ARE YOU WASTING YOUR TIME????

IT IS an all too familiar warm-up routine for most gym-goers.

Slip on your trainers, stretch off  your muscles … then  choose your music, untangle your headphones, check your messages and make sure your water bottle is full.

But fitness fans will waste 21 minutes of each hour on activities that simply burn up time rather than calories, a survey has found.

Chatting and adjusting clothes are other popular procrastination tactics which help the typical gym member waste around 35 per cent of each visit - spending only 39 minutes an hour actually exercising.

The poll found that up to 55 per cent of gym members fiddle with their phone or iPod to work out the music to go with their session.

30 per cent of regulars take as long as ten minutes to sort out their headphones, according to the survey of 1000 adults.

Up to a third (32 per cent) admit they regularly interrupt their routines to chat to other gym-goers.

Other time-wasting habits to emerge from the study include the constant refilling of water bottles, adjusting clothes and trainers and checking phones.

Kevin Yates of fitness chain Harpers, which carried out the survey, said: "Your time at the gym shouldn't be spent untangling headphones, choosing music or checking your phone, and we hope this makes gym-goers more aware of the time they spend exercising and the time they spend not exercising."

 

 

STOP SOCIALIZING AND START EXERCISING

I fall into this trap from time to time. I carry out some sets with maximum intensity, and in the process of taking a short break I strike up a discussion with a friend or acquaintance. Within a short time the 'short' discussion becomes an hour long conversation. At the end of the session, I leave the gym feeling distinctly unfulfilled and knowing that I could have achieved much more with the time I spent in the gym that day.

 

 

However, I have been able to combat the temptation of socialising during my workout time by following these simple steps.

 

1. I plan out my workout beforehand and I ensure that I meet every limit set in my workout plan. This prevents me from wasting time

 

2. Get to the gym very early, before the time wasters start arriving.

 

3. Cut down on classes if they are not HIIT based. Many classes involve lengthy warm up and cool down sessions which eat into your training time.

 

4. Get yourself a nice personal music player with your favourite tracks. Once you pop on your headphones, your concentration should be multiplied.

 

By following these steps, your training time will be maximised and you'll see results much faster than before.

5 WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR WORKPLACE PRODUCTIVITY

Productivity is the combination of intelligent planning and focused efforts designed to help you do more, better.  Productivity can be continuously improved, not by multitasking (which only clogs your mental pipelines), but by doing the following.

 

1. Leave Early: If you're putting in long hours and are not feeling productive at the end of the day, try shortening your work day by 30 minutes or even an hour.

 

2. Constantly ask yourself if you what are doing presently is productive: I often catch myself spending a lot of time using Facebook or participating in irrelevant conversations while at work. When I realize that I am not working on something productive, I mentally scold myself and get back to the grind. 

 

3. Weed out distractions: I know a few people that have a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Hootsuite, Tumblr, Foursquare, Shutterfly, Pinterest, Google Chat, Reddit, and StumbleUpon account. When they are not using these social media tools, they may be checking their e-mail on their smartphones or reading random facts on Wikipedia every 5 minutes. Disconnect from these tools while at work, it destroys your productivity!

 

4. Set ambitious, yet realistic goals

Les Brown, a motivational speaker and radio DJ, once said “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” If you can cross everything off of your to-do list in one day, you need to create more ambitious goals. Some goals should take as long as 1 week, 30 days, 60 days, or 90 days. People that set higher goals have a tendency to be more satisfied than those with lower expectations, according to research published in the Journal of Consumer Research.

 

One of the major reasons why people fail a goals is because they did not set a deadline. Goals have to be very specific and they should be written down. It is good to get feedback about the goals in order to refine them.

 

Goals should be personal and professional. Spending time balancing your budget can be a personal goal and putting together process flow charts to make certain recurring tasks easier at work is a professional goal.

BUILD A FITNESS SCHEDULE

How many times have you heard that "time is money"?

Do you remember the time tables we used to have when we were younger? these tables provided certainty, you knew exactly what to do, when to do it, and the penalty for not doing it.

 

Time management has been the rage in the past decade. As people work harder and have less time to devote to what they love to do, the impulse is to drop any difficult activities, such as going to the gym. Unfortunately, our bodies will not keep themselves in shape, and we need to take responsibility for our physical fitness and wellness.

In these busy times, customising your fitness schedule around your time availability and your needs is essential; you can't afford to live your fitness to chance, the same way you wouldn't leave your clothes to chance.

With the advent of time management and productivity improvement tools, it has become easier to manage your fitness schedule with the required discipline. Tools like your phone calendar, Google Calendar, or you could design one on Microsoft Word. You could also download and print out a workout calendar from http://www.workout-calendar.com/

In designing your calendar, start with your goal (health,fat loss, muscle gain), the location of your exercises (home, office, gym), duration (30 mins, 1 hour...),  the equipment you will be working with (weights, bars,) and the commencement time of the workout.

NOTE: The only way to obtain sustainable results is by DISCIPLINED, CONSISTENT, HARD WORK.