I went from being a quite a bad procrastinator to making quite strong progress in running and learning the piano. One of the secrets was setting specific times to do these things such that I can't wriggle out. For example I run on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings rather than the more vague "three times a week" which gives wiggle room on a given day. I also set modest goals of two 5ks and one longer run (up to 10k). For piano, I aim for twenty minutes a night minimum, five nights a week minimum after dinner (week nights but sometimes I have to be flexible and drop a weeknight and do a weekend). I won't be an Olympic runner or Mozart but I'm heck of a lot fitter and better at the piano after a surprisingly short amount of time.
My 'secrets' are rather boring; schedule specific times, keep it achievable and don't overdo it in the early days. Little and often works wonders and you build the ritual / habit that way. You can then scale the frequency and length of time per session accordingly.
Strangely, having kids made me much better at this too. When I had loads of free time I wasted a lot more of it. Now my free time is very limited, it's much more precious.
Low intensity, high volume works so well in so many arenas. As a former guitar teacher this is what I would recommend to students, especially the younger kids:
- pick the same time everyday.
- just start by playing for 5-10 minutes. Don't do any more.
- As the weeks progress and the habit is solid, add 5-7 more minutes.
So kid who plays 8min/day x 7 days/ week gets an hour each week, as opposed to the kid who does 25 minutes once or twice and gets bored. Then, when the kids habits are up to 25 minutes a day, they are getting 3 hours a week.
I second this! I found a great way to keep myself fit(let me leave out the gory details on how and why this is working) sooo the secret how to be fit: work out for no longer than 3min but every single day!and work out in a hiit fashion = no pauses in-between, 3min of pure uninterrupted workout _every_ single day! if yo can't get this 3min thing to work you probably won't have the mental capacity/lack the so-much needed self discipline to be successful
I do this for lifting, which I find unbelievably boring. It’s shocking how effective it is, I look more muscular than back when I had the discipline for 3x 40 minute workouts.
You aren't going to win any strong man competitions with this routine, but if you are just trying to keep your body in shape there are a few things to consider.
1) Abs are made in the kitchen. You need to spend a lot of time on the treadmill to burn off a single doughnut. If you skip the doughnut, you can skip the treadmill.
2) Each morning I do one set of pushups, curls, overhead press, lat pulls, and triceps. Probably takes less than three minutes. Back when I went to gyms, I would do 3-4 reps of 5-6 different lifts about twice a week. With travel time, rest between sets, and a shower that would take close to 2 hours per trip. So if you do the math, I am getting 7 reps of 5 exercises per week with a total time of about 20 minutes now vs 6-8 reps of 5-6 exercises per week for a total time of 4 hours. And if you do the math on total elevated heart rate time, the numbers are probably close enough, as there is usually a 10-20 minute recovery period after each workout. If we assume 15 mins, you get 7x15=105 minutes vs 2x(~40+15)=110 minutes. Basically in the ballpark even if the numbers are off a bit.
3) More importantly, I rarely skip the short workout whereas I would regularly skip the gym workouts. I definitely don't feel as good as I did after a gym workout. But I never feel as bad as I did after skipping the gym workouts for a few weeks in a row.
It is worth mentioning that I am not a disciplined eater. So I do go for a 3-4 mile run once a week, a short bike ride 1-2 times, and usually mix in another outdoor activity or two on the weekend. But just in terms of substituting gym time, I think the short daily workouts actually get you most of the way there. I am probably going to start mixing in an afternoon routine as well because it has been such a good development.
I am definitely on the same track. When the gym reopened I tried going back and doing higher intensity routines again after mostly sticking to smaller daily ones. Within about six weeks I had managed to blow through my fatigue threshold and it had a ripple effect on everything else(motivation, ability to learn, etc). Lesson learned, I now strive to hit "maintenance" workouts most of the time and then only do "training" occasionally so that I still experience some overload while also leaving myself some leftover energy. There is an 80/20 type of rule to be had.
I have been applying the "maintenance" attitude to a lot of things as well as exercise too. My whole approach to household matters is informed by this now - I think about most my consumer purchases in terms of the "low intensity, high volume" use case, and measuring what improves my life by looking for benchmarks that would improve passively by having the item. Best ROI here is to spend on storage, organization, and ergonomics, because that lets you assemble a workspace for something much quicker. Assigning some things to a tray or bin can make all the difference. If it's shoved in a pile, the activation energy goes way up, rendering everything you already have relatively less useful. This is true even if you barely have any stuff to begin with!
To add to your point #1: I recently transitioned to one meal a day in concert with a very minimal/maintenance strength building routine, of the kind others have described here. The combination has made a huge difference. I'm much leaner and more fit than I've been since my 30s.
Obviously the trick is making smart choices about that one meal, which isn't as difficult as I thought it might be.
Not the OP. I do about ten minutes a day but I'm only actually lifting for three of those, and it's made an enormous difference. As an office worker my arms were getting pretty much no exercise. The change from nothing to something is huge!
If you do say one set of max push-ups every other day, you will get noticeably stronger. Handwaving bro-estimate is you will start upping reps within a couple weeks, and start noticing stronger arms and chest after a month. Add in another set and you’re still under 10 mins.
If you’re starting from zero I wouldn’t suggest max sets, though. Start by trying to get the form correct. It can take some time to learn to recruit the right muscles. Watch a couple of YouTube videos and then film yourself to spot your deficiencies, correct, repeat. Still under 10 mins every other day.
the main trick here is building a habit. of course some times I do a boxingtinmer.org 6x2min with 1min pauses that I use to do other routines - ~30min where you sweat insanely, sometimes I continue after my 3min timer rings just because once you start seeing and more importantly feeling the results it's just fun to push yourself. the important thing is the discipline to do not less than 3min and every day
For people down in this well: have to find a rule you will not break, and then apply it. It doesn't matter what the rule is, it just has to be sacrosanct. You establish that it is possible for you to stick to something - anything - and then you start ramping up to rules that are harder but more valuable.
Later on, - and this is the important part - when you have a number of different successful habits, you can give yourself permission to skip one of them once in a while without fear of starting a slippery slope. One of my things I was still doing > 85% of the time. It was very hard to give myself permission to not go sometimes, but because it wasn't my One Thing, it worked out fine. Right up until the pandemic hit and every day for the last month or two I can feel how the other things I do aren't making up the difference and I need to get back into it. Except now here comes Delta variant...
I hate this regarding my day job. I don’t have a single day like other days so, setting routines is nearly impossible. Can 10-12 be focus time? Nope. Someone will need to throw a meeting in there.
I thrive with routine and structure, but can’t find it at work, which makes things way harder than they need to be.
I've tackled this by telling everyone that from 9am to 11am I'll be working offline with no IM or e-mail access. Even if the rest of my day is filled with meetings I don't feel too anxious because at least I've least accomplished something in the morning.
It’s not foolproof, but if you want 10-12 to work on something, block your calendar so people don’t see an open spot to drop a meeting into. You might get overridden sometimes, but most of the time it will work.
You know, I've thought about that before and it felt like asking too much, since I don't see anyone else's calendars like that. But I guess that's no reason not to try it. Thanks for the push.
If people can't find an open time on Wed/Thurs, or they have to schedule on my blocked days in order to coordinate with others, then they reach out and ask when I'm available.
It's a great way to control your time.
Also, always ask "can this be an email?" and "what's the agenda & decision that needs to be made for the meeting?".
You have to nip these habits in the bud. Might require changing company if it's a well established thing there though.
I know when my meetings start in the morning. If someone books a Monday morning meeting with me after I go home for the day Friday they will learn really quickly that I won't see their meeting invite until its too late. Same for any other days.
What do you use to schedule meetings? I feel like it's basic table stakes for a calendar/scheduling tool to require an explicit override to schedule people for meetings if they have the time blocked already. I hate Outlook/Exchange with a purple passion but at least it gets that right.
Just remember the best engineers are assigned to the least important projects. That way nobody is afraid to interrupt them as whatever they are on is more important. It also means your second best can develop to the best instead of relying on the best to do everything. So if you are a great developer you shouldn't get that time. (on the other hand, not getting that time will degrade your skills until you need to admit you are second best and drop back to leading something while someone else takes the interruptions)
We have this problem to some extent as well, but I've fought back pretty hard with some improvements having been made on my team. We have no meetings on Wednesdays and Fridays and also make as many meetings optional as we can. Time fragmentation and establishing a routine is still a big problem for me at work though. This is the only negative of the WFH experiment I'm finding. Too easy to have meetings when meeting space isn't a factor. I feel like we're working though this at least though so I'm confident we'll get there.
To add to it, the other thing besides being more explicit about the schedule for me was doing things in the morning before work. Even tough I was never a morning person, this helped me a lot with consistency since I can guarantee to get the time in every day while being more or less in the same physical/mental shape every time. Whereas end of day, I might feel too tired, finishing at different hours, have other things on mind, spontaneously getting asked to go for some social activity with friends, etc.
I have seen general advice for creatives, and sometimes applied it, that if you want to have a creative day you should more-or-less roll out of bed into that work. You might have some fresh inspiration to follow and not lose. You have the energy. By sleep your mind has been cleared of distractions.
only thing I'd recommend changing is doing it every day, even if it's a very small amount. That makes it easier to keep the habit going. I only workout hard 3 days a week, but I do lighter exercise the other days for maybe 15 minutes because it just seems easier mentally to stay consistent
Yeah true. My discipline isn't great so that's another reason for the modest initial goals. What drives me though is the sheer desire to do it. I don't do it through gritted teeth a lot of the time because I've cultivated the sheer will do learn these things. For the days that the desire is flagging, I have to fall back on grit but not too often. So another secret here is "cultivate your desire to do something" and to that I'd add "try to keep it as fun as possible". Desire is key.
Totally agree that modest goals make it easier to get started, get some "little" wins, and help build up steam over time.
I guess the point I was trying to make is when you set the specific schedule, convince yourself its not optional. I make the mistake all the time of saying things like "yea I'm going running at 7am tomorrow", but deep down I don't full commit to it.
Yeah I'm with you on the 7am thing. I think sometimes you just had to admit that maybe the time doesn't work for you even though you want it to. I can't run without having been awake for at least one hour and being fairly well hydrated etc and I rarely get out of bed before 0630 so I tend to run after the nursery / school drop off.
WFH helps here as I can drop kids off and then run, shower and be at my desk for 0900. I'd run at lunchtime at work otherwise if it wasn't for WFH but this also makes it easier.
I'm a little confused. You mention specific times so you can't wiggle out of them, but your approach to piano sounds like just that. Are you scheduling these sessions ahead of time for each week?
If you have not heard them, you might appreciate the old phrases: If you want something done give it to a busy person. And: The busiest person has time for everything.
I have a friend who's teaching me. I definitely recommend a teacher if you can get one. If not then apps can give you a little taste and take you somewhere for sure. I personally recommend Flowkey.
My 'secrets' are rather boring; schedule specific times, keep it achievable and don't overdo it in the early days. Little and often works wonders and you build the ritual / habit that way. You can then scale the frequency and length of time per session accordingly.
Strangely, having kids made me much better at this too. When I had loads of free time I wasted a lot more of it. Now my free time is very limited, it's much more precious.