Why you don't exercise and how to trick yourself into exercising?

We all want to be healthy, fit and look good. There is only one recipe for that: live a healthy life (good food, no alcohol, exercise). Let's focus on exercising.

It is recommended to exercise at least 2 hours per week. An average American spend almost three hours per day watching TV. That's about 20 hours per week. Therefore, cutting only 10% of TV time will leave enough room for exercise. Why we don't exercise? The answer is simple: bad habits.

Actually, there are three principles involved: the principle of minimum energy, the principle of safe ground and the principle of habits.

The principle of minimum energy says that if we have to choose between two tasks, we would chose the one that requires less energy. For example, if you have to choose between digging a hole 6 x 6 x 6 (216 cubic feet) and mowing your 6 x 6 lawn, which one would you choose? When you have to choose between 5 miles jogging and watching TV, what is your choice? Average answer is quite obvious.

The principle of safe ground says that when facing the choice between two activities we choose the one that is "safer" for us. If the choice is between fighting with a tiger with bear hands and buying some candies, it clear what an average person would do. It is safer to stay at home than to go to the gym.

The principle of habits is quite obvious. Facing the choice between something that we usually do and something we have never done before an average person choose the first one. If we usually watch TV and only occasionally exercise guess what will happen if we have to choose between them.

A recipe for success

It is the best to fight all three principles at the same time:

1. Try to make the energy difference smaller between tasks. For example jogging for 3 minutes doesn't look that energy consuming as five mile jogging.

2. Try not to make tough choices. For example don't choose between going to gym and eating a chocolate. Choose between going to gym and digging a hole that was mentioned before. You could choose to exercise at home.

3. Try to make it a habit. Make a habit of exercising after work on Monday and Thursday. Do it every week. Without exceptions. It takes one month to form a habit, and one day to ruin it.

Here is one example:

1. Start jogging every day first thing in the morning.

2. Start with 20 minutes walking. Every week replace one minute of walking with one minute of jogging.

3. After four months you should jog for all 20 minutes. After that maintain this level.

4. Optional: increase the time to 30 minutes or the pace of running.

Practice excellence

What is excellence?

By definition excellence is the quality of being exceptionally good of its kind. We do something in order to get some results. The result might have a measure of quality (grades at school for example). Excellence is a habit of putting enough effort in order to achieve the best possible results. That means that:

1. you should know what results do you want,
2. you should know how to measure the quality of results,
3. you should know what is necessary to obtain the best possible results.


Usually, you already know everything that you need to know. In that case, just make a mental note about those parameters and use it when needed. In case you don't know anything about those parameters, learn as much as possible. Some topics will require more time (learning) than other topics, but don't stop with work. After all, it is usually better to have a bad result than no result.

Is excellence important to me?

You already know that the answer is yes. To be honest, excellence is not important if you wish to live a mediocre life. Even without excellence you should have a life that is not that unpleasant. However if you want to be promoted, achieve more, be a better parent or spouse, you should practice excellence. Having reputation of excellence in some area of your life will result with respect and better opportunities. Look at the carelessness, the opposite of excellence, and you will find how the lack of excellence can lead to deterioration of your career and/or other areas of your life. Do you think that careless surgeon will have successful career? What about singer who don't like to learn lyrics? What about spouse who doesn't care about important dates?

What are the benefits of excellence?

You have probably noticed admiration of other people when they notice an act of excellence. That is very motivational and makes you feel great. Even if an act of excellence appears to be unnoticed, you will have a strong feeling of pride. If you are an average Joe (or Jane), you have experienced this feeling a few times in your life time. Imagine that you have that sense of pride every week! Such feelings build your self esteem and self confidence.

Another benefit of excellence is that it creates the good habits that might be useful in other areas of your life. Also, presence of excellence will eventually wipe out the bad habits that slow down your progress.

What are the enemies of excellence?

There is a saying: "The best is the enemy of the good". That means that we might be satisfied with the current result and stop searching for a better one. Reasons for stopping search is of psychological nature. Let's list some of them.

* fear of failure - you will do it the way you know, and it will prevent you from being creative (using experiments). Resolution is to tell yourself that there is no failure, only a feedback. If you don't get the result you want immediately, gather information about the achieved result. Almost always you can find something that can be used to improve your performance. Focus on the process, not on the result.
* lack of time - you will say I don't have time right now, let's just do it somehow. Resolution is to select the tasks that you want to complete. You can achieve anything but you cannot achieve everything. Always work on the most important task. The other tasks are less important. When you finish with the current task properly work on the other tasks.
* doing unimportant things - there is always something more important to do. If you wash the dishes and your house is on fire, of course that you should extinguish the fire first, but this is quite rare. Remember that if you start doing something, that must be the best use of your time.
* boredom - if something is boring, you will tend to get rid of that task, therefore quality of your work is on the line. Resolution is to think of: reasons for which the task should be completed, pride when you complete the task, interesting aspects of those tasks and negative consequences if you don't do the task properly, ways to do the task in a properly.
* interruptions - interrupting doesn't mean that your task is the only thing that is interrupted. Your mindset is also interrupted. After dealing with interruption it is necessary to create your mindset again. Resolution is: "Don't get interrupted!". If that is not possible, try to allocate certain period of time (for example 8:00-10:00am) when you lock doors and windows and don't check mail, answer phones, IM, ...
* bad habits - sloppiness, carelessness are bad habits that will result with the lower quality of work. The bad thing about bad habits is that they are created easily. Resolution is to create good habits in order to replace the bad ones.


How to achieve excellence?

Excellence is task related meaning that you might achieve excellence in doing one type of tasks, while doing other tasks not that well. It is unlikely that you achieve excellence in all areas of your life. Also, some tasks are not important and it is only necessary to do it somehow. What you should do?

* List all tasks that you do frequently (for example more than one hour per week),
* Ask yourself about the results, the quality measure and the ways to ensure and improve quality of the most frequent task,
* Use that answers in order to achieve excellence for that task,
* After you achieve excellence go to the next most frequent task and repeat the procedure until you process all tasks,
* Revisit this list weekly in order to find better ways to improve quality of your work.



Tips for achieving excellence

* raise a general awareness about the things you do every day,
* define the quality of excellence for each task,
* be proud when you achieve the desired quality,
* choose one thing that you do at least once a day and practice on it,
* whenever you start doing that thing ask yourself what is the best possible result of this action,
* whenever you start doing that thing say to yourself "I will do this the best possible way",
* Remember your thoughts (note down if possible) when doing something. Think about those thoughts, are they good or bad for you? You will find a lot about yourself during this process.


Quotes:

"It isn't what you do, but how you do it." - John Wooden

"The principle is competing against yourself. It's about self improvement, about being better than you were the day before." - Steve Young

"Every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it. Autograph your work with excellence." - Source Unknown

"True greatness consists in being great in little things." - Charles Simmons

"Excellence is not a skill. It is an attitude." - Ralph Marston

“If anything is worth doing, do it with all your heart.” - Buddha

Always have a backup plan

You have a great daily plan but suddenly you are unable to complete one of your tasks. For example, your task is to buy groceries at "Joe's groceries". You are at Joe's but Joe was robbed 2 hours ago and you cannot buy what you want. "Jane's groceries" is nearby but prices are 5% higher. Of course, there is "Cheap Joe's groceries" one mile away where prices are 2% lower. It is important to notice you probably have a tight schedule. In situations like this we are usually mad that our plans are falling down and we might make bad choices.

What should you do?

Obvious answer is to calm down and think. However, as an emotional being it is unlikely that you can do that. So the real question is "What you should have done before?" My suggestion is to go through your task list and ask yourself for each task: "What should I do if that task is impossible to complete at the moment?"

Don't think to long about each item, it is important only to have one or more backup procedure. Some answers could be: Try tomorrow, ask somebody to do it, don't do it at all, go somewhere else, modify the task. For example you want to buy chocolate as a present for your kid. What are alternatives? You could try to buy tomorrow after work, or you could ask your spouse to do that, or you could decide that your kid should not eat sweets anyway, or go to "Jane's groceries" or buy the white chocolate in a nearby white chocolate shop.

There is another benefit of this "what if ..." procedure. If you fail at completing certain task you will not become too emotional because you are prepared and you know that there are other ways to achieve what you want.