Most of us already use a powerful tool for staying consistent with things that matter: our calendar.
Doctor’s appointments, kids’ events, work meetings, and coffee with a friend we haven’t seen for a while all get added to it without a second thought. And because they’re on the calendar, we show up.
Training sessions, on the other hand, often don’t make the list. Instead, they live in the background of our minds as phrases like:
- I’ll work out on Tuesday afternoon.
- This week I want to get in three workouts.
Both might sound like a reasonable plans or goals, but they both behave quite differently than:
- Training: Tuesday @ 4:30–5:15
- Training: Thursday @ 4:30–5:15
- Training: Saturday @ 8:00–8:45
The first two are intentions. The last three are appointments. And you almost certainly know from experience that intentions are only sometimes—or perhaps rarely(?!?)—implemented, while appointments are almost always attended.
Routines vs. appointments
Alternatively, you might think of exercise as an important routine that you regularly do, in the same vein as going to work. And since you show up to work every day without putting it on your calendar—unless you’re on vacation, which, incidentally, usually does show up on your calendar—exercise can be treated the same way.
But I’ll argue that work and exercise aren’t actually the same.
If you don’t show up to work one day, your boss is probably going to call you to find out where you are—and you’re going to get fired in short order if you intentionally skip out on a regular basis. So even though work doesn’t usually show up on your calendar as an 8-hour appointment, you still treat it as such.
Skipping out on exercise has a much longer delay in consequences though. For example, you’re not going to immediately lose all of your muscle mass or gain 10 pounds if you miss one of your three, 30–60 minute training sessions some week. And because you intuitively understand that, it becomes much easier to subordinate a workout to either another event or a transient, unhelpful emotion—even if you generally value exercise.
Scheduling workouts into your calendar subtly elevates their importance to the level of “appointment” in your subconscious mind. And since missing appointments comes with immediate consequences, you’re far more likely to make them happen—or intentionally reschedule if missing them can’t be avoided.
Why scheduling exercise improves consistency
Scheduling training sessions helps in a few distinct ways.
First, it reduces decision fatigue. In Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, David Allen makes the point that our brains are good at a lot of things—but being a filing cabinet isn’t one of them. When we rely on memory to manage commitments, attention keeps getting pulled back to remembering (or deciding) what we’re supposed to do instead of actually doing it.
Explicitly scheduling exercise means we can focus on other important tasks when we’re not training—and still have enough energy left to focus on training when it’s time to do so.
Second, it removes (or at least minimizes) emotion from the equation. Research on behavior change consistently shows that expecting obstacles—like fatigue or related emotions—at specific times and having clear plans for when they arise improves adherence.
Putting exercise on our calendars turns execution into a time-based task instead of an emotional one.
And third—maybe most importantly—it makes missed sessions visible. If a session exists only in our minds, the act of skipping it can be quietly forgotten. If it shows up as an appointment, it almost calls out to us to reschedule it when missing it legitimately can’t be avoided.
Putting it into practice
Look at your calendar for the next week and add two or more training sessions to specific times—even short ones count.
Then treat those sessions the way you’d treat any other appointment that matters. Show up—or reschedule if something interferes.
(A helpful hint: Add your goal to the title—“Training for Mt. Rainier summit” is likely to elicit greater adherence than simply “Train”.)
Like most useful habits, this one is simple. Used consistently, it makes showing up a lot easier. And that’s how results are built.