Travel is slowly opening up around the world again, and people eligible to take well-earned time off are jumping at the chance.

I was recently one of those people, returning to Ireland yesterday after two weeks off in Berlin, Germany.

Since it was my first vacation in a long time, I was once again faced with a question many people ask themselves:

“How do I keep up my workout habit while traveling?”

Short answer: you can, but probably not fully.

Personally, I don’t try to stick to my usual training program while traveling. Chances are I won’t have the equipment or the will to train like I would at home.

Instead, I aim for two, full-body training sessions per week. That allows me to get enough stimulus to maintain my progress while giving me plenty of time to explore.

To design each workout, I pick one exercise per primary movement pattern – push, pull, squat, lunge, hinge, and carry – and spread them across both sessions. 3-4 sets per movement tends to do the trick for me.

Schedule your workouts whenever’s most convenient during your week, but try not to do them back-to-back. I’d recommend at least one day of rest in between.

Give this approach a try next time you’re on the road. It’ll help you stay consistent with a healthy habit while also letting you enjoy more of your time off relaxing instead of stressing.

These days, there’s no shortage of ways to manage our well-being.

Want to exercise more? Your watch can offer workouts and track them for you.

Want to eat healthier? There are plenty of websites listing nutrition, calorie, and macronutrient information.

Want to meditate? There’s an app for that.

There’s nothing wrong with these tools and software. They can help you set goals, be consistent, and quantify progress.

But they’ll never know you as well as you know you.

Therefore, to help manage and improve my well-being, I ask myself two simple-but-powerful questions a few times per day:

“How am I feeling?”

“What do I need right now?”

By asking these questions, I’m…

1. Taking a proactive, mindful pause during my day
2. Checking in with my thoughts, feelings, and emotions
3. If necessary, making an outcome-based decision, acting on what’s real for me in the present moment

The answers to and actions taken from these questions are as unique as the individuals asking them.

For example, when asking, “How am I feeling?”, one might answer, “Anxious and overwhelmed.”

Then, when they follow it up with, “What do I need right now?“, the answer could be, “A five minute break from work so I can meditate.”

Through this example, it’s easy to see how these two questions can empower many aspects of our well-being.

If you’re feeling tired, maybe you decide you need to go for a walk, which contributes to your health through gentle movement.

If you’re feeling hungry, you can decide to mindfully prepare a meal that nourishes you, as opposed to reactively choosing the most convenient, usually less-nutritious option.

If you’re feeling happy and focused, you could choose to keep doing exactly what you’re doing and note to do more of that in the future.

In the end, what matters is that you check in with yourself, observe whatever you’re feeling without judgement, and make a decision – no matter how small – based on that.

If you make time once or even a few times per day to ask these two powerful questions, you’ll be well on your way to a more proactive, mindful, healthy day.

– Ian

Oh hai, you sexy beast, you. I hope you’re having a fabulous day.

How would you like to talk for a bit about helping each other achieve righteous health and build bodacious bods?

“That sounds great, Ian!”

Awesome! I think so, too!

Heads up: this is gonna be a hell of a post. But if you hang in there with me (especially for the last point), I’m confident you will learn something that will benefit your health – now and potentially for the rest of your life.

So. Deep breath. Let’s begin together.

———-

Over the last several months, I have successfully managed to lose 25lbs. More importantly, though, is that I’ve managed to KEEP OFF those 25lbs. after I STOPPED dieting. My body image and overall mental health have significantly improved as well.

This is where so many of today’s approaches to losing weight today fail. They focus on how to achieve results NOW, without thinking about the implications those results will have on your health and wellness LATER. It’s not hard to see headlines like this plastered on covers of magazines and all over social media:

“Lose Your Gut in 21 Days – Guaranteed!”

“30 Day Detox Challenge Begins Next Week!”

“Get Single-Digit Bodyfat in Weeks!”

These make for eye-catching headlines and attractive Instagram bios, but they most certainly aren’t a smart approach to building a healthy, strong body – one that you have a good relationship with and can be proud of.

So with that, let’s talk about a smarter approach. Here is what I’ve learned and borrowed over the last several months building a better, healthier body. I hope you find some (or all!) of these tips and strategies useful.

1. You Need to Know WHY You Want to Change

Is it for your overall health? Do you want to look a certain way? Maybe it’s to help you reclaim peace of mind for the first time in years?

Whatever it is, knowing your “why” is crucial, because it will keep you anchored as you embark on your journey. It’s important to understand that this is about YOU – not what society thinks is acceptable, not what your social circle thinks you should do. Make this decision for you.

It’s helpful to write out your “why” and keep it somewhere accessible: a notes app on your phone, a sticky note in your apartment, a page in your moleskin – wherever. Make it easy to revisit and a powerful enough statement that it keeps you grounded when things get tough. Here was my “why:”

“I want to lose weight because being healthy and lean makes me feel like my best self. When I feel like my best self, I’m a better man for my loved ones and those around me.”

That’s powerful. Yours should be, too.

2. Principles > Tactics, aka Cutting Through the Noise

The fitness industry is saturated with strategies that claim they’ll help you to be healthier. Log on to Instagram and click on a “fitness” hashtag and you’ll find hundreds of thousands of posts espousing methods that promise to help you lose fat, build muscle, and supercharge your health.

Most of these are tactics. But we don’t want to focus on tactics – we want to focus on principles. This is something I learned from Nate Green, of NateGreen.org, and it’s made a huge difference in my approach to health and fitness.

“What’s the difference between a principle and a tactic?”

Principles are timeless. They’re the foundations. The elements that have stood the test of time. The “basics.”

Tactics are specific strategies that are planned to achieve a desired end. They’re the “parts” of the whole. The smaller, nitty gritty things.

Let’s look at some examples of principles vs. tactics as it relates to our health and fitness:

Principles

– Maintaining a calorie deficit
– Getting enough sleep
– Being consistent with eating mostly healthy foods and working out
– Minimizing stress

Tactics

– Keto
– Juicing
– Intermittent fasting
– Diet supplements like fat burners
– Any diet with a “name” (Atkins, Whole 30, Carnivore, etc.)

Now, tactics CAN be useful, but they will not be the key drivers of success. An over-reliance on tactics can end up leaving you stressed and confused. It can cause you to hop from one fad to another, and – very likely – leave you worse off than when you started. Principles, however, will keep you focused on the “big rocks” – the things that matter in the long run. This will help ensure you’re making progress day after day, week after week, month after month.

3. You Must Maintain a Calorie Deficit

The foundation of fat loss – the thing that makes everything else possible – is a calorie deficit.

Despite what some guru may tell you, fat loss occurs when you are consuming less calories than you are expending. If you are able to maintain a calorie deficit over time, you will lose fat. However you do that is personal preference.

There are a lot of calculators out there to figure out your calories. I recommend Precision Nutrition’s here: https://www.precisionnutrition.com/weight-loss-calculator

Now, this progress will not always be linear. I had weeks where I lost 1lb., others where I only lost .5lbs., and still others where I lost 2lbs. or even more. The key is to stay on track, trust yourself and the process, and be consistent.

Speaking of consistency…

4. Consistency is King

Lack of consistency is arguably the biggest reason why people fail to lose weight and keep it off for good. Many people will start a diet or new lifestyle with the best of intentions, only to fall off the wagon a few weeks in because of the intensity of totally flip-flopping their lifestyles. This results in frustration, doubt, potentially self-medicating with food, and backsliding.

The cycle then repeats itself, this time with new tactics and a renewed sense of focus and intensity. I think by now we both know what happens next: you’re stuck in the dreaded “yo-yo dieting” trap.

Dr. John Berardi of Precision Nutrition has a great maxim to combat this:

“Focus on ALWAYS SOMETHING instead of ALL OR NOTHING.”

If you are consistently taking steps – no matter how small – towards building and maintaining a healthy lifestyle, you will be successful.

In my case, I dieted for 12 weeks with the goal of losing fat. I am now finishing my 8th week of maintaining my new bodyweight post-diet. That’s 20 weeks – or five months – of mindful effort towards improving my health.

Hardly a sexy 30 day fitness challenge.

I was able to do this because I focused on sustainable, healthy habits that I repeated every day. I didn’t radically alter my life or push the pedal to the metal. I simply did less, but better, every day. You can, too – and that starts by…

5. Making Things Fit Your Lifestyle

A healthy diet should fit the unique needs of your life.

“Duh! Of course it should, Ian!”

Well, if we all know that, then why do so many people continue to gain weight every year, despite trying the latest fitness trends?

“…”

Right. Sometimes common sense isn’t so common.

Friction caused by trying to fit a “square peg in a round hole” – i.e., a diet that disrupts your day-to-day life – have a MUCH higher risk of failing.

One way to help avoid this is to move from expansive thinking to reductive thinking. Instead of saying, “What COULD I do to stick to a healthy diet,” ask yourself, “What SHOULD I do to stick to a healthy diet?”

Let’s look at this in practice.

Let’s say a diet tells you to cut out carbs, but you and your partner are foodies and like to go out to eat. It’s going to be VERY hard to make that fit within the context of your life. You will constantly be tempted to eat foods that contain carbs, which will make going out stressful, reduce your enjoyment of eating, and possibly negatively affect time spent with your partner.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ll take the dinner roll over 2 hours of stressing about food and not enjoying my evening and my partner’s company.

Another example: if a diet tells you that you NEED to eat 6x per day, but you’re much more comfortable with eating 3-4x per day, then you should eat 3-4x per day, because you’re more likely to be consistent with it.

The biggest thing to remember here is this:

Diets are static – lifestyles are fluid.

You need to accept this and be okay with imperfections, because you are almost certainly going to mess up a few times.

To help make this principle fit your lifestyle, I’d recommend following an “80/20” approach to food.

80% of the time, eat whole, nutritious foods. Stuff our grandparents would recognize as “real food.” But 20% of the time, you can include some “treat” foods like desserts, pastries, a couple of glasses of wine, etc. Just don’t make it an everyday thing and ensure you’re maintaining your calorie deficit.

Through making eating fit our lifestyles, we are seeking to create balance. This should be something we can do for the rest of our lives. We’re working to build healthy habits – not just complete a diet or challenge.

6. Pick Foods You Enjoy and Eat Them!

Lots of diets these days need to have a unique selling point in order to differentiate them from other diets. Extreme, flashy approaches to solving a very personal problem like weight loss sell, and they sell well.

For example, Whole 30 is a paleo-style diet. It tells you what to eat and what NOT to eat, such as dairy, alcohol, or grains such as bread.

While this is great for marketing, it might not necessarily the best choice for building healthy, sustainable lifestyle. This method is akin to an “all or nothing” approach that we discussed above. Diets like these will often deliver fast results in a short time, but often leave people asking, “Now what?” at the end. They don’t set you up for longterm success. We want principles that will work for life, not quick fixes.

Do you love carbs like rice and bread? Great! Eat them.

Maybe you really can’t stand spinach. That’s okay – you don’t have to eat spinach. But Popeye will be sad.

Design the majority of your diet around healthy, nutritious foods that you like eating. Doing so will help you actually ENJOY the process of losing weight and getting healthier, as opposed to feeling restricted, stressed, and tempted to overindulge in comfort foods.

7. What Does a “Healthy” Meal Look Like?

This is a great question and will depend on who you ask and what dietary ideology they subscribe to.

Low carb eaters might say steak and eggs. Vegetarians might say a chickpea chopped salad. Intermittent fasters might say, “Ask me later – I don’t start eating until 2 p.m.”

In my experience, it’s best to keep things simple. For our purposes, let’s agree that a healthy meal is composed of…

– A protein
– A carb
– A fat
– A vegetable

The idea of building meals in this “templated” style was inspired by my use of Renaissance Periodization‘s Simplified Diet Templates, which were absolutely crucial in my successful weight loss. Knowing the “building blocks” of a healthy meal can help empower you to make smart choices and focus on foods you like in those categories.

For example, a meal I ate countless times at lunch (consistency!) was 6oz. of grilled chicken, 1 cup of wild rice, 2 cups of broccoli, and 1 avocado, seasoned with sea salt and pepper. This covered all of my bases and provided me with a satiating, healthy meal that I looked forward to eating each day.

8. Supplement Your Eating with Strength Training

A healthy relationship with food and a structured approach to weight loss will be the most important parts of your journey. However, in my experience, the next biggest factors are strength training and building lean muscle.

So, why should you strength train? Well, strength training…

– Helps you burn more calories at rest, boosting your metabolic rate
– Increases bone density
– Decreases likelihood of diseases such as diabetes
– Decreases blood pressure
– Improves and preserves cognitive abilities

Pretty damn good reasons if you ask me.

Like designing a healthy meal, we can also take a “plug and play” approach to designing an effective strength training regimen. How you structure your training will be dependent on your lifestyle, schedule, and personal dispositions (see point 5, “Making Thing Fit Your Lifestyle”).

Maybe you love being in the gym and consider it a key part of your social life. There’s a good chance you’ll want to train frequently, like 5x per week.

Maybe you’re a busy young professional who works a 9-5 job and has a social life on the weekends. 3x per week could probably work well for you.

Maybe you’re a parent with a family, lots of responsibilities, and not a lot of time. Fitting in training 2x per week is probably your best bet.

Once you know your schedule, we can build a training regimen that serves your needs. Personally, during my journey towards losing 25lbs., I strength trained between 2-4x per week, depending on my workload and travel schedule. I also opted to walk as often as I could.

Given that this is my demographic, let’s look at an example program that a young professional might use during a typical work week:

M – Full body
T – Off
W – Full body
Th – Off
F – Full body
Sat – Off
Sun – Off

Full body workouts should follow some basic movement patterns:

– Push
– Pull
– Squat
– Lunge
– Hinge
– Carry

Examples of these movement patterns are…

Push – Push ups, bench pressing with barbells or dumbbells (flat, incline, decline), overhead pressing with barbells or dumbbells, bench or overhead pressing on machines, dips.

Pull – Rowing with dumbbells, barbells, bodyweight, or on machines, pull ups, chin ups, lat pulldowns.

Squat – Squatting with your bodyweight, dumbbells, barbells, or kettlebells, single leg squats, machine squats like hack squats.

Lunge – lunging forward or backward with your bodyweight, dumbbells, kettlebells, or a barbell. You could alternatively do a step-up style movement here, also with the aforementioned equipment.

Hinge – deadlifts with a barbell, hex/trap bar, dumbbells, or kettlebells, romanian deadlifts with the aforementioned equipment, kettlebell swings, hip thrusts, back extensions, cable pull-throughs.

Carry – farmers walks with either two hands or one hand, carrying things such as dumbbells, a hex/trap bar, or kettlebells. This includes carrying things overhead, but given most people do not possess the proper mobility to establish a solid overhead carrying position, I would opt for standard carries.

Now that we know how often we should strength train and what we should do when we’re in the gym, we need to design some workouts. Please note that these are purely examples and won’t necessarily apply to your specific situation. When in doubt, pick exercises that you’re able to move pain-free through a full range of motion. I’m opting for a moderate rep range and would encourage you to leave a rep or two “in the tank” on each set. Over time, try to add a bit more weight or a few more reps to each set, always focusing on proper form.

Day 1
– Push Ups: 2 sets of 8-15 reps
– Dumbbell Rows: 3 sets of 8-15 reps
– Romanian Deadlift with Dumbbells: 3 sets of 8-15 reps
– Bulgarian Split Squats: 3 sets of 8-15 reps

Day 2
– Overhead Press with Dumbbells: 2 sets of 8-15 reps
– Lat Pulldowns: 3 sets of 8-15 reps
– Goblet Squat with Dumbbell: 3 sets of 8-15 reps
– Hamstring Curl on Machine: 3 sets of 8-15 reps
– Farmers Walks with Dumbbells: 3 sets of 30sec. walks

Day 3
– Hex/Trap Bar Deadlift: 3 sets of 8-15 reps
– Reserve Lunge: 3 sets of 8-15 reps
– Incline Dumbbell Bench Press: 2 sets of 8-15 reps
– Cable Rows: 3 sets of 8-15 reps

So. We’ve covered our food. We’ve covered our workouts. But there is one final principle we still need to talk about…

9. The Mental Game

One of the hardest parts of developing a healthy lifestyle and maintaining it is the battle you fight in your head.

Temptations, peer pressure, and doubts can all be progress killers. I was told several times by those around me that I “don’t need to be doing that.” I was poked fun at, questioned, and criticized for trying to change. These rebukes come with the territory.

Because of this, we need to focus on winning the small, “1% battles” every day.

For example, while out at a dinner party, you may be tempted one night to get a big ice cream sundae for dessert. This is a “1%” situation – it’s you being confronted with a choice that will impact your progress.

But if you opt to respect that small moment between “stimulus” and “response,” you can take control. You can remember your “why.” If that’s powerful enough, you can hold strong and opt for a smaller, less calorie-dense dessert instead.

As we’ve discussed in a few principles above, we need to internalize the idea that weight loss, and indeed a healthy lifestyle, is a lifelong pursuit. It is not optimally achieved in 30 day challenges, transformation competitions, or via some super intense workout, diet, and supplementation program.

Because we’re in this for life, we’re gonna mess up. Thus, one of the most powerful drivers of progress – one that is so often ignored – is FORGIVENESS.

Mainstream or fad diets will demonize missteps, encouraging you to feel shame for nothing other than BEING A HUMAN BEING. We aren’t perfect. It’s not a matter of “if” we will slip up, but “when.” We might order way too much food, have one too many drinks, or skip workouts.

And that’s okay.

What’s more important than dwelling on these mistakes is what we do next. What should we do when we slip up?

We accept it. We forgive ourselves. We take the next best step to make progress.

Missed your scheduled workout for the day? Go for a walk instead.

Ate a little too much at brunch with your friends? Opt for protein and veggie-rich meals for lunch and dinner.

Strapped at work and stressed up to your eyeballs? Take 10 minutes to destress and forget about focusing so much on your diet.

Remember: your overall wellbeing – physical and mental – are MUCH more important than following a meal plan or how ripped your abs look in the mirror for Instagram. We’re doing this to be healthy. To be our best not just for ourselves, but for our loves ones, too. We owe it to ourselves to adopt an approach that brings results, but not at the expense of our lives outside of the gym or on a dinner plate.

Commit to the long road. You’ll be happier you did.

———-

Phew. Okay. We made it. How do we feel?

Hopefully, if you’ve read this far, you’ve learned a thing or two that will help you live a healthier lifestyle. Hell, even if you DIDN’T learn anything, I hope my efforts adhering to these principles and losing 25lbs. of fat inspire you to kick more ass in your own life.

Health and wellness – like life – is a beautiful, sometimes messy journey. We chase goals. We make mistakes. We accomplish great feats. All the while, we learn a little more each day about how to be the best versions of ourselves. One way we can start is by looking inwards and embracing the challenge of building strong, healthy bodies.

I’m confident that if we take the first steps on that journey, we’ll all be successful in our own ways, because we’ll be doing it together.

Anywho… all this talk about healthy food is making me hungry, so I’m off to eat dinner.

I love you all very much. If you want to talk about this or anything else, I’m always here for you.

Big snuggles and smooches,

Ian

This post was originally published on June 22nd, 2019

Succeeding in your health and fitness goals depends on one thing: having the right systems in place.

It isn’t the exercise program you do. It isn’t the diet you follow. It isn’t the coach you hire.

It’s the systems that enable you to consistently execute on the things that help you reach your goal.

For example, let’s look at factors for a successful fat loss diet:

• Maintaining a calorie deficit for 6-12 weeks
• Drinking enough water
• Getting 7-9 hours of sleep per night
• Eating mostly whole, nutritious foods at a frequency that fits your schedule
• Strength training 2-4 times per week
• Lots of low-intensity movement each day (walking, chores, light stretching)
• Managing stress through practices like meditation, naps, or other relaxing activities

We could endlessly debate what the “best” approaches are.

“What should I do for my workouts? Should I have a morning and evening routine? Should I do high carb? Keto? Intermittent fasting?”

At the end of the day, none of these matter unless you develop a system to ensure you can actually do them.

An imperfect plan done consistently beats a perfect plan done inconsistently.

Effective systems will vary by individual, but I’ve found the most successful ones have three things in common:

1. A very low barrier to entry. It should be ridiculously easy to get started.
   
2. The potential to build momentum – mentally or physically – once you’ve gotten going.
   
3. Is easy to repeat every time you need it (daily, weekly, etc.).

Coming back to our fat loss example, let’s say you want to create a system to help you stick to your calorie deficit. There are a variety of ways to track your calories – pen and paper, spreadsheets, food databases, etc. – but the most popular is via apps like My Fitness Pal.

After downloading your app of choice, a first step to create an effective system is to schedule a daily push notification that reminds you to log your food for the day. Let’s look at what this accomplishes for us and why it fits within our definition of a good system:

1. Enabling the push notification takes a minute or two – at most. That’s basically zero barrier to entry.
   
2. Getting a reminder to log your food (and actually logging it) will help keep you mindful and motivated towards your fat loss efforts.
   
3. The notification is triggered automatically, so it’s easily repeated without needing your intervention.

This may seem insignificant, but the snowball effect it has on your daily nutrition habits can be huge. Being held accountable to your daily calories will guide your food choices, most likely towards lower-calorie, more nutritious options. It can help strengthen your resolve in situations where you may be tempted to eat more than you need.

Moving from the kitchen to the gym, a system we put in place to keep us consistent with our exercise is to move your gym bag to the front door as opposed to your bedroom or closet. That way, it’s easily-accessible as you head out for the day and prevents excuses like, “I couldn’t find it,” or “I forgot it at home.” It’s always there, packed, and ready to trigger a reminder in your brain to workout that day.

There are lots of opportunities to implement simple, effective systems into our lives. They help simplify, build momentum, keep us accountable, and reduce the feelings of overwhelm when attacking long-term goals.

Mornings.

For a lot of us, this is the most stressful time of the day. You’re shaking off the sleepies and are about to be slammed with responsibilities at work, home, school, and other areas of life. Grumbling your way through it only compounds the stress. Take a moment to really listen to the usual morning chatter, and you might hear some cliches, such as…

“Another long week ahead.”

“I hate Mondays.”

“Back to the grind.”

“Can’t wait until Friday.”

Personally, I love mornings. Instead of looking at them as the start of another stressful day, I look at them as an opportunity to reorganize, refocus, and attack my goals. I have long believed that your life is a product of your mindset. That is, your perception largely shapes your reality. Research in positive psychology is increasingly finding this to be the case:

“We’re finding it’s not necessarily reality that shapes us, but the lens through which your brain views the world that shapes your reality.”
Shawn Achor

Given that, I like to see mornings as an opportunity, not a burden – and I hope you will too after reading and executing on the methods that follow.

I like to incorporate the following simple, stress-relieving methods into my day, as well as the rest of the week, to help me stay motivated, positive, and productive. I am fortunate to have access to some incredible people and resources that all have brilliant de-stressing and productivity strategies, which I use personally and will share with you below. Give these a shot, and maybe you and your mornings will start seeing eye-to-eye.

1. Move in the Morning

This one sounds a little obvious, but you’d be amazed at what a difference it makes. Oftentimes, people will shut off their alarm, lay in bed for a bit longer, and then drag themselves through their morning routine.

Instead of laying around, get up when the alarm goes off and walk around a bit. If you live in a multi-level house, walk up and down the stairs a few times. Take a walk around your apartment complex. Stretch your legs and get things moving – it helps set the tone for your day. If you’re feeling particularly drained, this short routine can be done almost anywhere and takes only a few minutes:

1. Cat/Camel – 10 reps

2. “World’s Greatest Stretch” – 5 to 10 reps

3. Glute Bridges – 15 reps

4. Reverse Lunges (alternate legs) – 5 reps per leg, or 10 total

5. Wall Slides (for shoulder mobility) – 10 reps (slides)

The concept of morning mobility and movement was given to me by my good friend, NYT bestselling author, and fitness coach John Romaniello of Roman Fitness Systems LLC. He calls it the “neural wake up call,” and it’s a great way to get moving and stretch out some kinks. A more in depth discussion of the neural wake up call (as well as other great content) can be found on his blog.

After this, grab a big glass of water, start your tea or coffee, and move to step two.

2. DON’T Check E-Mail Right Away

Or any other social media site, really. Tim Ferriss recently blogged that “E-Mail is the mind killer,” and I agree 100%. I include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any other social media site in this category as well.

Instead, write out your daily to-do list. Yes, with a paper and pencil. Or, if you’re like me, use a whiteboard and marker. Nate Green wrote about this in his e-book “The Hero Handbook,” which you can check out for free here. I’ve been using this strategy to help me outline my days, weeks, and even months, and it’s worked fabulously for keeping me on track and my tasks in perspective. The feeling of physically erasing something from your list once you’ve completed it is totally underrated.

When making your list, focus on a few key tasks. Modern to-do lists often fall victim to information overload. I never put more than 5 items on mine. I know from experience that anything more will stretch my attention and force me to forfeit the necessary care each task requires. Here’s an example of one of my recent to-do lists from this past semester at school, separated into two categories: “Must Do’s,” stuff that needs to be done that day, and “Also On the List,” other stuff that is coming up or I should be mindful about.

Must Do:

• Study for CS exam (2 hours)
• Draft final 478 paper
• Finalize edits for 483 project

Also On the List:

• Research agencies and companies I’ll be visiting on California trip

If you’re adamant about remaining in the digital sphere, check out CARROT. It’s like having your own personal Jarvis (fellow superhero fans will feel me on that one), because CARROT is a virtual to-do list with a personality and changes her mood based on how productive you are.

Focus on the bigger picture and organize your thoughts before mindlessly engaging with the Internet. Your E-Mail will still be there, I promise.

Now, both your body and mind are primed for the day ahead, and it’s all taken less than 15 minutes. Not bad.

3. Work Smarter, not Harder

In the age of distraction, people are oftentimes fooled into believing they’re working much more than they really are. Our minds are constantly pulled in different directions and tempted to engage with several different stimuli. Some call it multitasking. I call it distraction. Agree to disagree.

For zeroing in on the task at hand, I like to race the clock, yet another productivity method I picked up from Nate Green.

Set a phone, stopwatch, timer, whatever you have handy for one hour. Then get to work. You’d be amazed at how much you can get done when you actually commit to doing things. The timer keeps you accountable and helps you maximize your time. When it goes off, take a short break – grab some water, go through the mobility routine outlined in the first point, or just sit back and relax. Then reset it and go right back to work. Tasks that you anticipated taking “forever” are usually done in one to three of these hyper-focused intervals.

If you’re a Mac user and big on keeping tabs or other windows open while you’re working on a computer, I suggest downloading Self Control. This free app lets you blacklist certain websites that sap your productive time and energy by distracting you from the task at hand. Download it, set the timer (killing two birds with one stone!), and get workin’.

4. Chill Out

Even if the above steps are taken, some days will bring an avalanche of anxiety-promoting work. Stuff falls through. Deadlines go from creeping up on you to breaking out into a sprint. Motivation or desire to be productive wanes. What’s the best thing to do when you feel like the walls are closing in on you?

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

I’ve found great value in daily meditation. Five to ten minutes of “me time” when I’m feeling particularly overwhelmed. Just me and my thoughts, whatever they may be. Sometimes I’ll sit and relax, focusing on taking deep breaths. Other times I’ll read for pleasure, go through the mobility routine from point one, or shut the computer and take a quick walk around. Anything to disconnect for a moment and mentally regroup. Just make it mindful and “you” centered.

Then, once I feel revitalized, it’s right back to work.

5. Pump Up

I love working out. I’m active 4-5 times a week, regardless of my schedule. Hitting the gym is a cherished ritual – a time to become stronger, leaner, healthier, and work on my physical mobility. It’s also a great way to spend more “me” time, as point four discusses, and several studies have supported a positive correlation between exercise and improved cognitive function.

Strong body, strong mind.

When it comes to exercise, you can’t go wrong with including basic barbell lifts that stress the whole body. When combined with dumbbell and bodyweight movements, they will have the most carryover to your physique and health.

• Deadlifts
• Squats (front or back)
• Bench presses (any variety)
• Overhead presses (standing, with a barbell)
• Rows (barbell or dumbbell)
• Pull/Chin ups (all varieties)
• Dips (parallel bars or rings)
• Push ups
• Romanian deadlifts
• Lunges
• Glute bridges (barbell)
• Goblet squats (dumbbell)

Some other great additions are single-limb and core-centric movements, such as:

• One arm overhead press (dumbbell)
• Reverse lunges
• Hand walkouts
• Planks
• One-legged squats (to a bench)

This is just a sample list and is by no means exhaustive. However, I have found that combining movements like these brings a great return on my workout investment. Organizing these movements (and more) into a comprehensive workout template will be discussed in a future post. For now, know that if time is of the essence and there is work to be done, you can’t go wrong with moving quickly and focusing on the basics.

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Putting these five strategies into action has helped me become more productive now than in days past. By practicing early morning activity, organizing my thoughts, committing to mindful work, occasionally disconnecting, and training hard in the gym, I’m more focused and motivated to conquer whatever life throws at me. It works for me, and I’m hopeful it will for you.

Monday.

Not so scary anymore, is it?