Work not working?

I’ve noticed a trend at Basic Orange:  every year around January and October I have clients going off the rails because they have “too much work, and therefore can’t find time to exercise anymore”.  The sad reality is that they are also often the people who need exercise the most.

For those people I have a message.  Basic Orange is fortunate to have clients who are very successful business people.  They are people who work super long hours to grow their business, turn over millions a year while juggling a family and travelling.  Yet they find time to exercise.  Because they realise that no exercise equals sickness, weak muscles and slow brain cells.  And that is something they simply can’t afford.  They reckon that a week contains 168 hours, and they make sure some of those hours are spent on their own health. They would not have been this successful without it.

I have a client who is a single mother.  She works three jobs to make sure her child can go to university one day.  Time is very precious to her but she too finds exercise time to make sure she stays sharp, and uses her “me” time as stress relief so that her child has a healthy mother that can look after him.  She sees a personal trainer once a week to learn more about health and fitness, and swims and walks the other days.

When people are faced with extra work loads exercise is often the first activity that goes out the window.  I’ve always found that strange.  If you can’t even spend time on yourself you will burn out, guaranteed.  And once you’re burned out you are no damn good to your job anyway.

If you tell me you cannot find time to exercise I tell you rubbish, that is just another excuse because you are too lazy.  You have time to eat.  If you didn’t you wouldn’t be overweight.  You have time to watch tv and read this rant, and I bet you spend a fair bit of time on Facebook or PInterest.
  
If you wrote down all the things you do in one day I am very sure there is more than one hour where you are not doing anything that will benefit your work.  Because you don’t exercise you feel tired halfway through the day.  You get up and spend time making coffee.  Or staring into space.  Or cat napping.  Or chatting to other people because you can no longer concentrate.  Things that would not happen in the first place if you exercised.
 
So let’s look at your choices, and what it will do for you:

1. You don’t have time to exercise.  So you don’t.  You will find your productivity at work drops, you’re irritable, small tasks look like mountains.  You spend ages fixing mistakes or apologising for your cranky behaviour.  Boom, that is exercise time wasted already.  That scratchy throat you’re feeling?  That is a cold coming on so prepare to get even less work done.

2. You exercise in spite of your busy schedule.  You get a lot done at work because you are fit.  And fit people don’t get tired in the middle of their day.  That irritating customer no longer seems so irritating now because your workout de-stressed you.  Your day is automatically better, you got so much done today that you can now spend a bit more time with your family.

If you don’t have time to exercise, prepare to make time for sickness.  Period.  So open your diary right now and book an appointment with yourself, you need it!