105 hours: 5 hours minimum for exercise

I use a set of tactics and principles to manage my time. I call it 105 hours.

It helps me allocate the 105 hours I have in the week.

At least five of those hours must be allocated to exercise. No ifs. No buts. No excuses. No exceptions.

There's still 100 hours, plenty of time, for everything else.

A few years ago, the day starts

I open my eyes and reach for my phone – "What's happened at work since I went to sleep?"

I check my work messages and emails for anything urgent. Reply to some of them, getting an early start on the work day. Very productive, working in the very first minutes of the day, unblocking my colleagues a few time zones ahead of me.

I'm still lying in bed.

Before I get up, I also check Twitter – my social network. Some interesting posts. Some people are really creative and innovative. They're funny. Some of them are really upset too. Outraged. Some people have died, somewhere, I learn.

I get out of bed and shower to prepare for work. In the shower, I'm mulling over all those things on my mind: work problems, emails, funny social media posts, outraged people, people dying. Oops, where did the time go? Time to get out of the shower.

I dress up and walk a few steps to my desk – remote working. I open my laptop and check my email and Slack in case anything urgent has happened since I last checked; I got some replies to my earlier messages.

Then something funny happens: a digital whirlwind of Zoom, Email, Slack, and .. well, Twitter. I go from meeting to meeting, message to message, tweet to tweet, and the next thing I know, it's evening.

I forgot to have lunch today. I guess it's just another intermittent fasting day then; great diet for busy people, I hear. That's fine.

I'm exhausted.

I grab my phone and head to the living room to watch TV. I wish I said, "and watch TV until the end of the day," but I just sit there, trying to choose what to watch: Grace & Frankie? Bourne Identity? Princess Mononoke? Click, click, click, click, browse, browse, browse, browse.

I binge-watch on the couch and work on my phone while catching up on Twitter.

I go to bed and check my phone for any last-minute work things. Very productive, working in the very final minutes of the day, unblocking my colleagues a few time zones behind me.

Protect mornings

I now run every day first thing in the morning.

When I'm back and shower, my mind is filled with interesting ideas about my life and my writing. Undisturbed by digital intrusions.

Mornings are an easy time of the day to protect for exercise.

In the morning, life hasn't happened yet. In the evenings and weekends, so many different things can happen: I'm working late, feeling tired, somebody needs me, I have an event to attend, have a chore I need to complete.

Now, even if there's a day when I can't exercise in the evening, which I also do every day, it's okay – I've exercised in the morning.

Here's Gretchen Rubin in the book Better than Before talking about morning habits:

[..] does time of day matter? For most people, whenever possible, important habits should be scheduled for the morning. Mornings tend to unfold in a predictable way, and as the day goes on, more complications arise—whether real or invented—which is one reason why I’d scheduled my new meditation habit in the morning. Also, self-control is strongest then; I heard about one corporate dining room that encourages healthier eating habits by requiring people to place their lunch orders by 9:30 a.m., no changes permitted.

Rubin, Gretchen. Better Than Before: What I Learned About Making and Breaking Habits--to Sleep More, Quit Sugar, Procrastinate Less, and Generally Build a Happier Life (p. 80). Crown/Archetype. Kindle Edition.

For emphasis, "important habits should be scheduled for the morning," and nothing is more important on the 105 hours than five hours minimum for exercise.

Be more productive

Another reason to exercise in the morning is that it makes me more alert, energized, and sharp.

There's a tremendous difference between barely waking up and immediately checking work emails and reading the news, which I never do, and putting on shoes and going for a run outside in the fresh air of the morning, which I always do.

There's also interesting research on how important exercise is for high-level cognitive function in the brain. Here's an excerpt from John Ratey's book Spark: The revolutionary new science of exercise and the brain, which is full of research and anecdotes:

A notable experiment in 2007 showed that cognitive flexibility improves after just one thirty-five-minute treadmill session at either 60 percent or 70 percent of maximum heart rate. The forty adults in the study (age fifty to sixty-four) were asked to rattle off alternative uses for common objects, like a newspaper—it’s meant for reading, but it can be used to wrap fish, line a birdcage, pack dishes, and so forth. Half of them watched a movie and the other half exercised, and they were tested before the session, immediately after, and again twenty minutes later. The movie watchers showed no change, but the runners improved their processing speed and cognitive flexibility after just one workout.
Cognitive flexibility is an important executive function that reflects our ability to shift thinking and to produce a steady flow of creative thoughts and answers as opposed to a regurgitation of the usual responses. The trait correlates with high-performance levels in intellectually demanding jobs.

Spark (p. 54). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.

Exercising makes me better at my job, so it makes no sense to use work as an excuse not to exercise.

Allocate twice the amount of time

When it comes to exercise, Twice the amount of time for the exercise must be allocated in the day. Running 30 minutes a day takes me 1 hour a day.

That's because exercising takes time to do and undo. We put on exercise clothes, drive to the gym, try to find parking, drive back, drink water, shower, and dress up again.

Sometimes people don't allocate twice the amount of time; they rush a two-hour activity into a one-hour slot. They try to "just leave work 5mins early", get stuck in traffic, get late to class, rush back, delay dinner prep, and sometimes cascade to sleeping late.

There are exceptions, of course, but not many. A walking distance gym, handy habits of gym clothes, and anti-social gym mates all help. But it's better to allocate twice the amount of time at first and optimize later.

No one is complaining about too much time to exercise.

Exercise every day

We should exercise every day. It's the best for our health, for our strength, for our cognition, and it's easier to do.

Even if the specific exercise works better with a day's rest, say a strength training protocol, we should find a different exercise on the off day, such as yoga or running. And a day's rest is unnecessary recovery for most beginners.

When exercising every day, exercising stops being something we decide to do and becomes just something we do. Fumio Sasaki talks about it in his book Hello, Habits.

When you quit something, it’s easier to quit it completely. With acquiring a habit, it’s the opposite — easier to do it every day.
People believe it’s easier to run once a week than to run every day. This is because they consider the level of difficulty as a sum of the amount of effort each action involves. Because there’s a preconception that it’s easier to do something two or three times a week rather than every day, they choose to gradually increase the frequency at which they do something. But, conversely, that boosts the level of difficulty. You end up getting caught in a pitfall. Why is that?
Let’s say for example that you decide to run twice a week. This is what you’ll be thinking: “Was today the day for my run? When was the last time that I ran?” “Today’s the day for my run, but as I don’t feel like it, I’ll make it up by running on three days next week.” You’ll end up performing a lot of calculations, and then making choices. Then, you’ll be stuck tossing a coin to make your decision.
You don’t waver if it’s every day
There’s no need to beat yourself up about when you should do something if it’s already decided that you’re going to do it every day.

Sasaki, Fumio. Hello, Habits: A Minimalist's Guide to a Better Life (pp. 134-135). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

And so does Gretchen Rubin in the book Better than Before with her extremely quotable Introduction titled "Decide not to decide":

Again, this is where deciding-not-to-decide comes to the rescue. I don’t revisit my habits. I just think, “This is what I’m doing today.” Trust the habit. I take that first step, over and over and over.

Rubin, Gretchen. Better Than Before: What I Learned About Making and Breaking Habits--to Sleep More, Quit Sugar, Procrastinate Less, and Generally Build a Happier Life (p. 114). Crown/Archetype. Kindle Edition.

Trust the habit. Protect the morning. Allocate twice the amount of time.

And exercise every day.