Everyone has their own rhythm & working from home has given a lot of people more freedom to design their daily lives as they choose. Companies in the long-term are moving toward more flexible work schedules.
We’re in control of our lives now more than ever. We have the potential design our environment and spend our time however we want. But even if we don’t work from home, we can still make time for the most important activities in our lives.
Exercise is one of the most important habits we can develop, and today we’ll discuss how we can master the habit.
But first things first. Before you suddenly start working out…
Clarify your goals & intentions
Exercise is one of the most productive habits we can develop. Physically, it helps us stay healthy and reduce the risk of countless diseases. An active lifestyle is key for our physical well-being, while sitting is generally considered to be the new smoking.
Mentally, exercise energises our minds, improves mood and enhances our cognitive functions. The benefits of exercise are clear and far-reaching.
I’ve had idle periods in my life where exercise was the last thing on my mind. The reason I didn’t exercise is because I wasn’t motivated. And I wasn’t motivated, because I didn’t realise how important it was.
To start exercising, we need to have a clear reason why. Otherwise, our motivation will quickly fade. If the energy required doesn’t outweigh our perceived eventual pay-off, we won’t follow through.
This reminds me of a quote from Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning:
“Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.”
That’s why we need to be crystal clear why we’re doing it in the first place. Once we know the why, we can move onto the how.
Atomic Exercise
Atomic Habits is a framework we can all use to build better habits in our lives. The overall premise of the atomic model is that motivation is totally overrated.
It’s much more important that we set ourselves up for success by designing our environment and planning behaviours.
After all, we tend to follow the path of least resistance.
Cues & Implementation Intentions
We can make great progress with our desired habits by setting implementation intentions. These intentions clarify what we plan to do and when. For example, we might designate work-outs at set times throughout the week.
One of the key benefits of remote working for me is the ease of going for a jog or following a HIIT video right before lunch. That’s often the sweet spot, because I’m awake and ready to move. Plus, the exercise really helps me build up an appetite.
When I’m not working from home, I’ll try to schedule my jogs for the weekend and evenings before dinner. It’s a bit more difficult but definitely still possible when we put our mind to it.
The power of this method comes down to the 4-step habit loop, which starts with a cue.
Whenever we perform a habit, it will always start with a cue. Something will trigger the activity, oftentimes a specific situation or time. The cue is then followed by a craving, response and eventual reward.
We can use this model to our advantage by creating cues that promote exercise. Whether we’re working in the office or remotely, we can use cues to help us start exercising consistently.
Habit Stacks
Similar to implementation intentions, we can link new desired habits to our existing habits. Rather than only considering situation, we can use other habits as our cues.
For example we can aim to do 10 push-ups each time we brush our teeth. We could start with a HIIT video whenever we open YouTube. Or we can jog around the block each time we go out to check the mail.
We can also stack our new habits together. For example, we should stretch after we go for a jog. Opting for the stairs, when there is an elevator available, is another great habit to add to our post-exercise routine.
We can also get motivated with rewards. For example, we can always reward ourselves with a fresh, post-exercise smoothie.
My Key Takeaways
As I mentioned earlier, the pandemic has been an interesting time for me exercise-wise. I started the lockdown with a focus on reading, relaxing and learning about Stoicism. It took me a few incidents to start prioritising exercise in my daily life.
I decided to write this post, because I only recently realised how important exercise is for us. Luckily, once I was motivated, I could easily apply some of my learnings to start picking up the habit.
My Motivation to Exercise
I didn’t realise that being confined to my home for several months at a time would have a negative impact on my physical health. (Pretty dumb in hindsight.) But that’s exactly what happened. I stopped exercising in the subtle ways I was unaware of pre-pandemic.
Walking to and from public transport, taking stairs at work, going out for lunch near the office. These are the little things I’d usually do everyday.
After the first few weeks of lockdown, I started being constantly tired. Even though I’d been meditating for weeks at that point, which initially helped me sleep better than ever, I eventually had to visit my GP to understand what was happening. That’s when I realised that the lack of physical activity was damaging my health.
It sounds obvious in hindsight, but that was my trigger. That’s when I started to make a conscious effort to incorporate exercise into my daily life. And I’ve felt better ever since.
Making Time to Exercise
I believe people need to listen to their bodies and never do anything that causes us stress. That’s why we should design our lives around our daily energy rhythm, aka our chronotypes.
Because I feel most productive mentally in the evenings, that’s when I try to complete my most important and creative work. In fact, I published most of my articles on this blog around midnight, which makes sense. I dread waking up and prefer spending my morning hours reading, learning and enjoying life – rather than producing anything.
Because I’m more of an evening person, I can’t exercise first thing in the morning. But I also prefer saving evenings for planning, creative thinking and general enjoyment.
A key benefit from the pandemic is that we can generally spend more time working from home. Besides set calls and meetings each day, we decide how we use our time. That includes our breaks, which we can use productively. I’ve found daytime to be the best time for me to exercise.
Reducing the Friction
My key takeaway from starting midday exercising is that it helps to have quick work-out options that don’t take long too start. That’s because I don’t want to eat up my whole lunch break by walking to the gym, exercising for 20 minutes, getting a shower and going home.
I’d rather wrap up my work, throw on my jogging clothes and go for a jog around the neighbourhood. Then get a quick stretch when I get home, possibly while I’m heating something up in the oven. That’s about 20 minutes from the moment I stop working to the time I start cooking.
Similarly, I can follow a 15 minute HIIT video. I love HIIT videos, because you just follow the instructor. I’m always surprised how little thinking I put into following a HIIT exercise. Monkey see, monkey do. That’s me. 15 minutes of intense moving and panting, and I really feel like I’ve earned my next meal.
Having a quick work out routine makes it a lot easier to fit into the work day. And I’d much rather do a quick workout several times a week than have a longer, more complicated exercise that I’d be lucky to complete once a week.
I find that frequency is more important than the length and intensity of each individual training session. Of course, we’ll have good days and bad days. But if we don’t make time for it consistently, we’ll never get the benefits of exercise that we intended anyway.
The Exercise Habit in a Nutshell
Exercise is one of the most productive habits we can have. It keeps us healthy, both mentally and physically. It’s important to understand its importance before we try to make it a habit. The why comes before the how.
Once we have a compelling reason, we can build atomic exercise habits with specific implementation intentions and habit stacks. Anything we do should focus on putting exercise along our path of least resistance. Motivation is overrated anyway.
I’ve personally seen my motivation to exercise change during the pandemic. I didn’t realise all the ways my body was moving during my regular day-to-day before being confined to my room and recommended to work from home. This realisation motivated me to start exercising proactively whenever I got the chance.
When I started working from home, I found myself with a much more flexible schedule. At virtually any point of the day, I could throw on my running gear and just go for a jog. No one would really notice, and it would make a world of difference to my energy levels for the day and overall well-being.
I’ve found that having quick and friction-less work-out routines make all the difference. Because then there’s never a reason not to get your daily exercise.
That’s my simple approach to mastering the exercise habit with Mind & Practice.