“Why do some people always get their workouts in no matter what?”
“Is something wrong with me because I don’t want to exercise?”
“How come some days I just can’t find the motivation?”
I get these types of questions a LOT so I thought I’d give my personal insight.
Optional Back Story: We’ve all been taught that not being “productive” is a bad thing. If we are not tasking, practicing something, working over time or taking extra classes in school, we are falling behind. Anyone who’s ever worked retail or a minimum wage job knows full well “if you can lean, you can clean”. This has some long lasting impacts on how we structure our days and weeks as we go through childhood to adulthood. When you were in elementary school you probably had homework, house chores, and some sort of sport or extracurricular activity. When you got to high school your load increased needing top grades to get into a good post-secondary. You then got into university or college or went straight into the workforce. I took my first “stress-leave” when I was 22 juggling my 4th year of university, working a full-time management position, getting married, and buying a condo. I looked at my calendar and noticed I didn’t have a day off for 77 days straight. This sounds INSANE to me now, but at the time no one at school or work or in my family saw any problem with it. That’s just what you have to do to get ahead (and I’d better get used to it because that’s what the next 50 years would look like). I was at my peak level of being unhealthy. I was overweight, sick, tired, stressed, was sleeping about 4 hours a night (I’d get home from school at 10:00 PM and was up at 3:15 AM for work), and was deeply unhappy. I knew I needed to change something when my boss had a heart attack and passed away at the age of 34. I decided then I was done playing the game of who can burn themselves out the fastest (ps. my “stress leave” was a whopping 2 days).
Next lets look at energy debt. Imagine your energy as money. If you are healthy, rested and at 100% $10 gets deposited into your account for the day. There are things in your day that cost money:
Work $5 (regular hours)
Home-Work $2 (answering emails or things after your supposed work hours)
Home-Life $1 (making dinner, laundry, etc.)
Dependents $2 (obligations related to kids or pets)
Social Functions $1
Exercise $1
Entertainment $1 (watching Netflix, reading a book, etc.)
Right off the bat we can see that $10 isn’t a lot. For example after work, working past our hours, and looking after dependents, we’re already at $9 for the day, and that’s probably 5 days a week. That only leaves $1 a day Monday to Friday to spend on exercise, a Netflix show, or a social function. Because we’ve been programmed to do it all and stretch past our capacities we ignore the cost. Monday, we work and work past our hours, then pay for home life and our dependents and by 7:00PM we’ve already spent $11. We get mad at we didn’t get to workout, or watch our show, but we can bump that to tomorrow right? Right, just do Monday’s workout on Tuesday. You go to sleep, but it’s not a restful sleep. We don’t wake up at 100% but 90% today. Uh oh, that means we’re starting Tuesday with only $9, AND we overspent by $1 yesterday – today we only have $8. But, you still have to work and look after your kids and yourself and know you have a late meeting today and that’s $9 on it’s own. You can’t pay for the cost of today, let alone the workout from yesterday and the one you’re supposed to do today. We get more and more in debt everyday, BUT it’s okay because we have a weekend coming up, right? Saturday and Sunday will be a fresh $20 bill we can catch up on. Well, we still have home-life ($4), and we agreed to 2 social functions ($2), and we have a bit of work to catch up on ($2) = that’s $8 already and we owe $16 from the week. You get the picture.
This is energy debt. We are constantly borrowing things from the next day and are never able to catch up. We need to start breaking the patterns of borrowing money – we have to stop spending what we don’t have. On Monday, you can afford to exercise AND watch Netflix but ONLY if you don’t spend those $2 on working into your evening after your supposed work hours are over.
This plays into motivation in some crucial ways.
1) There is nothing wrong with you if you’ve overspent and don’t have “motivation” to workout. If working out is important to you, then instead of trying to muster up the energy (borrowing from tomorrow), you need to work on managing your energy better – unfortunately this usually means putting a hard stop on work (no work after 5PM), turning down social engagements that take up too much of the weekend, and saying no to taking on extra projects at work. This is difficult because it generally means letting someone down – and you know what, that’s OKAY.
2) Some people working out everyday are borrowing to do so. You know when you see that person on the street who always has the nice car, the nice clothes, the big house? What you might not know is that they have $500,000 of credit card debt and are on the verge of bankruptcy. A lot of “fit” people are on the verge of energy bankruptcy everyday – I’ve been there. I’d get my workouts done but then be so tired I’d start falling behind on work, house chores, and all my other responsibilities – this isn’t ideal either.
3) Prioritize what’s important and spend on that! I know for me, the important things are my clients, looking after my house and my dog, exercise and relaxing at night with my partner – those add up to exactly $10. That means it’s also important I get a good night sleep every night so I wake up fresh with my $10 to cover it each day! And it also means I cannot afford to spend money on working past my work hours, or going to a social function that takes up a whole afternoon. When I’m asked if I want to do a fitness class at 7:00PM, the answer is always no and I don’t feel bad about it – it will mess up my sleep, put me in debt for tomorrow, and take away the time at night I spend relaxing.
4) Buy 1 Get 1 Free! Some of these things you can double up to save some money! If you want coffee with a friend but need to exercise still and walk your dog, you go for a long walk with them and take your coffees with you, then you’ve completed $3 for only $1! Find the ways you can strategically plan your day to make the best of your time.
5) Some days you’ll have unexpected expenses. There will be days that no matter how much you plan ahead, you get called into work, or your tire pops, you get sick, or a number of things happen. All we can do on these days is manage what we can and not make it worse by beating ourselves up about something out of our control.
Take a look at your week, see what you want and need to get done, and cut out anything else.
Sincerely,
Sam
fitbusiness.ca 