How To Make Time To Exercise

Time is finite and yet also highly elastic. We can’t create more time and yet we can choose what to put into the time we have available to us.

One of the most common excuses people cite for not exercising regularly is lack of time, coming third in a recent survey conducted by the American Heart Foundation behind “I’m too tired” and “can’t afford a gym”.

Here are some simple suggestions on how to be more effective at fitting exercise into your day:

Park further away from the shops / work / bus stop so you walk further.
Go for a walk / run in your lunch break.
Meet friends for exercise instead of coffee.
Include a new habit such as doing 10 push ups every time you walk in the front door.
Exercise while waiting for your kids at their after school activities.

While these ideas are all helpful, they focus on how to squeeze exercise into a busy life. However, if your health really is a priority you need to flip this idea on its head and work out how to CREATE time to exercise rather than just squeezing it in.

We can’t create more minutes in our day, but we can choose what we do with every minute.

During his presidency, Barack Obama developed a reputation as an incredibly efficient person, seeming to somehow find extra hours in his day. It is reported that in amongst a relentless schedule he worked out for 45 minutes a day, 6 days a week. Obviously Barack doesn’t actually have more hours in his day, as time is finite. However, time is highly elastic and will stretch to accomodate what we need to put in it. Every minute of our day can look different to the next and it is about the choices we have made that result in time being used differently. For example:

I’m On Fire Day - You woke up at 6am. It’s now 9am and you’ve gone for a run, put on a load of washing, packed lunches, gotten the kids off to school, and are now at work having already accomplished your first task for the day.

Where Did The Time Go? Day - You woke up at 6am. It’s now 9am and you are still in your pyjamas, dirty dishes are in the sink and you’re running late for everything. What went wrong?

3 hours can look so different, depending on some choices we make. I acknowledge that occasionally these less than effective days are out of our control. A sick child, spilt breakfast, a late bus….these small hiccups can certainly throw things into a spin. Yet the more organised we are, the less chance we have of the little hiccups creating mayhem. Make lunches the night before, check clothes are clean and laid out, always have gym / school /work bags packed before bed, cook in bulk, grocery shop online. Find as many ways as you can to avoid the last minute hiccups so you can use your time in the way you choose.

Not all of our time needs to be used in a flurry of activity. Some days we may choose to take an hour and sit with a coffee watching the world go by. Just ensure this is a mindful choice of relaxation rather than a subconscious loss of an hour due to mindlessly scrolling through social media websites. Avoid losing chunks of time in your day that you could have spent exercising or doing other actives that would make you feel much better than “scrolling”.

“I don’t have time’ means it’s not a priority. I have been planning to scrub the bathroom tiles for weeks, but I can never find the time. If you offered to pay me $500 to scrub the tiles I’d have it done by the end of the day.

To spend our time well, we need to prioritise what matters and skip what doesn’t. We have the power to fill our lives with the things that deserve to be there. If you want to have a long, healthy life, then exercise should come towards the top of the list. Rather than squeezing in moments of exercise around your busy life, adjust your busy life to include exercise.