You’ve only got 24 hours in your day. Striking the right balance between working out, working your secular job and having an active vibrant social life is a real challenge.
It’s something that a lot of people are neglecting, leaving key areas of their life unfulfilled. In this article, we identify 8 keys to achieving the balance that you need to thrive in each of the three key areas of work, social life and fitness.
Schedule
Fitting everything in doesn’t just happen. Every successful person has a daily and weekly schedule. So, sit down on a Sunday afternoon and make a list of all of the things you need to achieve in the coming week. List them in order of priority.
What should come first?
The one that is most often neglected for you. For many people that will be their social life – time spent with family and friends. For others it may be working out. Once you have made your list, start fitting each item onto your weekly planner, starting with the item you listed first.
What happens if you don’t have time for everything on your schedule? Well, maybe you need to take a look at the amount of time you spend in bed. The human body can function perfectly well on six hours of sleep per night.
That leaves eighteen hours per day to fit in what you’ve got to accomplish. Even if you work 12 hours per day, including commute time, that leaves 6 hours per day or 42 hours per week for other activities.
The question often is not can you fit in your workout, with your social life and work obligations, but how badly do you want to do it? Do you want it badly enough to get up a little earlier?
Consider the Rock, Dwayne Johnson. Now that is one busy man. Yet he hits the gym, five days a week at 4:30 am. By 6:30, he’s done and on to the next part of his day. Now, 4:30 may be pushing it for most of us, but we can all gain some inspiration from his work ethic, right?
Learn to Compartmentalize
Having the ability to be totally absorbed in an activity while you’re doing it and then moving on to give a laser like focus to the next thing in your day is a valuable skill.
Yet, most people don’t have it.
They may love working out, for instance and hit the gym every morning. But, after they’ve showered and headed for work, they’re still obsessing over their workout, their body fat level or what they need to be eating. It not only makes them boring to be around, it also detracts from their ability to give 100% focus to anything else in their life.
When you’re working out, give your total focus to that activity. Don’t be thinking about your latest work project or how you’re going to balance the family budget this month. Instead, work on developing your mind-muscle connection. But then, when you leave the gym, forget about fitness and give you total attention to the next thing in your life.
It was this ability to compartmentalize that allowed Arnold Schwarzenegger to stand out from all the other top bodybuilders who were training at Gold’s Gym in the early ‘70’s. They would have marathon workouts every morning and then spend the rest of the day hanging around Muscle Beach working on their tan and talking bodybuilding.
Contrast that to Arnold.
He was in the gym at 9am for a two hour workout. By 11:30, he was on his way to acting lessons, working on getting a degree in International Business and developing his real estate portfolio. Arnold was, and is, a master at compartmentalizing. It allows him to be totally in the moment. It’s a skill that will help you to achieve life balance.
Work Out Early
When you work out you are giving yourself ‘me’ time. This is very important in order to attain life’s balance. However, we can easily start to view our time in the gym as selfish, especially when we’ve got a family who need our time. As a result, we’re constantly going through an internal battle – should I go to the gym or should I head home to spend more time with my wife and kids?
There’s an easy way to overcome this dilemma. Get your workout in early in the morning, while your family are still asleep. Then, you’ll be free to give your other non-work time to your family.
Combine Your Fitness and Social Lives
Fitness doesn’t have to mean heading off to the gym by yourself. If your wife and kids are into it, why not make your gym sessions a family affair.
Then, rather than hitting the gym treadmill for your cardio, take the family out into nature and burn calories together. Go hiking in the woods, play tennis, or go rowing on the lake. By expanding your vision of what exercise involves, you will be able to find countless ways to combine fitness with your social activities.
Set Up A Garage Gym
A lot of time is wasted commuting to the gym. Imagine how much more convenient it would be to have you gym on top, right in your garage. Over the last few years the home fitness market has grown up. Equipment is much better quality and, due to competition, much more price competitive. You can set up a quality garage gym for just a few hundred bucks.
Having your own garage gym will not only allow you to make far better use of your time. It will also provide further opportunity to exercise with your family members.
Get Proper Nutrition
Fueling your body with the nutrients that it needs to perform is essential, especially when you’ve got a busy schedule. This is especially so when you’re working out. You need to get proper recovery from your workout in order to avoid feeling tired, sluggish or sore at work after your training session.
To make sure that you’re fueling your body well, you should take a whey protein powder based pre-workout and a carb-protein blend post-workout to restore glycogen levels and supply branch chain amino acids to rebuild muscle.
Use Nootropics
Nootropics are natural supplements that are designed to enhance your brain’s ability to concentrate, recall, focus and multitask. They will also provide you with more energy and motivation. Use nootropics daily to stay mentally sharp, allowing you to focus on the task that is in front of you.
Look After Your Muscles
You don’t want to turn up at work after your workout with muscles ching from your training session. You can help to void this by warming down after your workout with foam roller. You can get proper recovery by sending just few minutes to perform deep tissue myofascial release to work out those painful trigger points.
