15 Ways to Create Free Time to Exercise
By Chris Campbell
We say we want to lose weight or inches or feel more energized, but we find many excuses to avoid exercise.
Let me, with some help from Men’s Health magazine, give you 15 quick ways to remove the excuses and get out there and go to work(out) for just 15 minutes a day.
1. Flip off Facebook…and Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc. You don’t need to eliminate social media, just limit your time on them.
2. Say “No”! You don’t always have to do everything everybody asks. Use your judgment here!
3. Plan Your Peaks. Schedule your biggest task for your peak time of day.
4. Do One Thing at a Time. Don’t buy into the myth that you can multi-task an unlimited to-do list.
5. Record Your TV Shows. Your typical hour-long program actually contains about 40 minutes of content!
6. Leave Well Enough Alone… Or as someone once said, don’t let “good” become the enemy of “the best.” Do those hubcaps really need to be spotless?
7. Be Decisive! Do your homework, make your assessment, then BUY the darned sneakers! Don’t succumb to “analysis paralysis” and take forEVER making simple decisions.
8. Buy Time. Yep, it’s possible. Pay for services that someone else can do more quickly and cheaply than you.
9. Ink It in Your Calendar. Block out your workouts in INK!
10. Use an Egg Timer. Time all those little time-wasters and force yourself to stop when the bell sounds.
11. Touch It Once. When mail or a piece of paper comes across your desk, deal with it right then and there.
12. Make a Call. Texting, facebook and email are great, but it sometimes takes 15 messages to accomplish what one 40-second phone call can achieve.
13. Put Things in Their Places.
“A place for everything and everything in its place” as my Dad would say!
14. Set Out Your Stuff.
Lay out your exercise clothes the night before. It helps you stay motivated.
15. Get Up 15 Minutes Earlier. Very simple AND very effective too!
An intense one-hour workout, performed three times weekly, will be a much better use of the time that you will save with the above 15 steps.
You will be much closer to achieving those New Year’s fitness goals you set way back on Jan. 1!
Chris Campbell co-owns TITLE Boxing Club with his wife Kim, the regular contributor in this space. He has been hitting the bag for six months.