Almost all of us know what needs to be done for weight loss and muscle gain – eating in a healthy manner and exercising consistently. This is commonsensical. Most of us also know that regular exercise is critical to our physical and mental wellbeing. Exercise is an integral part to our quality of life – not only our lifespan.
But in practice, many people find this difficult to accomplish. After all, we lead very busy lives and finding the time to exercise is often a very difficult task to accomplish.
The vast majority of people who enquire about our personal training services are time poor. Whether they be working one (or more) full time jobs, a parent, or both, time is a scarce resource. So exercise is really put on the backburner.
We have discussed this topic in the past and I have put fourth a few practical idea’s on how to manage your life by planning out your week in advance. Planning is a very effective tool and one which you should employ, if you are finding that time to exercise is scarce. We have also discussed effective shorter workouts to maximise your workout efficiency. You may wish to read my article entitled “No Time to Exercise?”
But planning can only go so far. We all have 168 hours in the week. The typical person requires 56 hours of sleep each week (and on a side note, if you’re not getting this amount of sleep, you are doing yourself a disfavour with respect to mental health, physical health and body composition). Therefore, we have 112 other hours in the week – a few of which should be devoted to exercising to lead a healthy and fulfilling life.
If you are struggling to find a mere 2-3 hours (ie. less than 2% of our week) to exercise, it is likely to be associated with your priorities in life. We all have the same amount of time each week, we just choose to use our time differently. If exercise is not a top priority in your life, it likely will not be done.
Let’s consider a four quadrant matrix discussed extensively in business litterature. Here is one pulled from Covey and Merrill’s book, “First Things First” (a book that I would highly recommend):
The top line demonstrates the important tasks in life, while the lower line are non-important tasks. The left column are urgent tasks that require immediate attention, while the right column are non-urgent.
Most of us spend our lives in the urgent column. Important and urgent tasks must be dealt with immediately to avoid a disaster. But once these are dealt with, often the third quadrant (urgent and not important) take precedence over the tasks that do not have time pressure applied. For many of us, urgent tasks seem to be important, only because they are “immediate” in nature.
Although quadrant four contains tasks that are not urgent and important, many people tend to spend a lot of time in here too, as it can create the perception that you are being productive. In effect, spending time here results in work being done, for the sake of “doing work”. These tasks add no real value to your life.
Ask yourself – what, if you did it consistently over a sustained period of time, would dramatically improve your quality of life and help you accomplish your goals. After considering this question, you’ll likely identify that all these tasks reside in quadrant number 2 – the important and not-urgent area.
The second quadrant contains tasks that we all know should be done, but many of us never actually get around to doing (often because urgency distracts us from the important tasks). Exercise falls right into this category, because exercise doesn’t need to be done immediately – it can be done tomorrow, next week, next month or even next year. There is no “immediate” consequence of not doing exercise.
It is essential to spend as much as your time as possible in the second quadrant. Of course, first quadrant tasks must be completed immediately – but then quadrant two tasks should be attended to.
If you do not currently consider exercise to be in this second quadrant, I would strongly suggest reconsidering (you can read through this website extensively on the importance of regular exercise).
Prioritising exercise is essential in order to accomplish your goals. In order to find time to exercise, you need to place it right up the top of your priority list of “to-do” things. You need to identify that exercise is important, even though it is not urgent. Further, you need to eliminate the non-important and urgent tasks from your life, to free up more time to attend to the important things that need to be done.
One final thought. If you do not attend to second quadrant tasks, they can eventually move into the first quadrant. Exercise, for example, has the potential to become urgent as soon as your health begins to deteriorate and you are advised by a medical professional that exercise is necessary, immediately, as your life (and health) greatly depends on it. With such time pressure applied, it is much easier to “find time” to exercise. But the thing is, exercise is no more important in this circumstance – it is simply more urgent.
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