I checked my phone this morning and it told me something I didn't want to see.

For the last five months, I've been on the exercise bike three or four days a week, at least 30 minutes a session. Marissa and I have been walking together once or twice a day, 30 minutes each. By any normal definition, I've been working out consistently.

So when I opened my health app this morning and saw my VO2 max, I had to read it twice.

It was below average. And it had gone down.

VO2 max is one of the strongest predictors we have for how long you're going to live. Not body weight. Not steps per day. How efficiently your body uses oxygen when you push it.

And there's the word that did the work. Push.

I haven't been pushing anything. On the bike, I'm listening to a podcast or an audiobook. On the walks, Marissa and I are talking. Both of those things are good. Neither of them is hard.

I'd been doing the thing that felt like exercise without ever doing the thing that exercise actually is. And the most important number I have for my long-term health was quietly going the wrong direction while I felt like I was doing everything right.

The Risk Nobody Counts

It hit me this morning that this isn't just a fitness problem. It's the same pattern that shows up everywhere in life.

There's a risk we never talk about, which is the risk of not taking a risk. The risk of staying put. The risk of doing the comfortable version of the thing instead of the hard version.

We act like staying still is the safe choice, when half the time it's the choice that's actually costing us something we can't see until we measure it.

The Question We Keep Asking

When Marissa and I were deciding whether to hit the road 11 years ago, the question we kept getting from family wasn't "what if it works?" It was "what if it doesn't?" Everyone wanted us to count the risk of leaving.

Almost nobody asked us to count the risk of staying.

But that was the question that actually got us out the door. Not "is this risky?" We knew it was risky. We could look like fools to our family. We could lose money. We could hate it. The real question was, which risk is bigger? The risk of going, or the risk of never finding out what going would have been?

We decided not finding out was the bigger risk. We had a plan to come back if it didn't work. I'd kept enough of my SEO clients that I could pick up where I left off. Marissa could go back to the hospital. We could buy another house.

The downside of going was real but recoverable.
The downside of staying was we'd spend the rest of our lives wondering.

We've used that same question for 11 years now. When our second was born and the pull toward a house and a yard was real. When we were deciding whether to try a fifth wheel. When we were weighing whether to take our kids on a mission trip to Africa. Every time, the question was the same. Not "is this risky?" but "which risk is bigger?" Sometimes the answer was go. Sometimes the answer was stay put. The filter doesn't care which direction it points. It only cares which risk has more weight.

Even small things take this shape. When Marissa first heard the word boondocking, she Googled it and asked me, out loud, why anyone would want to park in the middle of nowhere with no water, no electric, no sewer. It sounded like a downgrade. It sounded risky. She said no way.

In our second year on the road, we tried it anyway. We picked a spot with a great view and good reviews and told ourselves the worst case was we hated it and left after one night.

We didn't hate it.

Front row seat to the badlands, beachfront camping, sunrise over the Tetons, mornings around a campfire in Baja watching whales while we drank coffee, those memories don't exist if we let the surface-level risk close the door.

The Question Worth Asking

The risk we can see is loud. The risk we can't see is quiet. And the quiet one is usually the one that costs us more.

I'm not saying every leap is the right leap. Some risks really aren't worth it. But I am saying the question most people ask is the wrong question.

The question isn't "is this risky?" Everything is risky.
Staying is risky.
Leaving is risky.
Doing the easy bike ride is risky.

The question is which risk has the bigger payoff, and which risk is hiding from view because it looks like the safe choice.

That's the question I'm asking myself this week about my workouts. It's the question Marissa and I have asked ourselves before every big move for 11 years. And it's probably worth asking about something in your own life right now.

What's the risk you're taking by not taking the risk?

See you down the road!
- Nathan