“How can you not be romantic about baseball?” -Billie Bean
We are nearing the end of the fourth week of state-imposed isolation in Pennsylvania. It is also the first full day of Passover. So, in addition to continuing to cope with virtual school, virtual meetings, and the inability to visit with friends, we are also presented with the reality of the ostensibly similar Kosher for Pesach versions of our daily staples. Honey Ringees, while they appear to be quite Cheerio-like on the box, are not good. 🙁
As the spring season continues to emerge in State College, Pennsylvania, I keep thinking about how closing the day with a baseball game on the radio or television, preferably the Yankees, would make this time more tolerable. Somehow, it appears MLB is considering a plan to open in May or June, with all games played in Arizona.
In the meantime, our daily routine persists: Holger arrives in our room around 6am and agrees to leave us alone if we permit him watch TV. I wake up, shower, eat breakfast, and retreat to the “outbuilding,” which has become my new work domain. I re-emerge at the end of the day, jump on the Peloton, shower, and join the family to eat dinner. Becca and I put the kids to bed, watch a Netflix, and go to sleep. Rinse-repeat.
In the interim, another routine has re-emerged. I started using an iPhone app, LoseIt, to count calories. Since starting to measure my caloric intake and daily weight, I have experienced a slow but steady loss of weight. It is encouraging to observe progress.
On the Peloton, two of the attributes of the platform I most appreciate are the integration of the heart-rate monitor and the record of past workouts, including metrics for resistance, cadence, power, and heart-rate. Again, it is encouraging to observe progress.
It is striking to me how the role of measurement in our lives can be so impactful and how predictable certain outcomes are if you simply investigate the connections between inputs and outputs. When I started in my career at the Northwestern Mutual, there was a strong emphasis on getting qualified leads; If you received ten referrals, and you followed a given process, you could predictably earn three interviews for financial planning, which would result in one sale. The temptation is to focus on the sale; The best results occur by focusing on the number of quality referrals.
In two consecutive visits with my physician, who is a personal friend, he remarked that my weight and cholesterol have crept up. He knows that I lost considerable weight using MyFitnessPlan and a fitness routine after my father had a heart attack years earlier. My routine improved, my numbers followed, and I built good habits. For a reason that I cannot explain, I then relaxed those habits and my numbers slowly worsened.
Those two conversations with my doctor failed to engage me to change habits, yet something about the isolation order did, as did my father’s heart attack nine years ago. I imagine the explanation is rooted in some tendency to discount intellectual disruption (i.e. “my physician said I need to reduce my cholesterol”) contrasted with a more instinctual and emotional disruption (e.g. “my dad almost died”).
I wonder how many of us will emerge as stronger, fitter, and healthier versions of ourselves when our state-imposed isolation is relaxed. More importantly, I wonder what steps we can take to ensure that these new habits persist. I wonder what Billie Bean would say about this?
I hope someone will discuss this with me during baseball season on a night where Gerrit Cole is pitching for the Yankees.