How I Accidentally Built a System to Achieve my 2020 Fitness Goal

September 17, 2020

fter years of setting New Year’s Resolutions and never following through with them, for the last few years I’ve replaced the resolution with a theme for the year.

The theme is always 1-word and is expected to be incorporated into my life throughout the year, unlike a resolution which can often be an unrealistic, finite goal.

For 2020, my theme is: consistency.

Until this year, my relationship with fitness has had ups and downs. I generally chose to get in shape for a special occasion or to fit into an outfit. But secretly I wanted to be the person who who always worked out and could comfortably wear my jeans anytime of the year .

2020 was going to be my attempt to make that my lifestyle.

With consistency in mind, I refused to set my ultimate goal as “lose X pounds”. Instead I chose to focus on simply getting in shape and feeling good.

Getting Started

Prioritizing fitness wasn’t my problem. It was consistently getting to the gym every morning (at least 6 days a week) every week and having a proper, sweaty workout. Every time.

My approach to solving this was to walk through each step of the process to identify and remove points of friction. For me those were:

Waking up early and being rested enough to workout
Knowing what I’ll be doing at the gym everyday, and not get bored of it
Keeping myself accountable

My System

I’m a product manager. As soon as I isolated these requirements, I got to work building solutions that harmoniously worked together to help me achieve my goal.

I didn’t realize it at that time, but what I was actually doing was building a system.

This is what I built.

Waking up — The Trigger

I was committed to working out in the morning before work. As a result, my alarm & waking up became my signal to recognize it was time to workout.

The first giant experiment was not just waking up at X o’clock, but identifying an optimal schedule.

Throughout this period, I reflected each day

when I woke up

What time did I get to bed?
How many hours did I sleep?
How rested did I feel?

when I went to sleep

Did I get the workout I wanted today?
Did I get to work on time?

I’d take the results and make small adjustments to my routine accordingly.

More specifically I identified: what was the latest time I could leave work to be in bed at a specific time, sleep enough to feel well rested, have a proper workout and not feel rushed getting to work.

This process took me ~2 months to fine tune the routine that worked for me.

What to do at the Gym — The Plan

I knew I could get myself to the gym but the bigger hurdle was figuring out what workouts to do when I got there. I was bored with my default routine where each day of the week was dedicated to a specific muscle group.

I needed variety. I needed a plan.

I bought a 2-month workout plan from IG personal trainer, Melissa Alcantera.

I had never followed a workout plan before. I was surprised by how easy this part was.

This simple, $80 purchase completely removed a huge cognitive load for me. The workout was ready and waiting for me. Everyday. I had no excuses.

Keeping Myself Accountable — The Reward

Quite honestly, keeping myself accountable was the last priority for me. I didn’t know how to solve this one. I figured I’d rely on self-motivation to get me to the gym everyday (even though I knew that never worked before).

One day on Twitter, Justin Kan tweeted about using a streaks app to keep track of his workouts.

Side note, I love a checklist. I am that person who begins a to do list with the things I’ve already done just to have the satisfaction of crossing them off 😬.

So naturally I downloaded a streaks app and tried it out. The satisfaction of checking off my workout every day worked well for me as a reward. Seeing my streak count increase was the dopamine hit that kept me motivated.

To my surprise, this solution also removed significant cognitive load for incentivizing myself to get to the gym.

This step is also where extreme honesty with myself was needed. I could have easily checked off the workout in the streaks app without actually doing the work. But I knew if I inflated my streak numbers and tried to trick myself, I was the only one who was going to lose.

Progress

The Early Days

At first, I took it one day at a time and started small.

I started by telling myself: get to the gym for 1 day. Then 1 week. 2 weeks. 1 month. My stretch goal was 100 days.

I didn’t think I could do it.

I assumed by 100 days, the workout routine would become second nature. That I wouldn’t have to think about it. But just before hitting a 90-day streak, I broke it.

I couldn’t believe I let it happen. I was disappointed in myself.

Then I reminded myself how great I felt from both the results of the consistent workouts and the accomplishment of having gotten so close to my 100 day stretch goal. I had impressed myself. Note: breaking streaks happened several times before the 90-days, but this one was the hardest for me to accept.

I picked myself up and started again. The interesting part was that I didn’t find myself needing as much motivation to start again. All of the parts of the system were ready and waiting for me.

Where I am Today

With COVID, the workouts changed, especially when shelter-in-place came into effect I pivoted my ‘workout’ requirement to be ‘physical activity’. Throughout all of the disruptions, I couldn’t bare the thought of letting myself down and breaking my streak again.

I’m proud to say I’m currently on my longest streak of 239 days of consistently doing some form of physical activity (6 days a week).

Despite this, I’ll admit I’m not in my best shape but this is by far the longest I’ve ever been able to keep my fitness within my control and not retreat to bad habits if the routine is disrupted.

Habit Stacking

As I became more comfortable with my morning workout, I slowly started expanding the consistency theme into other areas of my life by adding to my morning routine.

For example I added a 10-minute Headspace meditation first thing when I wake up. I track my progress with a separate streak in my app.

As of today, I am on my longest meditation streak: 159 days.

Bundling habits together is what I would later learn is called “habit stacking” and is a highly recommended practice for building good habits.