"Every day, I have to at least touch the door of the gym." I read this tip somewhere (I believe on The Happiness Project, but I'm not sure), and it has become a powerful idea for me.
The person in question was talking about how he makes sure that he sticks to his goal of exercising. For him, it is best to do something every day. But doing a workout every day was a bit of a tall order, so he instead decided that he must simply touch the door of the gym. Often, he said, he touched the gym door and then went inside; once you're there, you have overcome the inertia of going. Every once in awhile, he'd have an off day and end up not working out. But the very next day, he would get on the bandwagon when he had to go touch that gym door.
The advice is closely related to Gretchen Rubin's resolution keeping advice at The Happiness Project. For some people, "everything in moderation" works. For others, it's better to just never do something or do it every day. For Gretchen, she decided it was better to never eat her favorite chocolate chip cookie. If she allowed herself one per day, she'd end up eating more.
In that spirit, I've been trying to do _something_ physical every day. I play frisbee twice a week, so Sunday and Tuesday are already covered. But what to do on the rest of the days?
I've got free gym membership at the university. But that still didn't make me go regularly last year. I went once or twice a week, sometimes, and sometimes didn't go for weeks. This year, I've rented a gym locker ($100 for 8 months), and I've already started a habit of going more often. Instead of having to remember my gym bag, I just need to head over if I come up with a spare hour somewhere.
Today, I came home a bit early. My frisbee ended up being canceled due to severe weather warnings that never materialized. I needed to do something, but I was feeling lackadaisical. I decided I'd just go for a walk and maybe run if I felt like it. But I didn't have to if I didn't want to.
About twenty minutes into my walk, I ran into a friend of mine. We chatted for a bit, but she was on her way to a meeting, so I decided just to walk her home. I explained wanting to go running, and she said "well, I'm going about two miles away. Why don't you ride with me? Then you'll have to run home."
I took her up on her offer, and I'm quite glad. Tonight, a night where I was feeling lazy and didn't intend to go running, I ended up running my fastest ever in recent history. I ran the 1.9 miles home in 20 minutes! And to think that this personal best would not have been achieved had I not made the goal to do something each day. Once I got dressed up and out of the house, it really seemed a shame not to push myself a little. And a little extra push from my friend resulted in great payoffs.
I have a busy month or so ahead of me what with qualifying exams in school (the exams that decide whether or not I get to progress on to working on my PhD) and teaching. But I think the exercise is important, even if my exercise some days is to just go for a walk. The longer I do something every day, the better I can form my exercise habit.