Tynan talks about living life at extremes and explains very well why he does so and how he (or anyone that lives life in a similar way) benefits from it in this article http://tynan.com/going-extreme
Even after reading the article though, the benefits are not always obvious when it's your life, and even when they are, what one gives up in the form of comfort with what's familiar to them, or with what's expected of them by their peers makes it a heck of a lot harder than Ty makes it seem.
BUT, If you're all in on this mindset and want to wrap your head around it as a complete lifestyle, I want to help with an aspect of with this post.
This was written in response to a post written by Cal Newport on his blog "Study Hacks". I highly recommend that you read it first, as it will give you some context. If you'd really rather not, then the summary of his post titled '"Write Every Day" is Bad Advice: Hacking the Psychology of Big Projects" is that when you say "I'm going to write 1,000 words a day so I can be as prolific as Steven King" (whose writing goal for each day is, indeed, 1,000 words) you are setting yourself up for some discouraging cognitive dissonance when you fail to meet this mark. If miss a day, and then another, you become more and more convinced that your plan is not working, that you are "failing" and therefore less and less inclined & therefore likely to stick with your goal the next day. He suggests instead looking at it week by week and seeing what are expectations that take into account that day, week, or month's demands that are reasonable, and therefore more likely to be accomplished and keep your momentum and confidence high, and your cognitive dissonance low.
Enter my response, and the meat of this post:
I agree with Cal’s point, but I don’t think that the advice “write every day” is necessarily a bad idea. To explain, let me touch on how triathletes train.
Triathlons start with a swim, then a bike ride, then finish with a run. So, obviously, in order to win you have to be really good at all three, and in order to improve it is of course tempting to work on all three at once. Triathletes don’t do this…kinda.