Hello!

Lots of new subscribers joining this week - great to have you along! Let me know if you enjoy today's email.

This email is inspired by my typical Sunday night / Monday morning routine. Here's how it usually goes:

1) Go to bed on Sunday night and start to try and figure out how I can avoid the gym on Monday morning. Maybe I could go at lunch, even after work?

2) Monday morning: wake up and drag myself to the gym anyway (with difficulty)

3) Post gym: be glad I got it out of the way and can get on with my day

Repeat each week.

There's another phrase for 'getting it out of the way' - it's called eating your frogs.

Let me explain - and don't forget to subscribe if you are new.

Eating your frogs is a simple concept that refers to doing the hard or unpleasant things that we tend to put off.

Work with me here - let's say you need to eat a frog once a day. 1x frog, per day. I would describe this as a sub-optimal scenario. It's definitely not the nicest thought, so if you're anything like me, you'll put it off. Avoid it. Make excuses.

But here's the thing...

If you put off eating your frog today, you will have 2 frogs to eat tomorrow - which is even less sub-optimal, and leaves us with 2 problems.

The first is that they will start to build up. 🐸🐸🐸

If you keep avoiding this task, you'll end up with an army(?) of frogs, and your little frog problem will become a big one. 🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸

It's going to get harder and harder to get rid of them, much more so than if you were to deal with the original one per day.

But then there's the second problem.

If you don't get rid of the frog ASAP, it will constantly be on your mind.

You wake up, and there it is, sat there, watching. Being a frog. Doing frog stuff. You think - 'no thanks, I'll deal with that later'. So off you go, you have breakfast, get ready for the day and go to work.

But the frog is still in your mind.

You know you need to eat it, and you can't concentrate on your work. You drive home - and all you can think about is the frog. You go out of your way to avoid the frog problem, but before you know it, they are everywhere and your problem has got out of hand.

By putting it off, everything you do is affected - all you can think about is this frog!

Maybe you can see where I'm going with this.

Stop putting it off

Eating the frog is a task that's hard and unpleasant. Just like going to the gym on a dark, cold winter morning. Or tackling that drawer full of rubbish that you never use but can't seem to get deal with.

The best thing to do with tasks like these - even eating a frog - is to get it out of the way as soon as possible. Get it done early, and go on and live your life.

Instead of putting it off and leaving it until tomorrow, where it's added onto your tomorrow to-do list, it's best to deal with these things as soon as possible. Leaving it until later on only makes it a later you problem! And why would later me be any more keen to deal with it than I am now?

It's a weird metaphor but I think it's a great way to show that letting things pile up isn't the answer. And nor is avoiding something, but having it weigh on you all of the time like a dark cloud.

Deal with it, get it out of the way, don't let it add onto whatever else needs to be done.

Happy days.

This week I'm: ⬇️

• 📖 Reading what can only be described as an incredible write up of a $125 plumping lip gloss in which the writer delves into her concurrent journey to quit smoking and her quest to find out whether "the man I love will want to make me his primary partner if my lips suddenly become medium size" - sharp, hilarious and unexpected. Great read

• 📺 Watching The Bear on Disney+ about a big time chef who returns to his now-dead brother's sandwich shop in an attempt to turn it around and bring the reluctant staff onside. Jeremy Allen White who plays Carmey - head chef - won a Golden Globe for best actor, and the best bit? There's only 8 episodes and they're all 30-45 mins

• 😋 Enjoying this amazing peach and passionfruit Kvarg yoghurt thing - 84 calories and 15g of protein and it's amazing!

• 🍺 On day 18 of dry Jan. Lots of temptation which so far I've managed to avoid which I'm really pleased about. I will be writing about this month's Dry Jan challenge as a whole in a future email series I can't wait to start, but more on that in the coming weeks...

• 📧 Resharing 23 lessons for 2023 - what's your favourite? Mine is: "Competitive sport is the best way to get fit without realising you’re doing any exercise. You play football and play tennis but you don’t play on the treadmill or play HIIT in your bedroom. The clue is in the verb"

• 🤔 Thinking of renaming this weekly newsletter to WORK IN PROGRESS / W.I.P. - the whole point of this email is me figuring out life and sharing what I learn. I like the idea of always being a work in progress. I also think it says a bit more about the point of the email than Weekly Wharmby which is more about me than the idea of development. Thoughts?

💬 And finally, a quote

Big fan of James, worth a follow if you're into no-nonsense life and fitness chat. And also being intensely jealous of his recent move to Australia...

Anyway, as always, thanks.

If you found this interesting and useful, feel free to subscribe. I send emails like this every Tuesday (ish).

And as always, feel free to reply to these email if you found this useful!

In the meantime, you can find me on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, and have a look at what I’m reading on Goodreads.