​Too busy to get to that workout? These simple steps can help you save time and get back on the fitness track!

Are you neglecting your fitness because of lack of time? These four simple yet effective Lean¹ principles will help you to save time to get going on your fitness activity.

¹Lean is a process improvement philosophy which focuses on improving the flow of work processes through identifying value-added activities and eliminating wastes.

Method 1: Eliminate steps

Too busy to head to the gym? A helpful Lean principle is eliminating steps, which is trimming away activities that are not key to the main process. If travelling is too much of a hassle, do you need to go to the gym for a workout?

There are many home exercises to be found online. All you need is some space, a comfortable mat, and yourself! You can save hours of travel time each week getting fit in the comfort of your own home.

Method 2: Parallel Processing

Optimise your time even more with parallel processing. This means doing two activities at the same time. For example, you could watch TV or scan social media whilst cycling on your stationary bike at home. Alternatively, you could also maximise your commute time by jogging to work, or to run your errands. Get your heart rate up and break a sweat instead of being bored on the bus!

Method 3: Improve current steps

Even after you have fully optimised your fitness routine, you may find that you are not as fit as you would like to be. This is when you can start looking at improving current steps, which refers to making current processes more effective without compromising quality.

One key aspect to fitness includes maintaining a healthy diet. Exercise would only get you so far if you do not take in sufficient fruits and vegetables. One quick way to get your daily servings is by blending your favourite fruit and vegetables into smoothies! They are delicious, refreshing, and would help you quickly and effectively get the all vitamins you need in a day. Adding healthy smoothies to your diet is one way to improve your fitness without compromising your time, or taking too much effort. 

Method 4: Converting internal activities to external ones

To prepare for your fitness routine, assemble or pack everything you need the night before—such as your exercise gear and a playlist of your favourite tunes. With everything you need at hand and ready to go the next morning, you are less likely to skip the exercise.

In Lean, external activities refer to activities outside of (i.e. before) the actual process, while internal activities refer to the crucial activities of the process itself. In this case, internal activities refer to the exercise itself while all the preparation beforehand, and travelling to the gym, are considered external activities.

Packing converts the preparation beforehand to an external activity. The principle is to reduce the number of ‘internal activities’ i.e. the activities that constitute the process itself. So if we take the process itself i.e. ‘internal activities’ to be the entire journey from the house to the gym on the day itself, packing the night before would turn packing/preparation from an internal activity to an external activity because it places packing outside of the main process. The goal is to shorten the process on the day itself and make it less tedious for the person to leave the house and head to the gym.

With these four Lean methods, you have no excuse not to exercise.

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