Most of the time, I hate numbers; I'm not a numbers guy.
I don't like counting money or anything really, but I don't mind the endpoint of numbers, and I don't mind the insight.
It's why I was able to create a business and an infrastructure within my business where numbers are reported to me but not counted by me. I'm happy to look at patterns, changes and validations for actions, but not counting the numbers. There is no joy in that to me.
I wanted to share a little story here, just about the use of numbers and how sometimes they can be so helpful in all sorts of circumstances (as long as I'm not counting).
So about 1000 blogs ago, I wrote the story about hypothyroidism, and how it affected me, and the first blog is here.
In 2022, in my 50th year, just after my birthday, I contracted a COVID-induced thyroiditis and ended up hyperthyroid.
It's pretty grim, hyperthyroidism, especially if you're trying to go hard at life, because it sucks the life out of you like someone's just pulled the plug out.
It decreases your basal metabolic rate, and it increases your appetite. It makes you sad and want to cry and lie down, and it certainly is not conducive to a high-octane life, running hard for 12 to 16 hours a day, including training, working, having a family, all of that stuff.
It’s generally not so complicated to fix it, except that you end up on medicine for the rest of your life, and here's the kicker, not all the medicine they give you is the same. Generic medication and variations of generic medication are a thing, and it turns out that there is one type of thyroxine replacement treatment that I just cannot absorb.
So for the last few weeks, although I tried to take the medicine that I can't absorb, I had told myself a story that I was all better now, and it wouldn't make any difference which thyroid tablets I took as long as I took some.
It turns out it did.
I've had a cold for about 8 weeks (a sign I've been unable to deal with it due to my hypothyroidism). I'm sad, fat, tired, but it's the brain fog that's the worst, forgetting what you were talking about halfway through a sentence almost all the time, forgetting people's names or things that you've just done, it's brutal, but as a sign of hypothyroidism.
Anyway, I figured it out in the end, came off that generic, and by hook or by crook, got onto something else (another story quite difficult). It should take 3 to 4 weeks to make any difference, but a week into this, the difference was massive.
Approximately 2 weeks ago, (and here's the bit about the numbers) I tried to climb a hill on my bike that I've done, I've climbed about 40 times before. I was with some guys on a Sunday morning that I always ride with, far from being at the front, I wanted to stop and get off my bike. That is not me, that is never me.
I decided to repeat the hill on the Wednesday, and the same thing happened.
Because I measure everything on a bike, including my heart rate, my speed, and the power that I put through the pedals, I could tell exactly where I was, and I was in a terrible place.
Fast forward 10 days or so, and I was able to climb the hill 33% harder based on the numbers than I was before.
I did it again today, better again.
Numbers are a thing, the way we count them in finance, in our work or in marketing, or in how successful our implant treatment is, or in how well we can go on a bike after we've changed our thyroid medication. It's not the collection of numbers themselves and not paralysis by analysis; it's the insight.
The insight for me is to continue to work harder and harder to take care of myself better and better, even though I hate sticking to a system. As far as my HYPOT is concerned, I have to stick to a system.
The numbers tell me that if I don't stick to the system, I'm in trouble.
Blog Post Number - 4507