With only 24 hours in a day, it may seem impossible to balance fitness with the rest of your life responsibilities. However, there are plenty of quick exercises that you can do throughout the day to help maintain balance. In fact, a quickie workout can give that boost of energy, second wind or get you in a good mood resulting in a productive day. Check out some of our other articles for some of these methods.
Exercise can be done almost anywhere, and you don’t have to dedicate hours a day to the cause either. A quick 15 minutes a day can do wonders for your body. We doesn’t want that? You may be saying to yourself, no way I don’t even have that time. Well we have provided you with some tips on how you can free up 15-minute time slot to get quickie in.
1. Learn to say “No”
Some say 24 hours is simply not enough time in the day to everything that they need to. However, we beg to differ. The problem is committing to every single task or activity that comes your way. We like to think we can do it all, but it just isn’t possible. Saying no to something of little to no value gives you power over your own life. Most people will say yes to something that they don’t even want to do, just to please the person that asked. If you start saying no to these non-urgent tasks, you will quickly see a freeing up of your time.
2. Good enough is good enough
Stop going back and forth, second guessing work that you have already done. That is a quick way to get burnt out, instead of burning calories. You don’t need to wash your car three times a week. One will do just fine.
3. Record Your Television Shows
Everybody has a set of shows that they cannot live without and if we are assuming, they are not on Netflix, the next best thing is to record them. This way you aren’t on the television networks time, but on your own time. You can free up time easily by saving your shows until the end of the day. However, if you just can’t wait. We have a few articles with home work out techniques that you can complete, while catching up on your favorite shows.
4. Be Proactive
We have all been guilty of tossing mail or paperwork into a pile and having to go through a large stack sometime in the future. Stop doing this. Not only is cluster stressful to deal with, it is also extremely distracting. Instead, try opening that mail as soon as you get it. You’ll love yourself in the future.
5. Phone Calls over Text
Texting can be awesome. It is a great way to send a quick message to somebody without making demands on their time. You can respond when you have a moment and it shouldn’t be an inconvenience, yet somehow it is. Why spend several minutes in a
50-message text conversation, when you can make a call and have the same conversation in 50 seconds? You tell me what makes more sense.
6. Stop Multitasking
A lot of us believe that we are the best multitaskers, but multitasking isn’t as efficient as it seems in theory. When doing several things at once, our attention is split, and we don’t perform at 100% on any of them. In fact, we move slower because we are trying to do the most. Make a to do list and complete the task one by one. You will start to finish your task quicker and more efficiently. Then afterwards you will have plenty of time to exercise.
7. Get Up Earlier
I know this one is going to sound absurd to a lot of people, but I can only imagine how many times they hit the snooze button in the morning. If you just cut back on two snoozes, that is an extra 20 minutes. Even if you don’t pop up and get to working out, you can get to work and try to leave 20 minutes early. This way you can exercise when you get back home.
8. Use a Timer
Another strategy you can use is keeping yourself on a tight schedule by setting a timer of some sort. This can be an egg timer or simply the clock app on your smartphone. Either way, this will help you not to get off task for long periods of time. Who hasn’t gotten lost on a shopping website that they had no intentions of getting on in the first place? The timer will serve as a wake-up call to you throughout the day.
9. Buy Some Time
They say that no amount of money can ever buy a second of time, but it depends how you look at it. You can buy more hours in the day by purchasing help. Outsourcing is the key to saving you time. These are easy tasks that anyone can do but are time consuming. If you were to get a cleaning service that would save you time from having to wash dishes or fold laundry. Take some money out of your entertainment fund and put it towards a maid service. There are plenty of inexpensive services if you look into it. This will give you plenty of extra time to focus on your physical fitness. You don’t have to have them at your home every day. Once or twice a week should do for most.
10. Know what you want
Many people are indecisive about irrelevant things, like what they are going to eat or what shirt they will buy online. This can be extremely time consuming. If you are going to order food or trying to decide on a movie. Don’t hesitate, just do it. Weigh out the pros and cons, then get it done. The time wasted on these decisions can easily be spent getting in shape. In fact, working out should boost your appetite, so just go ahead and get the bigger meal.
11. Know your peak moments
There is a certain time of the day for everyone that is ideal for certain activities. Some perform better working out first thing in the morning, while others prefer it being the last thing they do before bed. This applies to every activity you do in life. There is no wrong way. Just find out when your peak moments are for exercise and then get to work. You may find that an exercise routine that would normally take you 30 minutes in the morning, takes you 15 at night. Find your peaks and adjust your schedule accordingly.
12. Put it in the calendar
No body dares to not complete tasks on the calendar. Do you want a red star or a gold star? All jokes aside, the calendar demands attention and what better way to commit to exercising than placing it on something that you can’t ignore. Put your workouts in your calendar, like you would a doctor’s appointment. You wouldn’t miss a doctor’s appointment, would you?
13. Put things where they belong
Keys, wallet, glasses; who hasn’t misplaced one of these items before. We’ve all wasted far more time than 15 minutes in a single instance looking for one or all of these items. We buy hooks and baskets and still lazily put them in the wrong places. If you put your items in the correct places every day, then you will save tons of time for exercise.
14. Set out your stuff in advance
Mark Zuckerberg wears the same outfit days in a row, so that he does not have to waste time and brain power deciding what to wear. Set out your workout clothes the night before, as well as your work clothes. Iron them and hang them up. This way the process of getting up to exercise and then work afterwards, is much less of a tedious process. This will also save you massive amounts of time. This applies to meals as well. If you start a meal plan, you will have extra time not only to work out but to relax as well.
15. Stay off Social Media
The last tip may be the most valuable of them all. The new screen time application on the iPhone should have a lot of people ashamed, but sadly no one seems to care. You don’t need to cut off social media for good, but you need to set parameters and limitations. Most people spend more than 15 minutes a day on Instagram alone. Unless you’re using it for business purposes, it shouldn’t be in constant use. Get off social media and get on a treadmill.
These are just a few helpful tips designed to give you more free time to get in shape. I hope none of them are taken the wrong way, because we all could improve on at least a few of these. Time is what you make it and we should make it work for us. So there you have it, 15 ways to save 15 minutes for exercise.