I recently took an internet course entitled “Wake Up Productive” taught by Eben Pagan. One of the first things he taught was how critical it is to STAY FOCUSED on one thing at a time.

Yes, yes that’s all good and dandy. But what about all the many things I need to keep juggling every day, just to keep my head above water?

Tony Schwartz(author of The Power of Full Engagement) says the same thing. Multi-tasking isn’t working. It works IF your goal is to get further and further behind.

What does this all have to do with fitness and exercising?

One thing Schwartz teaches is to think of your exercise program as a “ritual.” A ritual is something you do come hell or high water, right? Developing a ritual helps to remove the need to “think” about whether or not you should exercise – you remove the need to procrastinate!

The beginning of building this ritual is the difficult part – until you can embed it into your heart, and it becomes a habit. This takes a willingness to see it through until the habit takes root – at least 4 weeks minimum.

OK, back to multi-tasking. I know in my situation, when I try to juggle 20 things at once, I get stuff done, but I also leave a lot of stuff undone – and a big one I leave undone is my exercise program.

The key here is to focus on one project at a time, keeping the distractions to almost zero. It’s amazing how much work you can get done. When you put this same intense focus on your fitness program – It will be much easier to turn your focus into a ritual.

Here a cool video of Tony Schwartz giving a talk at Google. It’s about acquiring lots of energy and sustaining high performance.