433 | Outside 365

0:00Hello and welcome to Choose a Fi. I'm your host Brad Barrett and today on the show we have Greg from outside 365. This is going to be a really fun one. I recently in my five weekly. I'm your host a five. community. And he talked about the importance and the benefits of spending time outside, which I think we all on some level intuitively know, but yet we stay in our hermetically sealed boxes all the time. And Greg is actually on a streak of nearly 1700 days at the time of recording of spending time outside. And I guess the ultimate barometer is moving at least one mile a day outside. So this is part of the Outside 365 movement that he is founding and trying to spread all across the world.

1:01I'm really excited to bring this episode to you. With that, welcome to Choose F5.

1:12Greg, welcome to Choose F5. I'm so happy to have you here. Thanks for having me, Brad. I am stoked to be on the show, longtime listener, first time caller. So yeah, stoked to be here. Nice. Yeah, this is cool. I really appreciate you responding to my email. One of the ways that Jonathan and I have always conceptualized ChooseFI and the financial independence movement is this crowdsourced movement, right? It can't be limited to me and Jonathan or Mr. Money Mustache or Brandon the Mad Fientist. It is, this is a group of us all across the world sharing ideas. And when I hear new novel ideas, I just want to bring it to the audience.

1:49And your response of outside 365 just really, really intrigued me. So where do you think would be a good place to start? Yeah, actually, Brad, I don't know if I ever told you this, but the reason I started listening to ChooseFI a few years ago was with the idea of having a community. Because in your actual normal everyday life, at least for me, there's not a lot of people I can actually talk to about financial independence. I was already on the journey. and I actually had sat down and I was thinking about an idea that I think I probably heard first from Tim Ferriss that you're the average of the five people you surround yourselves with and I was like I need to surround myself with more like financial independence because like this is something super important to me that's how I started listening to you guys so yeah it's been super fun to listen to you for a few years but before we dive too far into it I do want to like sort of you know even acknowledge some of the feelings like getting on the show I don't know of like what some of your other guests, you know, feel when they get on here.

2:44But like, as somebody that's on the journey, there is a sense of like, nervousness to get on and be like, hey, I'm into financial independence and like have my name out there. So as like a bit of a prelude, kind of want to talk about that for a few minutes, just because it feels a little bit weird to be employed by a company to be actively in the workforce with saying, hey, I'm working towards this thing. But as I mentioned in one of my emails to you, like right now is kind of a great time for a lot of employees to be thinking about this. Because as investors, we say we shouldn't watch the minor trends of the market too much.

3:17But there is like a lot of movement right now in the workforce, and especially the tech industry, which technically I'm now part of. So I've been watching articles about this for the past few months. And there's this website called layoffs.fyi that like a tech industry employee created a few years ago to track layoffs in the tech industry. And according to that website, there were 161 ,000 tech employees laid off last year in 2022. And as of the time of this recording early March, already 125 ,000 or more employees have been laid off already in 2023. So like, that's like a huge number of people that previously had extremely well paying jobs and what everybody thought was like the industry to be in.

4:01And we had people, you move from all sorts of other industries to like retool in tech. And now some of that money's drying up. So I think it's kind of like a great moment to acknowledge that, you know, even if you're in your career, like working towards financial independence could be like a massive benefit to you. So just want to throw that idea in there. Yeah, that's huge. I totally agree. I think really what you're talking about there is almost similar to what I realized literally 20 plus years ago at this point, which I know ages me quite a bit, But my first job, it's impermanence. And I think that was actually the genesis for why I started pursuing financial independence in earnest was seeing that at that time.

4:43So I was at a big accounting firm, Arthur Anderson, which was essentially the best accounting firm in the world. Because of the Enron scandal, the company basically stopped existing nine months after I graduated from college. And it was wild to go through and to see the partners and senior managers and such who had worked their whole careers at this incredible firm and it was all gone. And that impermanence really left a mark on me. I think to me, the larger point, and you see it now in the tech industry, there's never going to essentially never going to be an industry where you can just ride off into the sunset and do this for 50 years and not have to worry about just the ups and downs of life.

5:22I mean, I think that's realistic. We like to look at the world as there's no rainy day. we can just rock and roll YOLO the heck out of this and not worry about it, right? Save nothing. My job will always be there. But I think when you start to see there's some level of impermanence to any job, no matter how safe it is, no matter how highly compensated you are, that then speaks to, okay, maybe I should start saving for a rainy day well before that happens. And I think that that's a light bulb moment for a lot of people. Mm-hmm. 100%. And like, that doesn't mean you have to use your rainy day fund either.

5:58Like, hopefully you don't. But for me as well, like, I think it takes the stress off, right? To know that like, I don't have to be as worried. Like I don't want to get laid off obviously, but like, I don't have to be as worried. And that allows me to actually perform better in my position because I'm not feeling like I've got my back up against the wall the entire time. I can still make the aggressive moves to like, do the work that really needs to be done. say some of the hard things because I feel like I've got this latitude to do my best work and not be scared all the time about losing my job.

6:29So I think it's a good angle to think about. I think it's a great angle to think about. And the irony of this is you're saying on some level, there's some nervousness and trepidation for while you're still working, coming on a financial independence podcast, or I don't know if you're talking about your specific case, but, or even just talking about FI because you're worried, oh, what would my employer think if they knew X, Y, and Z. But on the other hand, you can say to that employer potentially, or just as a mindset of, wow, I'm actually choosing this job because I have the proverbial FU money, right?

7:04And I have a significant net worth and I'm not living paycheck to paycheck. I'm not living a life of scarcity where I'm worried all the time. I'm actually choosing you for the finite number of years that A, I'm on this planet or B, that I'm in the workforce. I'm choosing your company. Like that to me is like, it's just such an interesting reframe, but that's pretty powerful. I think so. Like that's a great way to put it actually, Brad. And I think this will connect to what we talk about a little bit later, but that connects all the way to the idea of living in alignment with your values and choosing like how you want to spend your time because you don't have much of it.

7:38So like, why not work for a company that you're, that you choose, that you're passionate about, that you're passionate about the work. I realize it's not always possible, but it's something to at least consider and think about. Yeah. And it's something to aim for and strive for. And I always talk about directional accuracy. If you have that of living in alignment with your values as kind of like that North star, as you're saying, a lot of us wouldn't necessarily think that for our job. Our job is a means to an end is the way to write it off, but it doesn't have to be. Every aspect of your life can be congruent with those values.

8:11And I think this was a very unexpectedly positive start to the episode here. What's cool about these podcasts is you don't know what we're going to talk about. I think this is really critical that everybody understands this. Hopefully this came through. And I think this is a perfect launching point for living in alignment with your values in other ways, because that's really the brunt of the conversation today about how do we extend this beyond just work? So now, okay, I want to spend more time outside. I want to be healthier. I want to spend time with family and friends and not just sit around watching TV, right?

8:45Like the easy ways, How did you start thinking about living in alignment with your values and really the outdoors ultimately? Because that at its essence is what we're talking about. Yeah, definitely. So I was at this point in my life where I've always valued going outside a lot. And I was probably way more active than the average person. I've been in the mountain bike media industry my entire career. I've been mountain biking, downhill skiing, hiking, doing all the outdoor sports my entire life. But I hit this point where I was working from home. I was behind the computer 40, 50 hours a week, maybe more.

9:21And even if I would get outside three or four days a week, I realized that I could often go three days without leaving my house. And I was like, man, I know what I value. And it's going outside and being active, being in nature as just this one microcosm, all my values, but this one value. and I was like, I'm not living in alignment with this value. It's like, how do I go about changing my life in order to just make sure that I'm living in alignment with that value a little bit every single day? Like it doesn't need to be an epic adventure every day and it can't be, but I think there's like a huge benefit of having a dose of that value like in your day, every single day.

10:01So I came up with this idea, went through a few renditions, but got to basically outside 365, which is the idea of getting outside, moving at least one human powered mile every single day. And like, you might think one mile is too small to be significant, but like I found that actually it can be super powerful. And sometimes the one mile days are actually the most powerful because those are the days that you wouldn't have gone outside normally. And maybe you're making yourself like prioritize this and get out. And then those are the days you need the most. That is really interesting. I love that last little aspect because on some levels you'd say, oh, of course the 10-mile hike day is going to be vastly more important than the day it was raining and I went outside and just eked out that mile.

10:50But yeah, I wonder how much more you learn about yourself on that rainy or snowy day when you still get out there. Because I think a lot of us chalk talk up so much of our outside time to quote unquote, good or bad weather. And I'm very specifically highlighting that because that is very much in the eye of the beholder, right? Like what is the definition? Is it because it's raining? Does it by definition mean it is bad weather? Okay. Maybe, maybe not. But I think so many people immediately say, oh, of course it's raining. That's terrible weather. What do you think about that? There's a common phrase in the outdoor industry that there's no such thing as bad weather there's just bad clothing but i have definitely gone out in tons of weather that's like suboptimal or maybe even like borderline life-threatening but there's still please beware everyone beware beware so i mean example of like borderline life-threatening is uh we were in pennsylvania for christmas and there was a polar vortex it was freezing cold i mean 30 below zero wind chills and still had to get out and do the mile.

11:59That was maybe a one mile minimum day, but we still got out there and we still did it. But talking to bad weather, good weather, I mean, that was maybe one of the harder days, but I've done a number of days where it's pouring down rain. And it's interesting that if you can move your mind from thinking, oh, this sucks right now to looking around and just noticing what is, all of a sudden you're realizing you're having a whole different experience of the forest or your neighborhood in the rain than you would if it was sunny outside. So I think there's a lot of value in getting out every single day for sure.

12:35Yeah, I agree. I love that there's no bad weather, only bad clothing. That's a really good thing for a lot of people to remember. If there's one takeaway maybe from the episode, that's probably it is don't just write it off. Don't write off something as good and bad. The only good weather is not just 70 degrees and sunny. And listen, I complain as much as the next guy, especially wind is my thing. So Greg, I don't know why, but wind is the thing that I hate the most. I'm fine with cold. I actually love going outside 30, 35 degrees when it's nice and calm. That is just one of my favorite times to be outside.

13:10And like you said, you just throw on some extra clothes. And for me, it's just a hat and gloves and I'm good to go. A lot of this also is just, is facing a little bit of adversity too. I think there's great value just for human beings. Again, I said in the introduction that we live in these hermetically sealed boxes where it's essentially 70 degrees, 365 days a year, but that's not good enough. I think there is great value to human beings for overcoming adversity, even when it's, in this case, self-imposed. I think that is a really valuable thing. And okay, for me, it's wind. I know it sounds ridiculous as I'm saying it out loud and people are probably laughing at me all across the world here, but it just annoys the heck out of me.

13:53It always has. But that's even more reason to go out when it is specifically windy to me. I think we should double down on this idea of overcoming adversity because that's really what it comes down to. And I do want to highlight, even though I've now been outside for like 1700 days in a row, that when I first came up with this idea, it took me like two or three different goes at it before I got to my first 365 days. It actually took me a few years of trying before I could get to a 365 day streak. I had a few like major injuries in there, knee surgeries, different things. And even when I started the challenge, like it's a personal challenge, right?

14:34So when I started, like the one mile wasn't even the goal. It was like, get outside and move. And I eventually upgraded to a mile. But like, for a while, I couldn't do a mile every single day due to pain and other injuries, these sorts of things. But the human body has evolved to perform under stress and to respond well to these stressors. And that's one thing I've learned is I've gotten healthier, I've gotten fitter, I've gotten more resilient through doing this. And I think that can't be understated. Yeah, agreed. And like you said, you are somebody who spent time outside and is active, right?

15:13You said something in passing. You're in the mountain bike media industry, which I'm actually curious about dialing into, but you do all sorts of outdoor sports, but you just said even something like going outside and moving one human powered mile a day has gotten you in better shape. That's actually really interesting. I'd love to hear more about that. Here's another spin on it to put into perspective. So, you know, I've had a few knee surgeries. I still sometimes have lingering issues, but mostly I'm fine. But sometimes I say to myself, I can't ride a mountain bike this many days per week because it's going to be too hard on the body.

15:51I'm dealing with knee pain. It's going to be too hard. But on certain points of my job, I'll be out documenting trails in a destination somewhere in the world. And I'll be planning to ride five, six days a week for two, three weeks in a row, something like that. And it sounds like a lot. I've started noticing that oftentimes coming off of two or three weeks of like heavy activity and almost zero computer work, my knees feel better than when I'm sitting behind the desk for 40 hours a week or whatever it is. And it's just fantastic. Like, it's kind of frustrating because it's like, you still have to sit behind the computer until you reach that FI number, but that the body is resilient enough to like respond well to that stress.

16:36And that's something I think I also learned in physical therapy is that movement and the right work, the right exercise is very healing and the body responds well to that. Yeah. And that kind of ties back to your little dose here, right? So we're talking about a little micro dose. I mean, a human powered mile, even just walking for most people, that's going to be 16 to probably 22 minutes for the vast majority of people. okay, in 16 waking hours, you can probably find 20 minutes, but even for people who can't, okay, what if it was two minutes? What if it was five minutes? That's what I'm curious about is maybe how this has pervaded more of your thought process in terms of maybe little doses of exercise for someone like you who's sitting there in a desk job for 40, 50 plus hours a week.

17:26Have you built in additional little micro doses of exercise or movement just within the day? Yeah, I think there's two thoughts that really pertain to this. One is the micro dose, the one mile minimums are actually, I think, super important for maintaining momentum. In the sport of mountain biking, being a good mountain biker is all about maintaining your momentum, essentially. Like if you look at all of the tactics of mountain biking, it all boils down to maintaining momentum. The same thing applies in life. And those one miles keep you in the habit of getting outside and being active, and they keep your momentum going.

18:05And when you have that kind of momentum, it just brings you forward and keeps you moving, keeps you active. So I think momentum is just hugely critical. And actually, if you're thinking about getting started, I also like to think about maybe having momentum coming into the challenge. So this is a bit of an aside now. But I just want to throw out that if you haven't done much activity, it might be a good idea to build up some momentum before you think about going 365 days. Because I mentioned earlier, it took me a few years before I got to 365. And my current streak, uninterrupted streak, I had been fairly active for several months leading up to it.

18:45And I was like, hey, I'm feeling pretty good. I'm actually going to take a couple days off, rest, and I'm going to dive into it because I'm feeling like I've gotten the momentum built up to actually do this thing now. So that's one portion. The other portion is focusing in dialing in on that one mile minimum. I think it's hugely useful, even in your day to day. So if we just think about your average work day, and maybe your computer employee, because that's where my mind goes sitting behind a computer, getting out and getting a breath of fresh air is fantastic. Your lunch hour is a great time to do it.

19:18And for me, moving outside is mainly about connecting with my values, but there's actually a ton of science, like scientific studies that supports this. Basically, getting our nature, nature exposure, improves your mood, improves your mental well-being, decreases anxiety and stress, increases creativity, and of course has all the physical benefits as well if you're exercising. Now, I pulled a few stats, and these things are actually scientifically and statistically relevant with as little as 20 minutes of outdoor exercise. They increase with more nature exposure, but with as little as 20 minutes, you start seeing decreased stress, decreased anxiety, increased creativity.

20:00How long does it take to walk a mile? About 20 minutes. So there's actually, it's just like a, such a fantastic benchmark. I won't get too deep into numbers because that doesn't maybe come over well in the podcast, but a fantastic resource if you want to learn more about this is a book called The Nature Fix by Florence Williams. It's starting to get a few years old now, but she dives into like all the science and scientific studies that are being done in this field. So it's pretty fantastic. Yeah, that's great. I love that concept of essentially the minimum effective dose, right? So you're saying it's somewhere in the vicinity of 20 minutes and just coincidentally, that's about what it takes to walk a mile.

20:36That's fantastic. Exactly. And that's definitely like a minimum dose. So if you could sum up Nature Fix book into like one sentence, that's your minimum dosage. Getting out for like a longer day hike or longer nature exposure, better. Getting out for like a wilderness trip where you're out for multiple days and disconnected from technology, even better. But that 20 minutes is your minimum dosage. Yeah. But like you said, and this is important with any type of habit or anything we're trying to build into our lives is you have to gain momentum. And there's some benefit, obviously of these streaks.

21:11And I do want to talk to you about that. But there also is, like you're saying, you actually purposefully stopped on some level and just say, it's almost like a regrouping. I'm thinking about James Clear and his book, Atomic Habits and how, okay, it might even be those first couple of days, just literally lacing up your shoes and walking out of the house for a couple of the nearest houses, literally walk a hundred yards and come back. It sounds ridiculous when you hear it, that you're like purposefully limiting it. But the actual importance at the beginning is building the habit that I'm the type of person that goes outside and walks every day.

21:48And when you understand that, okay, I can do this because really the hardest part is just the inertia of sitting around in your house. So the physical, getting whatever those clothes on, getting your shoes on, figuring out, okay, how far am I going to walk. You can just, you can shortcut it all and just go outside, walk a couple of houses, come on back. And I think that to me would be kind of a cool way to start this. And it sounds like that's roughly what you're saying as well. Oh, a hundred percent. I mean, you nailed it. I can't add much to that. I would say if you're starting small, don't overcomplicate it though.

22:23Like if there's something new to you, don't overcomplicate it. Like we talked a bit about clothing and bad clothing and bad weather. Okay. The reality is if you're going outside for 20 minutes and you're starting from your house, right? You don't have to have a specialized rain jacket. You don't need to have a specialized clothes. Put a heavy jacket on. It's going to get wet. You can come back home and take it off. If you're going to start small, you don't need anything special. I'm curious, what are your thoughts? Because a lot of the benefit is being out in nature. And like you're saying, maybe on those longer type trips, the three or four plus days, being in nature, disconnecting, et cetera.

22:59But now more realistically for most of us is that 20 to 40 minute walk. My inclination is to grab my phone, grab my wireless headphones and listen to podcasts for 40 minutes. And that's roughly what I've been doing for, I guess I've been now walking for about eight weeks where I'm trying to get to that, the rough 10 ,000 steps. Not that I think there's any definitive science on the 10 ,000 steps. It's more, again, that directional accuracy of, okay, that means for me to get to 10 ,000 steps in a day, I usually have to walk, make an overt and specific walk for about 30 minutes. So I'm probably only getting to about six to 7 ,000 steps without that specific walk.

23:42So that's where I'm thinking about the 10 ,000. But again, I always grab the phone and the podcast and I still feel like I'm in nature. I'm walking around, I'm looking about, I'm not like head down on my stupid phone, obviously. But okay, quick hit thoughts. What do you think about that? And be brutally honest, I can dig it. It depends what your goal is. If you are trying to connect with nature, I think it's gonna really inhibit you quite a bit. So there's actually quite a bit of science around what is it about nature that is important to us. And that's something that's kind of hard to parse out, but there's a few different things.

24:20One of it is like, the novelty and like experiencing novel things and noticing things. And if you're listening to something, you're missing out on this whole soundscape that surrounds you. So many things you might not notice. You're also maybe distracting yourself and you're focusing on that instead of like what's around you. So if moving your body and gait exercises your focus, great. If this nature connection, which is kind of a different level, different aspect of it is the bigger focus, then you're probably missing some of it. Yeah, that makes sense. Right. What are you trying to get out of it.

24:49That's another important question. So there's no right or wrong answer, obviously. But yeah, I think in my perfect world, I probably don't bring the phone next time. So maybe that'll be my challenge after we're recording this, Greg, is go a week or two without bringing it. And again, I'm still I'm happy that I'm not head down in the phone and I'm clearly not doing that. But yeah, I think it would enhance the experience of the actual walk, even though I'm just in a suburban neighborhood. So it's not like true nature, but there's a lot going on nevertheless, which is one of the kind of fun things that I've noticed is you notice animals that you might not have noticed before.

25:23I see squirrels all the time. We have white squirrels in my neighborhood, which is actually pretty cool. So yeah, it's just, it's kind of neat. No, I think that's it. It's like noticing. And another thing to think about, which I think Oliver Berkman mentioned briefly in 4 ,000 weeks, which I read while you guys were doing the book club, fantastic book, by the way. But another writer, Johan Hari, definitely mentioned in a book called Stolen Focus, Why You Can't Pay Attention is the different types of focus. And one of the different types of focus that's really important for creativity and creative connections is what Johan really refers to as like mind wandering.