Beep Beep! “Great, Monday morning. Another day at the office,” you think. Those words were laced with sarcasm of course.
As you crawl out of bed you remember: you told yourself you’d go to the gym today. But Monday comes and Monday goes…with no workout. Oh well, you’ll do it the next day.
The next day comes and still nothing. No workout. No exercise at all besides the walk from your car to the office. So you shrug it off and say you’ll start next week.
It’s an easy cycle to fall into, that you’ll workout the next day, week, month, but it doesn’t happen. You just don’t have the time. “If only I had an hour between meetings, then I could get my workout in,” you think. You don’t have enough time for the hour long workout you’d like to do.
Many people—many, many people—struggle with this situation, of getting their workouts in, so if you do as well, then know you’re not alone.
To help solve this issue, we’ll chat about a common mindset that gets in the way of our goals, an idea for fitting workouts into a busy schedule, as well as a planning tool for when obstacles get in the way.
Progress Over Perfection
A common pitfall in fitness and life is this: if we can’t do everything, we don’t do anything.
We get caught up in trying to be perfect—to workout for an hour, eat three balanced meals—that if we miss the mark, we figure, oh well. We let things slide.
If we can’t make time for an hour long workout then we don’t do anything.
If we miss one balanced meal then we go off the rails for the rest of the day, because we figured the day was ruined because it wasn’t perfect.
Approaching life this way, by going from one extreme to the other, misses everything in the middle. Because something truly is better than nothing.
Success with exercise and nutrition isn’t an on/off switch; it’s a game of darts.
In darts, there is a bullseye—that’s what we aim for when we try to be perfect—thinking we can hit it every time. When we inevitably miss the bullseye, then we give up and stop playing.
But here’s an important consideration: even if you don’t get a bullseye, you still can hit the rest of the dart board. Hitting the board for one point is still better than no points.
“But I suck at darts,” you think. “I would probably miss the board.” So? You still have two more darts to throw. Odds are you’ll get a few points because you tried, and that’s what matters.
You start where you are, with your darts in hand, and you take a shot. If you don’t get as many points as you’d like on that throw, then you reflect on what you could have done better. You practice and learn and try again.
It’s never going to be perfect game, but that’s okay. Sometimes you hit a bullseye and that’s great; other times you don’t. The only way to truly fail, to lose the game, is to give up after missing the bullseye.
A half hour workout is better than no workout. Even a five or ten minute workout is better than no workout. Do what you can.
Take the shot.
Chunking Workouts
One of our BSP rockstars, Jen (aka Fancy Jen, aka Cinnamon), was struggling to get her workouts in during quarantine. Before March things were good. The last few months though, it got harder and harder for her to find time: work would pop up and call her away, she had to stop to take care of her kids, or she’d be too tired at the end of the day to workout.
Jen’s workouts were roughly 45-60 minutes in length, which, given how busy she was, made it hard for her to get those workouts in. When she couldn’t find that block of time in her schedule, the workouts didn’t happen.
She was in a common trap we all fall into at times: if we can’t do everything, we don’t do anything.
Frustrated with this lack of consistency, she texted me one day. After listening to her problem, I said, “Have you tried chunking your workout up into smaller parts?” She hadn’t, so she tried it.
In the morning, she did her warm-up, which took less than 10 minutes…and that’s it. Later, she did her “A’s” section which took around 10 minutes roughly as well.
Jen continued this throughout her day when she found—or made—time to do it. That’s the beauty of chunking workouts when needed: finding 10-15 minutes at different points during the day is much easier than one big chunk of 45 or 60 minutes. She made the workouts work for her busy schedule.
And she was getting her workouts in now.
Let’s pause a second though. What if your issue isn’t that you’re struggling to get the full length of a workout in, but that last minute obstacles get in the way?
In that case, you use If/Then planning.
If/Then Planning
“Failing to plan is planning to fail.” -Benjamin Franklin
It’s normal to think that we’ll hit any goal we set, because we’re hopeful. We set the goal, then assume it will happen. Rarely do we consider the obstacles that get in the way.
If/Then planning helps us account for all the life stuff that pops up.
Here’s what it looks like: If “X obstacle” comes up, then I’ll take “Y action.”
Said another way, our If/Then plans focus on the action we want to take if an obstacle comes up. For example, if I don’t have much time to workout today, then I’ll chunk up my workouts to get them in.
If I forget my workout clothes at home one day, then I’ll leave a pair of clothes in my car at all times so I can always go to the gym.
Let me restate the quote that started this section because it’s important: “Failing to plan is planning to fail.” There will always—always—be a chance for obstacles to come up. Whether the goal is small or large, easy or hard, something can get in the way.
We like to think that we’ll always hit the bullseye—each and every time. The thought sounds like this: “If my day goes perfectly, then I’ll workout after work.” But it might not go perfectly. A solid If/Then plans helps us tackle our goals when life gets in the way.
So, next time you set a goal for yourself, whatever it may be, take a few minutes to write down some If/Then plans. That way, when life does toss an obstacle in your path, you’ll be ready to step over it.
Final Thoughts
“A workout doesn’t have to be perfect. You can do what you can with what you’ve got. Excellence is doing what you can, where you can.” -Josh Hillis
An important first step towards your goals is understanding that aiming for perfection is aiming to fail. Remember the dart board. You still get points even if you don’t hit a bullseye. Something is better than nothing.
If you’re struggling to fit a full 45-60 minute workout in, then chunk it up. Do five minutes in the morning, ten minutes between a work meeting, and over the course of the day, you’ll have finished your workout.
Finally, create an If/Then plan for yourself, because there’s always something that can get in the way; even if you don’t think something could get in the way, there’s a chance it will.
Remember: failing to plan is planning to fail.
And, by the way, if you’d like to get the most of your time when you do workout, then click the link below to claim your free week at BSP NOVA. We’ll set you up with a plan that puts you in the best position to be successful, literally and figuratively.