Getting Steps Done – When There Is NO Time

Some of the days it feels like just getting 10,000 steps is unbelievably hard. There is just no time. So I try to trick myself.

• Make an effort every hour on the hour
• Take a quick walk through every room in the house (putting away items or gathering clutter to throw away)
• In nice weather, for a walk around the block
• In crummy weather, walk thru the office (take the stairs and walk each hall)
• Set my timer so I have to focus intently on a project and when it goes off, take one more minute to move.

There are many days I really can’t get steps in – like driving, in meetings or working on the computer – and it is strange, but those are the days that I have very little energy at night. It really feels like the more I do, the better I feel and the more I sit around, the less I feel like doing anything.

On Friday, I felt really didn’t have time to do exercise. My to do list was a mile long! Or at least it felt that way.

One of the items on my list was to prepare a new product launch for my company. It’s one of those projects that is too big to every really get done but if I don’t work on it every day, or at least every week, it NEVER happens.

So I flipped things on its head. I decided I would take one hour and think about NOTHING except how I can accomplish this project. The goals, the action steps, challenges to meet the steps, how much each would cost, who could help me get it done, what technology resources I need, the timetable to do everything, etc.

So I took an hour. Put on my running shoes and brought my dog Lady with me to get some steps done. There’s never enough time to take her for an hour walk. Especially on a Friday morning!  But that’s exactly what we did.

By the end of the hour, I had my exercise and she did too. Best of all, the motion and movement unleashed my creativity and I actually was able to accomplish more than I know I would have if I was sitting at my desk, starring into the white void of my computer, trying to force myself to come up with the launch plan!

Supposedly multitasking is really bad, but I’m not sure that walking with the dog and thinking/planning/creating are mutually exclusive. How about you? Does your brain turn on when your feet start moving? To me this is the best of both worlds, getting work done while I’m getting the steps in when there is no time.