Changing My Mind Is a Feature, Not a Bug
Third lesson in Sticking Around, and this one's a confession too, same as the last.
I told a group last spring, pretty firmly, that the way to build a walking habit was to pick a fixed time and never move it. Same hour every day, no exceptions, because exceptions are where habits go to die. I believed it. I said it like I'd tested it in a lab somewhere.
I don't believe it anymore. Or I believe it less. Some weeks the fixed time works great. Other weeks life doesn't care what hour I picked, and if I've built the whole thing on rigidity, one bad Tuesday and the habit's dead anyway. So now I tell people to pick a fixed time and hold it loosely. Which is close to the opposite of firm advice.
I used to think that made me an unreliable teacher. I've come around to seeing it as the more honest way to run this. If I'm not allowed to update, I'm just defending a position instead of trying to get people to actually keep walking. Those are different jobs.
Where this shows up on the loop
I noticed a guy a while back guarding his left knee the whole loop. Not limping exactly, just careful with it, the way you're careful with something you don't trust. I mentioned it. Turned out he had an old meniscus thing from years back, never dealt with, just lived around it.
I didn't fix anything. I'm not going to diagnose you on a gravel path. I told him to go see somebody about it, and he did.
Here's the part that matters for this lesson. If he'd asked me the week before what I thought was wrong with his knee, I'd have had a different, worse guess. I only got it right because I watched him walk more than once and let my first read be wrong. Had I locked in on my first impression out of pride, he'd still be guarding that knee.
Same principle as the fixed-time advice. The first guess isn't sacred. Update when the evidence says update.
Practical version of this, for you at home
This isn't really about walking schedules or knees. It's about how you treat your own plan when it stops working.
Write down the plan you're actually following right now. Not the ideal one, the real one. Days, times, distance, whatever it is.
Give it three weeks before you touch it. Long enough to learn whether it's you being lazy or the plan being wrong. Shorter than that and you're just quitting with extra steps.
At three weeks, ask one honest question: did I not do it, or could I not do it? Different problems. "Didn't" is a motivation thing. "Couldn't" is a design thing, wrong time of day, too far from home, whatever.
If it's "couldn't," change the plan without shame about it. Nobody's watching to see whether you were consistent with your original guess. The goal was never the plan. The goal was the walking.
If it's "didn't," that's worth sitting with instead of immediately redesigning. Sometimes the plan's fine and you just need to show up, which is its own lesson and not this one.
I'll say the opinion plainly since it fits here: I'm suspicious of my own certainty. If I taught you something firm last month and it's stopped fitting your life, drop it. I'd rather you keep walking on a plan you've revised twice than quit a perfect plan you were too proud to touch.
The one caution
Where I won't tell you to keep an open mind is pain that doesn't go away, or a joint doing something new and unpleasant. That's not a "give it three weeks" situation. That's a "see somebody now" situation. The guy with the knee waited years before I said anything, and he still needed to go in. Don't wait years. Don't even wait three weeks on that one.
Everything else, the schedule, the route, the pace, the who-you-walk-with, hold it loosely. I do.
Before next time: look at whatever plan you're currently on for showing up here, and ask yourself honestly whether it's working or whether you've just been too stubborn to change it.