Beautiful repetitions

The other day my headphones did not work in the gym so I was left with my own thoughts surrounded by others in the sweatbox... just me and the reps.... As I was pushing the bar, and my musicless workout grew longer, so began a deeper revelation: reps are beautiful.

The beauty of a rep comes down to the fact that it is so small that it does not matter in the grand scheme but sums to something astonishing over time. There is something about a rep that helps you stay in the moment if you focus on it.

You can also compete with idols on reps. That stacked guy? he only does about 100 repetitions per day. Ok yes, maybe a larger weight, but you can also put in 100 reps - reps are the leveller. Your favourite programmer Andrej Karpathy does 400 lines, 10 commits and 5 PR reviews daily - you can match those reps. Sales calls... also reps. Meditation... reps. This blog post is even a rep.

Another intriguing aspect of a rep is that they allow you to risk more... anyone can waste one rep... who cares if even 1/10 reps fail. People like to talk about habits but you can't actually do a habit, they exist in this strange space in your head where you are semi-aware of them but they could slip away. Reps are tangible and can be traded for time, you can actually do, feel and adjust the amount of reps to your liking.