"desire is to drive what truth is to knowledge" you need it to be a kind of mediating objective to not lose that pledge. otherwise, the inevitable abandonment

"desire is to drive what truth is to knowledge" you need it to be a kind of mediating objective to not lose that pledge. otherwise, the inevitable abandonment comes after exercising a handful of times, if that :P my intuition tells me you'd need a goal that has pushups (or exercise at all) only as a subcomponent along the path towards the attainment of that goal. hopefully it would persist longer than if solely working out were the goal. so that it doesn't feel "empty" or easily abandon-able after doing it a few times.