207: Win The Day With Min and Max

Scot: Hey, guys, I have a question for you. When it comes to your health goals, and it doesn't matter what it is, if it fits into the Core Four, if it's just maybe even drinking more water, how do you decide if you are successful on any given day? How do you judge your health goals? What's your criteria? So give us a goal and your criteria.

Mitch: Well, right now I'm really focusing on the mental health aspects of everything and getting that all kind of locked in so I can focus on some other parts of my health. And I guess my limit is, "Did I have a mental breakdown or not?" And if I didn't, I nailed it. I crushed today. I can go to bed, try again tomorrow.

Dr. Smith: That's a great day.

Scot: Yeah, I think that's good. Is that really your answer or . . .

Mitch: I mean, it's about there, but no. It's about productivity and whether or not I did certain things. But yeah, it's basically "How am I doing?"

Scot: All right. So productivity. Then what is the criteria that "I had a productive day"? What is the metric that you use to judge that?

Mitch: Oh, I don't even know. I think that's what we're talking about today, isn't it?

Scot: Oh, okay. How about you, John? Do you have a goal, and what's your metric to say, "I succeeded. I did it"?

Dr. Smith: Right now, I'm working on nutrition and kind of fueling my body better because I've gained a few lbs. I went on a vacation and I ate really nice. I took my wife on a dream little trip. We went to Italy for a little bit and I probably ate my weight in pasta while I was there. Came home and I was like, "Eek, buddy."

Scot: Appropriate.

Dr. Smith: Yeah. So right now, I'm working on just making sure that I monitor my caloric intake and then not eating after 7:30, 8:00 to help curb and get things back in line to where they have been in the past.

Scot: And so if you go over your caloric intake then, was that a fail for the day? And if you stay under, you were successful? Is that how you judge that?

Dr. Smith: Yeah. I mean, for me, absolutely. There are some days where if I'm going and taking my kids to a movie and the movie starts at 8.30, I'm probably going to have some popcorn. Let's just be serious. But I allow myself those moments of knowing what's coming and also to prepare for those things. But also, they're not an everyday occurrence, like, "Why not?"

Scot: Got it. So it is that time of year. A lot of us are going to be setting goals or resolutions or something. I'm hearing here that this might not necessarily be the case, but for me, I tended to define one exact version of what that goal looks like and if I'm successful.

So it used to be exercise. I had to go to the gym twice a week, and I had to do two sets of all my exercises, the full-body workout, and I had to take my sets to failure. Anything short of that, that was a failure. I don't even know why I bothered showing up. And if I didn't feel that I could do that, then I wouldn't go sometimes.

So I wanted to try to explore a different way of thinking, and it feels like you guys are already intuitively doing this, but I want to label it.

This is "Who Cares About Men's Health," with information, inspiration, and a different interpretation of men's health. My name is Scot. I bring the BS. And I'm excited to tell you about this massive insight I had that I think will help make this idea we're going to talk about today, the min and the max, a really useful framework for men who maybe have struggled with keeping their goals.

And Producer Mitch, he's a "Who Cares About Men's Health" convert.

Mitch: Hey, there. And I guess thinking about the min-max, it made me really think about my bad brain days, which we'll go into deeper I think a little later.

Scot: The MD to my BS, Dr. John Smith.

Dr. Smith: Hey. I'm really looking forward to exploring this more in-depth of these ideas to make things more successful that I can hopefully take it back to my patients too, but also to help me as I go through this journey.

Scot: I feel like at least in my case, and I think there are probably other men that fall into this pattern, where our habits slip when our life gets busy. And sometimes I think it could be because we only recognize the ideal version of that habit as success, and anything else feels like it doesn't count. So if we can't achieve success, well, then what's the point? And then we slide into this habit of not even trying.

But the min-max is this idea that each health behavior or anything in our life has a range, and that minimum still counts and we feel good about that minimum. And there's a maximum that's ideal as opposed to just one.

When you work inside this flexible range, I've found it takes a lot of pressure off, a lot of frustration falls away, and it can really reframe what progress looks like and it helps me stay consistent.

And the little breakthrough I'm going to get to, I'm going to tease it right here, is your habits can flex. Flexibility, I think, could be the thing that keeps me going, and it might be helpful to you.

So for me, where it finally started clicking . . . I saw this on Instagram, by the way, and as soon as I heard it, I was like, "Wow, this is genius." And the example that they used on this Instagram that I saw was the example that I'm going to use except for to my life.

At the top, I talked about my goal, my standard was you show up twice a week, full-body workout, 45 minutes, you do the two sets per body part, you do them to failure, and that's when you are successful. But I'd find that there'd be times where that just wasn't possible.

And then I heard about this min-max and this individual said if that was his max . . . He's like, "Sometimes your day just doesn't allow that, or your mental energy doesn't allow that, or your physical . . . You didn't get a good night's sleep, or your not feeling well doesn't allow that. So what's your minimum? What's the minimum you can feel happy about and still go, 'I was a success,' and more importantly, keep the momentum going?"

I used to think my minimum was go to the gym and even if I only worked for 15 minutes and I just did a real quick, real super half-the-weight kind of workout than I normally would do and I got through it, that was still a success. I showed up, I moved some weight around. It wasn't exactly what I had hoped to do, but it was within the range that I decided that's acceptable.

When I started thinking about this podcast, I actually have an even lower min. If I can't make it to the gym, I have some kettle bells and maybe that's five body exercises. I can get my whole-body workout in. I do one set in between meetings or something.

So I would like to know when it comes to min-max, when I said we were going to discuss this or when you first heard about the concept, was there anything that this opened up for you insofar as, "Oh, this could actually make goals easier"? And if you have a specific goal, that would be great.

Dr. Smith: Hearing about this min-max, it made me realize that a lot of things in my life have progressed towards this, if that makes sense, where I've given myself the grace to say, "It's okay."

Like in the beginning when I talked about the food thing and if I know I'm taking my kids to the movie, I'm going to have popcorn that night and I'm okay with that. Whereas before, I might have been much more rigid and said, "Well, then I just probably won't go to the movies." I might even have made it that rigid.

And I think having the ability to have the little bit of sway is super helpful and it makes me think about all of the things we're learning about metrics in health. When you look at all these things like Oura rings and different WHOOP things and things, they'll tell you, "Hey, you should probably not go as hard today because your body isn't rested." Have you guys seen some of that?

Mitch: Yeah.

Scot: I have.

Dr. Smith: When you brought up the concept of min-max, it made me think about that, of our bodies intuitively tell us, "Hey, man, today's probably not the day to go to failure."

Mitch: "Cool your jets."

Dr. Smith: It made me think about that and all of these different metrics we have now of, "Hey, your sleep quality was garbage last night and your recovery is 50%, 60%." If you have some of these biometric things, it'll tell you. And they tell you, "You should go for a 30-minute workout today no more," because you need your body to recover in order to be at peak.

It made me think about that, but then how can I push that into the goals that I have right now? Does that make sense? And so to me, that's where I went with the min-max, is this stuff all makes a lot of sense that probably if we were 10, we would go, "Well, duh." But as life gets more complex and things get wild, you look around and you're like, "No, but I have to go all the way or it doesn't work."

Scot: Right. I think about Mitch when you say that, and I think about how you used to be with your nutrition, Mitch. You're counting those macros and you had to just hit those exactly perfectly. And if you had a day where that didn't happen, you really got down on yourself. There was no leeway whatsoever. There was no min-max.

Mitch: No. I would force-feed myself chicken breast, or I'd go the other direction where I'm like, "Well, today's a nutritional bankruptcy. Let's get all the chips and everything and eat them all." So that was the two ways I'd approach it.

But one of the lessons that I was reminded of when you first started talking about min-maxing was this idea in Japanese culture of kaizen, this idea of continual small improvements and that over a very long time they add up.

I remember when I was reading a book that was talking about how to incorporate kaizen . . . I mean, I love a self-help book where it's just like, "Oh, what's wrong with me?" I found this book and it was telling me that even a 5% improvement on the day is better than it was yesterday.

Scot: Five percent, actually, on the day is huge. That's huge.

Mitch: Sure. But versus 100%. Even if you're just giving a small amount, even if you're making one small change that day, it was better than yesterday. And eventually, those all add up.

I think part of it is maturing, getting a little older, seeing some things pan out in your own life. Eventually, that started to ring true. And so I'm reassessing how I measure success. And sometimes just a small improvement every day or even just a stabilizing health step in a day is better than nothing.

Scot: Right. "I didn't sabotage myself today, so that's a win."

Dr. Smith: A huge win.

Scot: I didn't have to drive forward. I just didn't have to go backwards. Not that going backwards . . . I mean, it happens, and sometimes you do, but yeah, I like that.

One of the things I love about this concept of min-max is not only does it get me into the gym . . . Because if there's a day where I'm just like, "Oh God, I just can't do it," for whatever reason, whether my Oura ring is telling me that I can't or some other reason, or I just don't have time on my calendar, I can do the workout at home. I can do the 20 minutes at the gym. And you know what? Then I still maintain the identity of "I'm somebody that exercises." That doesn't slip away.

I've heard people frame that when you first start a goal, if you want to accomplish something, if you're trying to start a habit, you should only schedule to do it two minutes a day. I think that was in a book called "Atomic Habits." And it sounds crazy, right? You drive to the gym, and then you work out for two minutes and you leave. But it's more about developing that habit.

Even if you only do it for a couple of minutes, eventually then when you go, you allow yourself to do it longer, but then you've developed that solid habit and that identity that "I'm somebody . . ."

If reading is your goal, you read for five minutes before bed, it doesn't have to be an hour, it doesn't have to be a book a week, I'm a reader. And when you're able to do more, then min-max lets you flex that, right?

In the ideal situation, I'd read for an hour. In the minimum situation, I read a page. And I've still accomplished my goal of reading every single day, if that's my goal.

And the other thing I love about it is we all have multiple health habits. And we're all focusing on one maybe a little bit more than the others. Mitch, you mentioned your mental health right now. So you can let some of the other ones flex a little bit smaller and get towards that min. And if you're really focusing hard on another one, you can let that flex and focus on the max.

That way, now you're not overloading yourself with all these different health habits that you absolutely have to have. And you're still a person who's working on your mental health, you're still a person who is eating nutritiously, you're still a person who exercises. It might not be the ideal at that moment in all of them, but you're still that person. So that's a big part for me, is that identity part.

Dr. Smith: The more we talk about this, the more I think we do some of this just on our own in order for survival. In a lot of these things where we want to have some goals that are met, where we make the goal of "I'm going to read every day" and we don't necessarily put a min-max on it, but there's a min and a max to it.

Scot: Or for some people, it's only one thing. "I'm going to read every day" and that means one thing. And actually, probably worse is they've never thought, "What is success?"

"I'm going to read every day," and you hear about quantifiable goals, but if you make it too rigid and you can't hold up to that, then where are you? But the min-max lets you continue to do that.

Dr. Smith: Right. And the min-max, it's kind of . . . Because I've done that too where I wanted to read whatever. And so I've done that where it's a page or a chapter or two chapters. And there are days where I'll read for two hours, and there are days where I read legitimately a page and I shut the book and I go. I think that I min-maxed without min-maxing and having a name on it.

And so when you said at the beginning of the episode, "We're going to name it. We're going to give this a label," I think it gives us permission to also do those more frequently, right?

Because sometimes it feels like you're cheapening that goal, but in reality, you're not. It's giving you the ability to reach a goal where things are going to ebb and flow. Life is going to be busy.

There are going to be days where it's your wife's birthday and you've got to take her to dinner. And there are going to be days where you've got to be somewhere, do something, right? Those are the things for me that I still have the ability to have success.

And I think that's the big thing we want to bring, is success. I mean, that's what I'm getting from this whole min-max conversation. When we talked about doing it, I was like, "Yeah, I like it."

Scot: And the other thing . . . I'm going to come back to you, Mitch. I think it was you that said just making small efforts, that little incremental improvements, right? A min-max allows you to continue to make progress because you've defined your minimum. And it could be the bare minimum, but at least you're still moving towards that goal.

John, do you feel like the men you see undervalue those small or partial efforts?

All right. Mitch, let's talk about a min-max in your life, how you apply this kind of thinking.

Mitch: Yeah. So for me, it's just like you were saying. There's a flexibility. There is ability to give yourself grace with this kind of min-max paradigm for success.

And so one of the things that I realized very early in my mental health when I eventually got diagnosed with ADHD was that there are some days that my brain is not going to work with me. My brain is going to actively just check out. It's going to fight me with every little step that I take, whether it be the medication is not quite working and the brain chili is off, or whatever is going on. I didn't sleep too well or I blah, blah, blah.

There might be days that either biologically or psychologically, I just am not going to have a brain working the same as it did yesterday or the next day or whatever.

And so for me, it's starting by doing that kind of checking in and saying, "What kind of day is today? Hey, I'm dragging this morning. Hey, I can't seem to get started. How bad of a brain day am I having?"

For people who've ever done ADHD stuff, they talk about spoon theory, right? How many spoons do you have? And I don't know why they're spoons, but it's just once you're out of spoons, that's a single unit of energy and motivation. And there are some days that you don't have very many in the drawer. You can't really do much that day.

And so for me, I've created some systems where it's like, "Hey, if it's a bad brain day, here is the bare minimum of what you've got to do." You've got to check your email. If there are any must-do deadlines between now and tomorrow morning, you've got to do them. Other than that, it's a bare minimum Monday. What can you do to just stabilize?

Scot: That's not going to be the day that you beat yourself up because you didn't come up with the next six months' strategy for something at work.

Mitch: Right. If I answered a handful of emails that were time-sensitive . . .

Scot: Right. You got your work done that had to be done that day on a bad brain day. And then you save your good brain days for, "All right. Let's really hit this big project that I've been wanting to work on."

Mitch: Yes.

Scot: I like it.

Mitch: And so it gives me that little bit of flexibility. And then on top of that, it also allows me not to screw over future Mitch if I have a day where I just don't do anything, or a bad brain day becomes a bad brain week where it's this cycle of overworking, exertion, and burnout and blah, blah, blah, and then I'm fried.

Dr. Smith: Mitch, I think you're right. And I love you not making problems for future Mitch. It's a concept that you talk about and when people say it, you kind of chuckle, but then you realize you allowing for that variance does help future Mitch more than allowing it to spiral for a week.

And I think to me, when you said that, I was like, "Yeah, it's true." I've got times at work where I'm dialed in and I can get my documentation done. It's all done and I get home and I'm like, "I'm on top of the world. I got nothing from work that's looming." And then there are other weeks where I come home and I'm like, "Damn it, I've got 35 charts to close. What happened to my brain?"

So I can totally resonate with that and go, "I know exactly what that feels like."

Scot: Yeah. And actually, John, it wasn't until you commented on the future Mitch thing that it's just like, "Maybe the minimum is let's not screw over future Mitch tomorrow." That's what we've got to accomplish today. "Let's not get future Mitch fired. Let's not put him in a situation where he's feeling like he's a waste of space." I love that.

That makes me think of my work example. And I know this is a common thing that you hear. It's one of the tips or hacks or tricks for being productive. If you don't feel like it, you just have to dedicate five minutes to something.

And even if it's a big project and I'm not feeling it that day, I might not have . . . I don't know what your limitations are versus mine, but I might not be feeling that day. I just tell myself, "All right. You've just got to open it up and five minutes. Just spend five minutes with it." Sometimes that's the activation energy I need, and the next thing I know, I'm at it for an hour and a half and I have a good, productive day.

But that's that min-max idea. I think we tell ourselves . . . we put on our to-do list, "Come up with a six-month strategy." Wow, that seems huge. No wonder I'm not doing anything with that.

But if you go, "All right. Well, I'm just going to dedicate five minutes to the six-month strategy," then you get to sit down and you start engaging with it, and if after five minutes you just don't have it, then you move on to the next thing and try not to screw over future whoever. If you do have it, then you just keep rocking it. And you feel good about those five minutes if that's all you did.

Dr. Smith: That's a huge thing. And I do something similar, but I think I've done that as well where, "I just have to do something on this project. I have to do something on this thing."

And then something else that I've tried to push and I've talked to my kids about is if this is going to take you less than five minutes, you do it now. The "do it now," right? And I know we've talked about that before, but it made me think about that when you talked about the five minutes and just getting started.

Sometimes, yeah, you get started and an hour and a half later, you look up and you're like, "Man, I got a lot done." And really, your intention was just for five minutes. I think it's awesome.

Scot: So as I said at the top, we talked about min-max in another show. It's been something I've been kind of using, and successfully. I've really found it super useful to just continue to show up towards my goals every day, to not feel like a failure if I didn't do the thing that I really wanted to do, because I've set a minimum. I've conscientiously decided, "If I accomplish this little bit today, then that's success."

So it helps me emotionally. It helps me motivationally. It helps me continue with the identity that "I am a person who . . ." Fill in the blank.

Did anything shift for you, Mitch, as we had this conversation?

Mitch: Yeah, actually. It was some of the stuff that both you and John had talked about a little bit, was this idea that . . . I mean, it's kind of dumb, but it's like the daily readiness score, right? It's, "Hey, let's check in if it's going to be a min or a max day." And make sure that min is still something. It's that five minutes. It's still something. You're not completely letting yourself off the hook.

But at the very least, that little bit of a check-in is something that I didn't necessarily do all the time. I don't really check in, like, "How'd I sleep? How'd I do?" or whatever.

And man, if it's a minimum type of day, if that's all you can do, just pick five minutes to work on something, pick the minimum, and call it a success.

Scot: Right. How about you, John?

Dr. Smith: This really reaffirmed some of the things that I'm trying to implement to keep pace, even though some things are difficult. The nutrition thing right now has been a struggle, because I have some things that are at my house, the holidays, and all these things that make it more difficult. And I think it just reaffirms, "Hey, man, just stick with it because the little . . ."

Scot: You are a sucker for the Christmas tree cookies. I've seen you snarf those, dude. It's just insane.

Dr. Smith: That tin was full of cookies at one point, but it's not anymore.

But no, those are the things that reaffirm, "Hey, man, it's okay to do that." And I think to me, it was nice because it's something I've been beating myself up over the last little bit because I have had some difficulties with it. And so it's good to have this, "Hey, man, let's go through and re-set up some goals and set some min and max." For me, it reaffirmed these things. So it's awesome.

Scot: I have a couple things. One, I appreciate, John, that you said that putting a name to it was something that you appreciated. To me, that's how my brain works.

I think we did a show on these mantras, right? I have a whole bunch of these things that run through my head, these little subroutines. And I will always ask myself the question, "Well, what's your min? What's your max today? What are you going to feel good about? And if you achieve even more than you expected, then that's great." So I think naming it and then conscientiously thinking, "What is the min? What is the max?" Setting yourself up for success that way.

And the other thing I loved, again, it's the future Mitch. I love that.

Mitch: I'm sorry.

Scot: And even though we've talked about it before and it seems brutally obvious, a good min for some things might simply be, "What can I do that's going to make future Scot happy, or at least not screw up future Scot's life?"

Mitch: Yeah, not screw up . . . Right.

Scot: So if I'm feeling like I want to have a beer, because I still do enjoy beer, one is cool, but if I have two or three, am I screwing up future Scot? So that's kind of a reverse min-max, but you get what I'm saying, I think.

Mitch: Sure.

Scot: I love it when we tie these things together.

So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to put a challenge out to our listeners. I'm going to challenge you to pick a health behavior or any behavior, and define your minimum. Making it something you can always accomplish, I think, is super key there and that's not too much of a stretch. Nothing perfect, just the minimum.

And then define what your maximum is. What is the ideal? What would make you so happy, like, "I am king of the world if I can accomplish this"? But you're still king of the world if you get your minimum.

So pick one health habit, define your minimum and maximum, and see if that changes how you interact with your health and health goals.

If you have any feedback or thoughts or would like to contribute to the conversation, you can do so. Just email us at hello@thescoperadio.com.

Thanks for listening. Thanks for caring about men's health.