Making Time For Sports and Physical Activities

Everyone wants to be healthy and fit, but the most often sighted excuse from someone who wants to get fit is the lack of time for physical activities.

Could it be that too many of us can't afford the time to work out and keep ourselves healthy and fit? The short answer is no, but the long answer is worth looking into.

While some have little to no window in their life to engage in physical activities for myriad reasons, that is not the case for most of us.

With adequate planning and proper time management, finding time for sports and other physical activities should not be very hard, and in this post, we will explore some of those practices.

Write down what you need to do

Before you push things onto a calendar, it is first necessary to identify things you need to do and how to do them. And finally, affirm those details.

So block 30-45 minutes on your calendar and sit down with no distractions and write down the following details:

1.   What part of my health do I need to work on?

2.    Is there a sport or activity that suits my body?

3.    What are my goals with this exercise?

4.   What time frame is realistic for my schedule?

You can take down these pointers on a physical notebook using a method known as flow note-taking.

This is where you start on an empty page with the core idea in the middle, note down your thoughts, and then connect them to the core idea.

The flow notes method will help you put your unorganized thoughts on paper so that you can start to see a pattern or get some insight to move to the next step.

Get the opinion of a professional on your plan

You know your body well and have a gut feeling about what you need. However, you are also prone to biases, making it necessary for a professional to vet your plan.

A professional will also tell you what results you can expect for your effort so that your expectations are grounded in reality.

You can choose to take either online or in-person private sports coaching, whichever suits your schedule the best.

Employ the Ivy Lee method

You can use productivity methods like the Ivy Lee method to ensure that physical activity is part of your daily priorities.

Employing the Ivy Lee method is as simple as listing the six most important things you need to do that day. You can choose at least one of those things to be a sports-related activity.

The Ivy Lee method focuses on chronology quite a bit, making you not only add sports to your everyday schedule but also where it should likely occur.

Similar to this method, several others from the productivity realm can take advantage of such as time blocking, eating the frog, etc.

Make sports part of your calendar

What is out of sight is often out of mind, so it is critical to add your sports plan to your calendar so that you constantly see and are reminded of it.

As discussed earlier, you can add sports activity right at the beginning of your Ivy Lee method list and schedule time early in the morning for it on your calendar.

Blocking time for activities on your calendar gives these activities the attention they need instead of gathering dust at the back of the closet.

Pre-plan and clear schedules the day before

If you want to get something done effectively, planning for the day ahead is always beneficial.

You don't want to wake up trying to figure out the first thing you need to do.

Instead, if you have the plan set the night before, you can wake up and start executing your plan instead of aimlessly contemplating.

It would help if you also considered clearing out your schedule and possible hurdles you might come across while executing your plan.

As long as physical activities and health are high on your priority list, you should be able to clear out distractions reasonably quickly.

Have an accountability partner

You are less likely to bail on your workout when you have someone to hold you accountable. And this role can be played by your friend, mentor, or sports coach.

Ideally, this should be someone you respect, and they should hold you to a higher standard than you do yourself.

Coaches are perfectly positioned to help you with this since that is their job, and your improvement is a definite incentive for them.

Start small and build on

In the book Atomic Habits - the author argues that progress happens when you make minor incremental improvements consistently.

If you rely on major actions to improve your health and fitness, you will soon realize that it is not sustainable.

When you want to do something long-term, it has to be realistic and sustainable, and improvement has to be gradual yet challenging.

The easiest way to do this is to join a sports program or a local sports club so that you can outsource the logistics to them and only focus on showing up & working out.

And that is all about making time for sports and other physical activities. Getting started is half the job, so get those wheels in motion.

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