Holiday Hustle: Mastering Your Time For Healthier Holidays

With the holidays here it is important to know where your time is going and how to manage it best.

And lets be honest: Everybody thinks they are the busiest person they know.

The truth is we all have a lot of things on our plates and for most that means fitness, meal prep, exercise and self-care are the first things to be neglected.

But as you know by now life doesn't slow down, and if you are to ever make real change in your fitness, then you must get better at being prepared for the busiest times in your life.

Where Are You Spending Your Time: Time Audit

I have no doubt you're busy, but being busy and productive in the things that matter most are two different things. For this reason, I suggest doing a time audit. Take 5-10 minutes and journal out exactly how you spent the last week in as much detail as you can. How did you spend the first 3 hours of each day? what did the afternoons look like? How about the evenings after work or after the kids got home?

Be honest with yourself. 

For an extra kick to the gut, check your phone usage for the week. The average American spends 4 hours and 37 minutes are their phone each day. Harsh truth, this equals over 1 whole day each week!

As stoic philosopher Seneca once said "Its not that life is short, its that we waste most of it."

Here's how to streamline your health-related tasks using a simplified approach, without needing any fancy apps

The Common Pitfall in Health Management

Many people treat all tasks with the same level of urgency and importance, leading to overwhelming to-do lists where trivial tasks like organizing your linen closet bag get the same priority as crucial workouts or dietary planning.

Be ruthless to the things that don't matter. When you eliminate the things that don't matter you are able to do the things that matter, better.

The Health Decision Framework for Fitness
This framework helps streamline your fitness, nutrition, and lifestyle tasks into four actionable categories:

• Important and Urgent: Do Now

  • Example: Realizing you've run out of protein or prepped food and need to restock immediately to keep up with your meal plan schedule.

  • Example: Realizing you've missed a few workouts recently but have the time today to do one.

• Important BUT Doesn't Need to Be Done Now: Schedule

  • Example: Planning your meal prep for the week ahead. This includes deciding on recipes, portion sizes, and ensuring nutritional balance.

  • Example: Setting aside time for a grocery shopping trip to buy fresh produce for your meals, or grab healthy options when you travel.

• Needs to Be Done Now BUT Not Important: Delegate

  • Example: Your car needs to be cleaned but you also need to get to the gym. Ask a family member to clean it or have it taken in to get detailed professionally.

  • Example: If you're too busy to cook, delegate meal prep to a service or a family member who can prepare meals according to your dietary needs.

• Not Important, Not Necessary: Delete

  • Example: FRIENDS marathon is on, yet you haven't hit your step count, worked out today, or have food in the house. DELETE!

  • Example: Turning the TV off or putting your phone away at a reasonable time instead of staying up too late each night.

Real-World Fitness Applications
Here’s how this framework gets applied in the daily grind:

• Task: You notice the fridge is about empty and there are no proper options available.

  • Decision: Do Now - Make a trip to the grocery store or have groceries delivered to the house.

• Task: It's Sunday and you have 3 workouts on your calendar for the week..

  • Decision: Schedule - Spend 15 minutes going through your week and scheduling times each day for your scheduled workouts.

• Task: You need to clean and organize closets or workout.

• Decision: Delegate - If possible, have a family member or roommate help with organizing while you focus on your workout that day.

• Task: A co-worker wants to go out for drinks after work and you also need to go grocery shopping.

  • Decision: Delete - Stick to your current plan or go out but avoid alcohol and the temptation to sabotage your goals.

By categorizing your fitness and nutrition-related tasks this way, you ensure that your time and energy are invested in activities that genuinely advance your health and performance, making your day-to-day life more manageable and focused.

Its not that you can't do certain things, but you can't do them at the expense of what is really important: Your health and fitness.

Conclusion This framework isn't perfect but its about prioritizing your schedule and it's about prioritizing what's truly beneficial for your health and fitness.

Apply these filters to your health tasks:

• Urgent and Important: Address immediately.

• Important, Not Urgent: Plan for a future time.

• Urgent, Not Important: Find someone else to handle it.

• Neither Urgent nor Important: Don’t do it.

The challenge lies in sticking to these decisions. When you label something "Delete," you must actually remove it from your list. Trust this process, as it fosters focus and efficiency in your health journey.

Now, review your health, fitness and daily tasks and start applying these filters.

Have a great week!