Fitness to Support Your Livelihood

Seeking balance in work and fitness… balance or order?

I actually laughed at the idea of competing in CrossFit when I started it. I did not think it could be a real sport.

At first, I saw it as useful, but in a limited way. It seemed like a good way to stay strong, capable, and generally harder to kill. That was enough for me. I was not thinking about competition, and I definitely was not thinking about CrossFit as something that could shape the kind of man I was becoming.

But that is more what it did.

It is easy to compartmentalize life. Work over here. Fitness over there. Relationships somewhere else. We act like these are separate categories that should not touch each other too much. But that is not really how people work. The kind of person you are in one area of life tends to spill into the others.

Prepare for the unknown and unknowable

And right now, especially with so much uncertainty around work and AI, that matters. More and more, it feels like we are being asked to prepare not just for known demands, but for the unknown and unknowable. That takes more than technical skill. It takes a kind of readiness.

CrossFit helps train that readiness.

Anybody who has done a hard workout knows the feeling. You are in the middle of it, and your brain starts negotiating. Put the bar down. Slow down more than you need to. Stare at the wall for a few extra seconds. Suddenly the workout is not really about the workout anymore. It is about whether you are willing to stay in it.

That is where a lot of the growth happens.

You learn something about yourself when you keep moving, keep thinking, keep solving problems while uncomfortable. Not because suffering is automatically good, but because willingly staying with something hard changes you. It builds reliability. Adaptability. Resilience. Problem-solving. Not just gym qualities. Work qualities. Relationship qualities. Livelihood qualities.

Designing systems and building character

That idea makes sense to me as a designer too. In UX, one of the best ways to prevent errors is to make them hard to make in the first place. A well-designed system shapes people toward better outcomes. Training can do something similar. Put yourself in contact with the right kinds of challenge often enough, and over time you become a person who is harder to rattle when work gets messy, when plans change, or when life asks more of you than you expected.

And those qualities are not just for you. They are for the people around you. Your team benefits from your steadiness. Your clients benefit from your problem-solving. The people you love benefit from your patience, your discipline, and your ability not to panic.

That matters even more after injury, when it is easy to let your identity get wrapped around what you cannot do. A better anchor is this: base your identity on the kind of person you are becoming at work and at home. Are you dependable? Are you calm under pressure? Do you keep your word? Do you serve people well?

Order over balance

Maybe balance is not the right word. Maybe the better word is order. Put first things first, and let fitness support your livelihood, your relationships, and your calling.

Honestly, I think there is even a business idea in that. A website directory of service professionals for hire who are also CrossFitters. Not because CrossFitters are automatically better than everyone else, but because there is something compelling about hiring someone who has trained themselves to do hard things well.

And when we are looking for people to trust, most of us want the same thing:

We want the best.