Day 25: The Real Challenge

The intensity of intern year has begun and finding the time to train and workout has (as expected) become the real challenge. The main things that have been really helpful toward keeping it up so far have been to:

1) Adapt.

Having 30-minute workouts that have the same level of intensity of longer workouts, but condensed into 30 minutes, helps make squeezing in a workout all the more doable--especially when you factor in any kind of commute to and from the gym. Making workouts and training sessions that are more of a "total body" workout helps even more. This way you don't ever neglect any muscle groups. It makes an even bigger difference when you never know when you'll have to cancel a workout/training session.

2) Prioritize.

Know your values and make sure that your time and effort (and money!) reflect them. In order to make sure that my health, career, and quality of life are all balanced appropriately I need to make sure to schedule in the things that matter into my week. If I schedule in work and meetings because I find them to be important investments of my time, then it makes sense to also schedule time at the gym and time for sleep. Working my schedule so I can hard-book the time I need to work out with as much time in advance as possible can sometimes be like a Sudoku puzzle from hell, but saves a lot of headache and schedule shuffling later on. I also like to make sure that I have at least 7 hours of sleep every day, so I schedule that in and keep it just sacred as an important business meeting or work shift. Sleeping much less than 7 hours, for most people (genetically speaking), makes workouts and training sessions almost a waste of effort (with collateral damage of wasting time and money), since you need to give your body time to recover, rebuild, and recuperate. This allows your body to be in a better place than it was before your workout/training. This all happens at the microscopic level... slowly building up day after day toward being macroscopically noticeable.

3) Focus.

Do whatever it takes to make sure that you'll commit and follow-through with your plans to workout/train. Focus on what motivates you. Write it down on a piece of paper and keep it in your wallet or pocket. Set it as your phone or computer's desktop image if you need to! Build up as many "will power points" as you can whenever you have a chance. Some studies have shown that we all wake up in our day with a set amount of "will power points" and we expense them throughout the day--from having the motivation to get up out of bed and brush your teeth to having the will power to go to the gym at the end of a long day. While some say that physiologically you're better off going to the gym in the late afternoon and early evenings due to fluctuations of your cortisol levels, if there's a motivation wall in the way of getting you to the gym at the end of the work day, then make a point of getting a membership at a gym that opens up early enough that you have time to workout/train before work... before you've used up too many of your "will power points." If something in your life is taking up way too much of your brain's attentional capacity and distracting you from your priorities, consider taking the time to work those distractions out. If those distractions will take a bit of time before you can resolve them, it may be worth working on cognitively muting them long enough to focus on your daily priorities so they don't get in the way of your social and physiologic functioning.

Overall, the current hospital service I'm on has a schedule where I frequently finish around the time that Tyler isn't available to train; however, I've still been able to make it to the gym at the end of every other day for the most part given my schedule's constraints. I reliably go to the gym on my day's off, too. The next service I work on combines day shifts and night shifts... while some might find it less than ideal, it's actually pretty great to have night shifts. It allows for a few hours before and after work that occur during regular working hours when the sun is still up and people are still out. This will make it much easier to schedule time with Tyler. In terms of rest or mind/body days, I find that incorporating mindfulness techniques into the average work-day (regardless of how hectic it is) it actually helps increase the efficiency and efficacy of work overall and really makes the stressful things of the heavy work days a lot less stressful. It's also been really really great to have co-workers and teammates who value your time and work with you to make sure that everyone gets out of work when they're supposed to. Covering each other's backs is so incredibly valuable.