Fitness Tip: Schedule Your Priorities First

TOP FITNESS TIP: THE F3 TRINITY

You’re a “normal” person. If I was to ask you what the most important things in your life are you’d probably answer with what I call the F3 trinity. Fitness, Family, and Friendship. Conversely, if you’re a normal person your health and relationships are the first things to be forced out of your schedule by competing priorities.

If we all agree that these are the most important things in life why is it so many of us struggle to nurture our health and relationships sufficiently?

This weeks Monday Fitness Focus is about prioritizing the actions you take so you can live life fully. So many of us fail to reach our fitness goals, or any other goal for that matter, because of how we prioritize our actions. You’ve heard me say this before and you’ll hear me say it again, generally speaking, we fail not because of a lack of commitment, but because of over-commitment.

I’ll say that again. We do not fail because of a lack of commitment, we fail because of over commitment.

There’s simply too much on your shoulders. You get bogged down by the day to day and you inevitably let the urgent overpower the important. We all know the struggle.

Nowhere is this more evident than with our health. Whether it’s workouts, a healthy diet, or simply making it to the doctor for our annual checkup. Your health tends to get put on the back burner. “I’ll do it later,” you think. But later never comes.

So how do you overcome this? After all, YOU DO have a lot going on. The solution is simple, although not easy.

SCHEDULE YOUR PRIORITIES FIRST. Schedule your priorities FIRST. You might think that sounds like what you’re already doing. And if you’re spending time on the things that matter like health, family, and friends then congrats! You probably are. Good on you. But if you’re like most people those are the first things put on the back burner.

Here is a simple process, best done on a Sunday or Monday, to ensure that you spend the time necessary to on the most important things in life.

STEP 1 – DETERMINE WHAT YOU’RE MISSING

It’s impossible to schedule priorities first if you don’t know what your priorities are. So ask yourself what you need to spend more time on. For example, you may be putting off your strength training or following through on a meal plan. Once you’ve identified what needs more attention you can move on to the next step.

STEP 2 – IDENTIFY THE MINIMUM NECESSARY ACTION

Notice the operative words. Minimum action. You may be thinking, “I don’t want to do the minimum!” and that’s understandable. But right now you’re not doing enough. So start smaller. Figure out what the minimum you could do to actually make progress is. Let’s take the example from step 1.

You want to start strength training and eating better. You’d like to strength train 4x per week but that’s at least 4 hours of your week. Reduce that number to 2x per week. That’s enough to make real progress but is still manageable.

For your nutrition get premade healthy meals here at ProCore or somewhere else you trust if you don’t live in Southlake. If you want to cook have your groceries delivered to you via an app like Instacart or Amazon Prime NOW.

STEP 3 – SCHEDULE YOUR PRIORITIES BEFORE YOU SCHEDULE ANYTHING ELSE

Using the strength training example of 2x per week pick a time that is least likely to be interfered with and SCHEDULE IT.

Schedule 30 minutes per week to ensure your groceries are ordered or your food is ordered. Put this time in your schedule!

Schedule your priorities before you schedule anything else. If something comes up and you absolutely have to move it then reschedule it to a time later that day. And if you have to miss for some crazy reason then you never miss twice. That’s your mantra. Never miss twice.

When you follow the formula above you ensure that what is most important actually gets done. As a result, you will be much healthier and you will have much more satisfying relationships. If you can do that, you will have a much better life. What could you be doing that’s better than that?

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