Doing it every day is easier than sometimes

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Originally published on Elephant in the Room.

I watched a Casey Neistat video that wouldn't let me go. In it he celebrates his two-year mark — 730 days in a row of running, not one missed. His minimum: two miles. His average: over seven.

One time the streak nearly got him. New York, flight to London, layover, on to Cape Town — where in that schedule was he supposed to run? He found a tunnel at the airport where they move the garbage, and ran back and forth until he'd clocked 2.3 miles. Streak intact.

Sounds insane. It is, a little. But his actual point isn't.

The sentence that matters

Doing the thing every day is easier than not doing it every day.

His reasoning lands: if every day starts with "should I do it today?", then every day starts with a rationalization. I did it yesterday, I'll surely do it tomorrow, skipping once is fine, and honestly — today just isn't my day.

None of that is thinking. It's a permission structure for saying no.

With "every day," the question disappears. You skip the whole weighing-up. The answer is always yes.

My version is more boring — and that's exactly the point

His thing is running. Mine, for a long time, was swimming, almost daily. Just not on weekends, when the pool was so crowded it made no sense.

By now that's turned into walking. Every day. And I want to push it: 5,000 steps as a minimum first, then a thousand more every two weeks. 6,000, 7,000, 8,000. Eight thousand a day — around 56,000 a week — would actually be enough. But by then I'll probably often keep going anyway, because it's no longer a fight.

That's the goal behind the goal: not the step count. The automatism.

But "no exceptions" isn't true for me

Here I disagree with the video. My swimming streak had an exception — the weekend — and it still worked. The automatism can handle a sensible gap. It doesn't break just because the pool is too full for once.

It's even clearer with food. In the video, Casey's sister gives up sugar completely, no cheat day, because moderation never worked for her — like a drug.

For me it's the opposite. I have something sweet every evening. One portion, one bar. Every day.

And it's not a slip. It's planned, agreed with my nutritionist. It's a rule — just one that allows pleasure.

What it's really about

The best line in the whole video isn't the one about running. It's this: The best part of "every day" is that you write your own rules.

That's the core of it. We make the rules ourselves — and only then do we actually keep them.

A rule someone forces on you, you break at the first headwind. A rule you built yourself, because you know how you tick — that one holds. My evening bar isn't the hole in the discipline. It's what makes the discipline hold.

Two miles a day. 5,000 steps. One portion in the evening. None of these numbers is sacred. The only sacred thing is that they're mine.

And tomorrow? I walk.

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