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Over the next few months, I’ll be transitioning from full-time work in an office to full-time work at home. Currently I’m staying home one day a week. Today was that day.
One of my goals is to work out at least once every day that I’m home. In theory, this should be an easy goal to meet. In reality, it requires some effort. I need to change the way I think and operate.
Left to my own devices, I’d sleep in ’til seven, roll out of bed, and then plop down in front of the computer to get some work done. The trouble is that I then sit at the computer for eight or ten hours with barely a break.
One way to circumvent my nature is to exercise first. Before I shower, before I get a cup of tea, before I check my e-mail, I ought to go for a walk. Or ride my bike. Or do some Dance Dance Revolution. By exercising first thing in the morning, I’m getting it out of the way so that it doesn’t loom over me, doesn’t make me feel guilty.
That’s my goal, anyhow.
Sometimes — like today — real life intervenes. Today I got up early, but was on the phone almost immediately. I stayed on the phone until noon. This isn’t typical (I’m not a phone guy), but I’m sure there will be other disruptions in the future.
So, instead of walking when I rolled out of bed, I took a walk in the early afternoon. By then the grey clouds had burned off, and Portland was enjoying a rare sunny winter day. It felt great to be strolling through the neighborhood. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who thought so — there were many people on the street walking, jogging, riding bikes.
One of my objectives is to pursue fitness by making “lifestyle changes”. I don’t want to force myself into a diet or fitness regimen that I won’t be able to keep in the long run. That’s why it’s important for me to establish easy good habits now. Like exercising first thing in the morning.
Mac
13 responses so far ↓
1 Rolltimer // Jan 15, 2008 at 6:11 pm
I exercise in the mornings. Just not first thing. I don’t know how old you are but I have found that as you age, it gets physically harder to get moving in the mornings. Some mornings I wake up feeling like rigor mortis has already set in. My advice would be to get up about 5 a.m., have some water, oatmeal and coffee. Then by 5:30 or 6 when your blood has uncongealed and your muscles no longer feel like chewing gum stuck to the bedpost, start with a shuffle, move up to a slow walk, run for a bit (if you’re able) and finish with a slow walk, then a shower. Shuffle around groaning the rest of the day if you’ve overdone it. Sleep late the next day and try again the day after. Eventually, progress will kick in due to inertia or thermodynamics or some scientific nonsense like that and you’ll feel better and able to do more. You may even find out you like it. That’s how it happened for me, anyway.
2 Blubba // Jan 15, 2008 at 6:30 pm
I completely agree that to make lasting lifestyle changes you have to start with the readily obtainable. Start by doing what you can, and as your fitness levels increase, up your work-out load. This way you are less likely to get discouraged or get injured.
3 TosaJen // Jan 15, 2008 at 7:41 pm
I hear you — I’ve worked from home for several years now. Nothing screws up the early morning workouts like having middle-of-the-night insomnia + kids that have to be dressed, fed, prepped, and delivered to school (4 & 6) first thing in the morning.
I plan to exercise first thing, but if that doesn’t happen, I have a running mental list of all the other things I could do if I took a break at 9, at 11:15, at 2, at 7 . . . you get the idea. Just something, anything — that day! Sure, some days, I just watch the opportunities come and go, but I don’t kid myself that I couldn’t have gone, and I usually don’t go two days without exercising.
The lists are ever-changing and growing, and based on my interests, the seasons, our finances, the weather, and the family schedules. That’s part of the challenge. Hey, it keeps things from getting boring, and I hate being bored!
The walk in the afternoon sunshine sounds lovely. Nice improvisation. When I do that kind of thing with my kids, we’re “having an adventure”, which beats the heck out of “getting some exercise”.
4 greenman2001 // Jan 15, 2008 at 7:43 pm
Here’s an observation: this morning, in the contest between answering the phone and exercising, answering the phone won. To put it another way, in the contest between willpower and impulse, impulse won. It usually does.
You probably had to answer the phone. The fact is, you have to exercise if you want a good quality of life, but you don’t believe that as strongly as you believe you had to answer the phone. So belief is an important component in this equation, and part of the secret to moving toward a healthy lifestyle, but you’re a long way from that point.
That’s not a problem for you, though, because you’re someone for whom strong beliefs are a powerful motivator. I know that because at some point you changed your belief that “working in an office at someone else’s company is how I want to earn my living” to “working at home for myself is how I want to earn my living” and you changed your circumstances to make that a reality. This week, that’s your reality. It finally caught up with your belief. At some point, you’re going to let the machine pick up the phone while you get on your bike and ride 10K before breakfast. Before that point, though, you’re going to have to believe that exercise is more important than picking up the phone. And even after you change the belief, there’s going to be a lag time before you make it your reality. But at some point, 400 posts from now, someone is going to ask you why you went for a bike ride instead of picking up the phone and instead of saying “life gets in the way,” you’re going to say “exercise got in the way” without even thinking about it.
This is all very clunky, and blogging makes it seem more concrete than it really is, so I have a suggestion: is there a way for you to make exercise such a crucial part of your life that you literally can’t function happily if you don’t exercise? Is there a way for you to take the discretion out of it? You know by now that I believe that unless behavior is automatic and unthinking, doing the right thing becomes a struggle between willpower and impulse, and that’s a hard contest to win. Is there a way to remove willpower from the exercise equation, and make it automatic? I can think of a few ways. Can you?
5 brad // Jan 16, 2008 at 3:07 am
In summer, I go for an hour-long bike ride each morning after breakfast (unless it’s pouring rain). The way I make myself do it is I set a time (7am) by which I’m supposed to be on the road. We get up at 6, and traffic gets pretty bad by 8am, so 7-8 is the perfect time for me to be out.
In winter, though, I exercise in the late afternoon. My chosen form of torture in winter is a rowing machine, and it’s a much more vigorous workout than the bike. A half-hour of rowing is equivalent to two hours or more of biking where I live (where the terrain is relatively flat). I find it hard to muster the energy to face the rowing machine in the morning, so again I just set a time (5pm) for my daily date with the rower. The only problem I’ve encountered is that I can’t always tear myself away from work at that hour, particularly when I’m on a tight deadline.
6 monica // Jan 16, 2008 at 6:38 am
I exercise in the morning if at all possible (which has been HARD this winter in London, where the sun doesn’t rise until after 8am!). But I’m with you - it feels good to get it out of the way. I’ve been doing the morning routine for years and now, if I don’t do something in the morning, even if it’s just a couple miles on my bike to work, I miss the exercise. (Today I went for a swim -what a glorious start to the day!)
My advice - make sure you have all the stuff ready to go the night before. In my running days, I’d sometimes sleep in my running clothes (I was also very single at the time). Good luck.
7 Marcia // Jan 16, 2008 at 6:43 am
Important versus Urgent? Telephones ringing are urgent. Exercise is important. I am still riding my bike to work, and that gives me exercise twice a day. The challenge now is to add something to make it different. And I too struggle with the urgency of dishes, cleaning, and etc., etc., etc. Don’t give up!
8 Eric Nagel // Jan 16, 2008 at 7:37 am
I work from home, but still get up at 5AM to be at the gym at 6. My friend’s don’t understand it, which is why none of them workout with me. I invite them to run with me in the summer, but sprints at 6AM doesn’t work for them.
I’ve been working out in the morning for at least 3 years now, and couldn’t imagine it any other way.
If you’re going to be working from home, set yourself on a schedule ASAP, or else chaos will take over your daily agenda.
9 greenman2001 // Jan 16, 2008 at 9:46 am
JD, listen carefully to Monica and Marcia. Monica SLEPT IN HER RUNNING CLOTHES. Marcia RIDES HER BIKE TO WORK EVERY DAY. These are people who have built important parts of their lives around exercise. Exercise is not something that is 11th on their list of 12 things to do today: answer the phone, commute to the office, blog, and … damn, I’ve got to find time to exercise today! Shoot, no time to cook, I’ll stop for a Sno-ball!
I have tremendous admiration for people like Eric, who has done something truly impressive: he has stripped 50% of the fat completely out of his body in 9 months. Clearly — getting up at 5am, exercising alone — he is an extremely self-disciplined person. By now, he’s got enormous momentum behind him, has seen tremendous rewards for his efforts, and can’t imagine going back to the life he had before. From his vantage point, his own path seems obviously the best. But JD has told us that he sometimes blogs until midnight or one a.m. For him, getting up at 5am is no more likely to happen than quitting his job and going to work behind the counter at his local Gold’s Gym. Him and me both! He’s simply not going to reverse the habits of 33 years tomorrow morning at wake up at 5am to exercise. He needs a different approach.
JD, where is your desire to exercise first thing in the morning coming from? What is it about getting up early that leads you to say it’s an “easy” habit to cultivate? I wonder if the appeal of getting up early to exercise is that it enables you to think you can do everything you’re already doing PLUS exercise, without giving anything up. But you’re making a lifestyle change. That means you’re changing your life. It doesn’t mean you’re going to live the same life you’ve been living PLUS exercising. This is an enormously important fact to come to grips with if you’re to move forward. Eric LEFT BEHIND his old life 3 years ago. (I’d love to hear him talk more about this.) You’re going to LEAVE BEHIND parts of the life you’re living now. Which parts?
10 metroknow // Jan 16, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Great suggestions and disclosure here, yet again. I am the same way, suffering the Oregon winter doldrums, and work at home full time.
GreenMan2001: From my unmotivated experience, I slightly, *slightly* disagree with the following:
“Clearly — getting up at 5am, exercising alone — he is an extremely self-disciplined person.”
I used to think this as well of folks who could do this. I am NOT a morning person, I work at home, and would not consider myself very self-disciplined in any way (which my scale has reflected for some time now). However, I have been able to get up early for the past few months (now 5:30 - 9:15 used to be “early” for me with my flexible work schedule) using some tips from Leo over at ZenHabits (like not making a drastic change immediately). And I am actually starting to enjoy it, and reversing the habit of my 36 years. Here’s the link: http://zenhabits.net/2007/01/how-i-became-early-riser/
I got severely ill for a month which set me back, but I found that I actually craved that early morning time that I was missing.
For me, in order to exercise I set myself up for success by laying my clothes out the night before to take my rationalizing brain out of the equation. In my case, I also wind up showering twice unfortunately — showering immediately seems to really work for me to approach the day with a better frame of mind (my inclination is to just get up and work, fitting in a shower when I need 10 minutes to process some code or writing problem).
At any rate, for me its working - and my habits good and bad I am finding can be changed if I approach it in a way that suits me individually, not using someone elses’ total fitness solution.
The trick is to identify those strategies that work for me alone. Which is why I’m now addicted to blogs like this one, ZenHabits, and GetRichSlowly. All really great tips that I can try, discard, or keep. The self-discipline only matters in that I keep trying the small strategies until I find ones that work.
11 monica // Jan 16, 2008 at 2:50 pm
greenman, you talk like a reformed smoker. =) what i mean is, for a smoker who wants to quit, one strategy is to imagine life as a nonsmoker, and then BE a non-smoker. i.e. leaving behind the life as a smoker. it’s kind of an interesting analogy to exercise, in that it’s all about habit right. all addicting in their own right. which brings me to early mornings…. and by the way, i no longer sleep in my running clothes (but i do cycle to work every day, but that’s nothing special, just my morning commute)… why? well, i guess you could say i’m addicted to my early mornings. i’m not exercising tomorrow morning, but i am getting up early, by 6am, for the simple joy of being awake before everyone else is. i like that feeling of having the world to myself. and maybe that’s what makes morning exercise easier - it’s nice having the track/gym/park to myself. i don’t feel like i have to compete with anyone for space (or feel like a pea amidst the bohunk bodybuilders, or like a tortoise among a bunch of marathon runners). hey, we all have insecurities.
metro - i’ve done the showering straight away thing. now i sometimes have a cup of tea. whatever will wake me up. when it comes down to it, i like to take it easy and slow in the mornings, even if i have to wake up even earlier just to fit in tea, then ease into my swim or cycle or whatever. i do like what you said about taking the “rationalizing brain out of the equation”. again, it’s all about habits. and soon enough, even the rational brain will agree with them.
12 greenman2001 // Jan 17, 2008 at 9:11 am
Monica, I’m not a reformed smoker, but I do believe that overeating shares many qualities with other addictions, and that a fundamental 12-Step belief — I am powerless over my addiction — applies directly to overeating. Just as I know some people who have quit smoking, or drinking, or doing coke cold turkey, they are in the minority of the smallest minority. Most people take a systemic approach because willpower and good intentions by themselves just aren’t sufficient.
I love the story that JD told here about eating out at the Italian restaurant, because it is the very picture of an addict in the worst environment he could be in. He could have been writing about an alcoholic walking into a bar and trying to think of strategies to walk out sober. I know JD is going to be successful by the end of this journey, but the day is going to come when he looks back on that post, and the question he asked in it (how do you count calories in a restaurant?), and shake his head in wonderment over the whole scenario.
In his 1/17 post, JD tells a funny story about eating a handful of candy he gets from a gumball machine at his bank. The picture of a blogging dieter, resolved to change his ways, 40 lbs overweight, tilting his head back in the lobby of his bank and swallowing a fistful of candy and FEELING GOOD ABOUT IT because it only cost him 25 cents: this is the very portrait of an addict. I could tell a similar story about polishing off a rack of lamb singlehandedly at Thanksgiving dinner, full to the point of vomiting. I am powerless over my addiction. (Lest you get the wrong idea here, I’m also 100% in JD’s corner: I can’t tell you how much I admire people who take a look in the mirror and say, “whatever I’ve been doing up till now hasn’t worked: today I’m going to change.”)
I always enjoy your comments, Monica!
13 Dave Child // Jan 17, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Getting up early takes some getting used to. I managed to get myself into the habit of getting up at 5:30 and found it great - feels so good to be up early.
I don’t exercise every day though, and I should. I play racketball or squash some days, but really need to get in the habit of doing something every day.
Your last line is something I believe fervently in -that whatever changes you make, they have to be ones you can integrate into your lifestyle comfortably, or they won’t stick. Diets fail when they involve non-sustainable changes. Same with getting up early and exercising first thing. If you have to force yourself to do something you dislike, of course you’re unlikely to keep it up.
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