Make your exercise time highly productive

Are you too busy to exercise and do you struggle to justify the time?

Faced with a choice of work, education, family and social demands it is easy to let exercise time slide and it is often the first casualty of making hard choices. The work project that requires extra time, the assignment for university or school, the family event or a pressing social engagement are all reasons we decide to skip or workout and catch it up next week.

Do you find that with work, education, family and social commitments you never have the time to exercise as much as you would like to?

It does not matter whether you are a full time student, busy work at home parent, young professional, business executive, corporate CEO or retired there is never enough time to do all the things you want to do so using you time wisely is a great strategy for achieving more. When we don’t work smarter not harder we experience:

Constant feelings of frustration and being time poor;
We are always pressed for time and struggle to catch up;
We choose what is urgent rather than important;
We fail to plan time together including exercise time;
We make poor use of our time together including exercise time
We ignore each other or fail to make the most of our time together during exercise;
We don’t include time together and for exercise as part of our must do tasks; and,
We don’t have an exercise plan.

Failing to use time is a waste of time and potential

When we overlook the opportunities to use our time effectively we achieve far less than we otherwise could. We miss out on opportunities and this contributes to poor performance and making our troubles and hassles greater. As an example when we skip our exercise time or fail to use it effectively we:

Reduce our fitness and our ability to perform in the other aspects of our life;
Waste effort and use of time by duplicating effort or taking longer to complete tasks;
Skip important conversations that would have improved our situation;
Allow relationships to deteriorate rather than improve;
Find ourselves too busy, less fit and in a negative spiral; and,
Lack quality time to address problems and plan future.

What if you used your exercise time more productively?

Running, walking, cycling, cardio machines and weight training are some of the great activities for training with others and using the time productively by planning your conversation to address the important issues in your life. Some examples of how this works include:

Romantic partners planning holidays, discussing problems and thinking about the future;
Business partners discussing key business issues;
Executives combining exercise with strategic advice, mentoring or coaching;
University students discussing research and assignments; and,
Friends sharing problems and exploring solutions;

When we make use of our exercise time to effectively complete two tasks at one time a wide range of possibilities open up for us which improve our productivity, reduce stress and enhance our relationships. Some of the benefits include:

More productivity as we complete two tasks at once;
Better thinking as we devote our attention to the conversation we enjoy while exercising;
An increase in quality time to improve and enjoy our relationships;
Planning of the future we are trying to create and the action required;
Problem solving which leads to reduced worry, better action and desired result;
Thinking about possibilities and deeper consideration of options and consequences;
Improved performance through quality of relationships, thinking and action;
Opportunities to learn and reflect;
Exploring issues over longer time frames leading to better consideration; and,
By increasing fitness, reflection and planning you do the things which make you less busy.

Two areas where we make the most of combining exercise and important conversation are in our private and professional lives.

Each week we do a long run on the weekend and we pre-plan what we will talk about. As a married couple this has been a wonderful strategy as we use the time to talk about our relationship, plan our future and solve our problems.
As a 20 year CEO and now Executive adviser, author, speaker and facilitator Andrew runs and work out with select clients who are busy CEO’s, professionals and/ or executive leaders. By combining a workout with a strategic advice or coaching session executive leaders effectively squeeze in a work out while conducting a business meeting and improving their fitness and productivity at the same time.

Boost your fitness, Improve your relationships and Get more done

Making your exercise time more productive builds on the steps involved in exercising with a partner but can be modified so as to apply individual or solo work outs as well. For improving productivity with a partner apply the following steps

Select a partner.
Set fitness goals.
Determine ground rules.
Plan your training sessions.
Plan your conversations – What issues to you want to discuss?
Review against goals and ground rules.
Seek to improve the conversation / planning skills and tools to improve output.

To increase workout productivity when training alone skip step one as you are training without a partner and replace the conversation in step 5 and 7 with the issues you are going to think about while training and the techniques you will use to explore issues and decide on the action you will take.

How we help you make your exercise time more productive

We provide a range of programs and resources to help you and your partner achieve your fitness goals and are continually offering new materials to assist you. Some of the services and information available to you include:

Partnerunning
Partnerships That Matter
Level 1, 181 Bay Street, Brighton, Victoria, Australia, 3186
Phone +61 3 9607 - 8548
Fax + 61 3 8679 - 0542
Email:

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