Will you please stop saying that you “don’t have time” to workout?
It’s not true.
I believe you that you’re busy. I believe you that you’re overwhelmed. I could probably be easily convinced that you are overworked and underpaid, too.
I get it.
By my calculations, there are no fewer than 2098342 levels of “busy.”
Have you ever called your grandmother and had to pretend that you understood where she was coming from as she described how busy she has been lately? I mean, she had a doctor’s appointment at 9:30, had to get groceries, and still has a load of laundry to do (because, after all, it’s Wednesday. And Wednesday is laundry day).
[Meanwhile, you were awake by 5:30, washed , dried, and folded a load of laundry (1 of 7 for the day and only 1 of 432 for the week), made three separate breakfasts, dropped your kids off at their respective schools, went to work, got groceries over lunch, picked the kids up from school, dropped one off at soccer, took the other to ballet, made two different types of dinner because the good recipe is “too spicy” for one of your angels…]
“Uh-huh. Yeah, Nana. I know… after all that…the dishes. Yep. Such a task…so many plates and utensils between the two of you… And to get it all done before the news comes on!”
But we’ve all been there.
We’ve been busy as high school students,
busy as college students,
busy as single working adults,
busy as married working adults,
busy as parents…(I use “we” loosely here),
and each time our lives fill up, we can’t believe we thought we used to be busy!
Busy is relative. C. Northcote Parkinson wrote a book entitled Parkinson’s Law to illustrate his observation that a task shrinks or expands to fill the time allowed for its completion. It’s the law that explains why you can manage to make your entire house presentable in the 10 minutes before your guests arrive yet otherwise end up spending hours and hours cleaning on any given Saturday (or can spend 15 minutes getting ready to get ready to begin reorganizing your hall closet).
And so it is with exercise. Did 20-minutes ever just drop itself on your lap after delivering a kettlebell next to your feet? Did your kids ever just quietly begin reading books in their bedrooms, while your list of to-dos crossed themselves out? It’s not about having time. It’s about making time.
“I don’t even have time to go to the bathroom!” Really? You’ve been pooping your pants?
Again, I really do understand. So please forgive my crassness.
But you make time for what is important to you. It’s called prioritizing. It applies to bathrooming, it applies to money, and it certainly applies to time.
It’s okay to not make time for working out.
Say what?!
I mean it. It’s okay to prioritize your time such that exercise drops off. If you will either spend 10 minutes helping your spouse with his/her resume or 10 minutes working out, you absolutely should choose helping your spouse. If, however, you only spend 5 minutes helping your hubby and then sit and scroll through facebook (“liking” redundantly depressing political memes, perhaps) for the remainder of that allotted 10 minutes, I tend to believe you have neglected thoughtful prioritization. You most definitely could have made better use of that time by swinging a kettlebell.
If you choose to spend that 5 minutes mindlessly exposing yourself to the mundane postings of former high school acquaintances, so be it. All I ask is that you own it.
Don’t try to tell yourself or others that you “didn’t have time” to exercise.
On that note… 🙂 ….let’s set not make excuses today. Let’s set aside, at a very minimum, 5 minutes today to flood our bodies with happiness-inducing, metabolism-revving, stink-producing goodness.
5-Minute Sweaty
Set a timer for 5 minutes and get to work:
1 squat
5 forward lunges R
1 squat
5 forward lunges L
1 squat
5 reverse lunges R
1 squat
5 reverse lunges L
1 squat
5 jump squats
Repeat as “diminishing-rep sets,” so that you do 4 reps of each lunge next round, followed by 3, then 2, and finally 1.
Go until your timer dings with the sound of sweet relief!
P.S. Do you think accountability would help? If you want effective, time-efficient–paired with a swift-yet-loving kick in the pants–perhaps you would be the perfect victim participant for Pat’s fall group coaching. Click here to get started!