs and the benefits it’s measuring. Our analysis of a situation might be quite different from someone else’s. And our analyses can morph over time as any of these things change.

My adult sons have recently mentioned to me how beneficial it is to be strong — meaning, how beneficial it would be for me to be strong — and I get their message. I’ve grown weakish, and I’m not getting younger, and older age is easier if you’re strong.

They’re 100% right. I need to get strong, or as we like to say, get swole. (You’d understand if you raised boys.)

Just like that, one of the pieces in my analysis of whether the gym commute is worth it changed. The two people I adore most were telling me fitness matters. My metric of the benefit of going to the gym just ramped up. This meant the cost of getting there would have more wiggle room now.

I used to run far. It required extra effort, but since I deemed the benefit to be worth it, the effort wasn’t “extra”. My brain decided it was a reasonable cost to pay for what I got out of the deal, which, for me, was the fun of the journey on a wooded trail coupled with the satisfaction of completion. Throw in the excitement of the competition and the hours of gabbing on the trail with my friends, and it’ll make sense that I agreed to pay the cost many times.

But, for whatever reason, I’ve felt driving five miles back and forth to the gym is a high cost for what I get out of the deal.

The Data: This is how much it costs me to go to the gym:

20 min: drive, park, walk across the parking lot, check in

7 min: set my things inside locker, get over to the Stairmaster

2 min: pack things up

15 min: leave gym, drive home

Total cost: 45+/- min

Total benefit: 75+ min gym workout + the fitness it generates

The biggest hurdle I’d have to get over was the commute I’d grown accustomed to: zero. For a walk or a local run, the overhead involves opening your front door. With yoga in your family room, or anything you do from home, it’s the same. I’d have to come to terms with the fact that a gym workout comes with a mandatory commute cost, like it or not.

And I did.

I asked myself, “Is getting stronger worth it?”

The answer was . . . drumroll . . . YES.

I’ve been consistently going to the gym to lift weights for a few months now, and already I feel a difference. I like this difference.

Further, I realized I could transform the commute into a benefit. I could enjoy the time while listening to music. I could learn things while listening to podcasts. I could even contemplate the book I’m writing. These were three decent ways to transform that driving time from dead to alive.

From my coaching practice, if I were to sum up the two most common things I notice standing in the way of the goals people desire, it’s a lack of confidence that they have what it takes to achieve, and a lack of willingness to spend time, effort, or attention on that achievement. This lack of willingness comes from their analysis of whether the effort is worth it. Knowing that this analysis is never set in stone can be the first step towards achievement.

I know full well that following through on our goals in life can be weighty, murky, confusing, and overwhelming sometimes — or many times. I know there is so much complication to all this, so many factors and influences, so many things not within our control, but there is the opposite, too. There are many things within our control, and sometimes the equation is much simpler than we realize.

Collect the data, do the math, think about what you really want. I want to be stronger, and one day I want to be able to sleep in the locker room. We’ll see how that goes.

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I hope you're doing well, friends.