So last month, I had a moment of weakness, and I admitted to falling off the wagon. There’s nothing wrong with that I want to make clear. Having times when you fail is fine; the trick is getting back up again. Something that was suggested to me by my doctor was that instead of putting “workout” on my to-do list, put it in my calendar. I have to admit it’s something I didn’t consider before, but it actually makes a lot of sense.
1) Calendar Vs. Todo list – I’ve spoken before about how important it is to differentiate between your calendar and your to-do list. If you throw tasks on a calendar, then it looks like you’re busier than you are because if you look at your calendar and see wall-to-wall meetings when, in reality, it’s your task list. How does this relate to either technology or health? My general philosophy for my calendar is that I only put things in my calendar when I have to go and pay attention to that one thing at a time. In pre-covid times I would say that it would only get into my calendar if I had to leave my desk and go somewhere. For my health, setting myself up workout meetings means that I have to leave my desk and focus on that one thing, so it meets BOTH of that qualification.
2) It’s right there in front of me – While I love my to-do list, the only downside that it doesn’t have is that It doesn’t have pop-ups to remind me of things. I want to make clear that I did not set up anything that would notify me of specific tasks at certain times of the day. Partially because this, for me, would act far too much like a calendar, but also because when I want to do something on a specific day, I don’t like for tasks to be time-bound within a specific half-hour to an hour. This allows me the freedom to take care of personal tasks when I’m done work and work tasks when I’m in between meetings. With my workouts being set up as a calendar meeting, I get a pop-up from my outlook (like I do for every other meeting), so I get a reminder that it’s time to work out in the middle of my day.
3) Surprisingly… it’s working – It’s funny, but I’ve been doing this scheduling for about a month now, and I found that having it as a calendar event (subject to when I’m busy at work) has made it easy to keep up with my workout schedule. Originally, I thought that it took about two weeks to form a habit, with no research about that whatsoever, I would like to make clear. I scheduled my workouts for about three weeks and thought that would be enough to make it a habit, so I tried going without scheduling my workouts. What happened? You guessed it; I did no workouts at all that week. I have since been scheduling my workouts throughout the week to pop up and remind me to do them.
For me, having a reminder of where I need to be throughout my day makes it easier for me to go where I’m needed. This is also true of my workouts. Making sure that they are in my calendar makes it so that I treat it like any other meeting. Having that simple reminder is enough to make it so that I am (mostly) working out every day. While some to-do lists can set up date-specific tasks, I don’t think they are sensitive to time. If you like to work out at a specific time of day, making an appointment in your calendar may be the way to go. It certainly has worked for me.
How do you like to be reminded to work out?
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great idea!