With those two ideas that in mind, here are a couple lazy suggestions for staying fit. Maybe one of them will strike you like a good idea:

1. Eat By Design
We eat for a hundred reasons, but most of them aren’t related to hunger. We eat for social gatherings, for distraction, to console ourselves when we’re down, to connect with others, and many other reasons.

What if you made a conscious choice to only eat when hungry, and do something else for those other occasions. Want to get together with friends? Women: Go shopping, go to the gym, do a spa day. Men: play golf or tennis. Picking some other activity instead of going to a restaurant will make fitness an easier goal.

2. Make Exercising Convenient
Instead of always planning 1 1/2 hours out of your day for working out (which makes it a major event), try adding mini-workouts throughout the day. When you’re on the phone at work, stand up and stretch. If you have a wireless headset, walk around while on those long conference calls. Watching TV at home? Do a few situps, pushups or toe raises. There are a hundred options to do things that can help us stay fit, if we look for them.

3. Get Enough Rest
There are plenty of studies that show when we’re tired, our bodies don’t function optimally, we don’t think we well, we don’t move about as much. We’re a sleep deprived society, and that helps neither fitness or productivity. Get your rest! You deserve it, you’ll make better choices and you’ll get more (and better) exercise.

The clearer we are about the goals and objectives we set for ourselves in life, the more efficient, and effective, we will be in achieving them. Clarity has as much or more to do with success and happiness as hard work, because once we’re clear about exactly what needs to be done, we produce far less wasted effort and motion. Having clear, written goals allows us to accomplish far more in a shorter period of time we would otherwise ever imagine.

Setting Priorities

Our ability to set priorities on our time (and again, they should be clear and specific) greatly impacts the entire quality of our life. To achieve great things, we have to concentrate on the small number of activities that contribute the greatest value to our life and work, and pursue them one at a time. See my recent post on the myth of multi-tasking for more along these lines.

Making Choices

Here’s another truth I believe: Before we start something new,we need to discontinue something old. Our ability to get control of our life occurs only to the degree to which we stop doing things that are no longer as valuable or as important to you as other thing you could be doing. There simply are only so many hours in the day, and as we learn to replace less important activities with more important ones, we move closer to the outcomes we desire. This leads to a sort of continual improvement of the investment of our time, replacing less beneficial activities with more beneficial ones.

In fact, what I’m thinking about can make it seem like you’ve put your goal seeking efforts on steroids (if that were legal, which of course it’s not – nyuk!).

The final piece to this process of managing your goal seeking efforts is so simple that it’s easy to overlook, yet so critical that without it your chance of failing increases with the difficulty of the goal. The missing element?

Time for simple, undistracted, clear thinking. Setting aside time each evening, or the next morning, to think “big picture” about your goal, without distraction. Giving yourself time to consider the progress you’re making, recognize any new obstacles that may require a change in your plan, or just getting a new understanding of what’s required that allows you to improve the plan.

Thinking time is the most valuable time you can spend each day, yet “physical” busy frequently wins out over quiet thought.

Taking just 15 minutes each evening, maybe less, to focus in a quiet place, without distraction, on what you are trying to accomplish can be invaluable. It gives us an opportunity to consider new thoughts about how to do it better, faster, cheaper, easier or differently, and can be the best possible use of our time. It’s like your personal “board of directors” meeting, the time when you step back and think about the big picture and assess your progress toward your goal, the steps you are taking, etc.

If you keep a journal, you’re getting your thinking time then. That’s one of the huge benefits of journaling. But if not, you can vastly improve your progress and reach your goal sooner by spending time on a regular basis thinking about what’s working, what’s not, how to deal with problems and ways to overcome hurdles.

Franklin Covey calls it “planning and solitude”. Some call it prayer. Some call it meditation. Some simply call it quiet time.

Whatever you call it, it needs to be done daily. In my humble opinion….

Today’s post is about two things:
1. The importance of capturing those ideas, by writing them down immediately.
2. The fact that ideas not manifested through action are worthless, no matter how great their potential.

These are important lessons for each of us to learn, to really “get” that ideas are things. Every great movement, every great invention, every cure for disease or solution to a problem, started with an idea. But the next step is to realize that ideas, without action, have no value. It’s only when ideas are married to action, and consistent effort is applied until they are developed, that the value of an idea is realized. Which leads us to a simple, but surprisingly powerful, formula:

Idea + Action + Focus Until Finished = Benefit

Simple, right? Let’s break the formula down:

THOUGHTS (IDEAS). This first step is sounds easy, but the fact is that most people don’t like to think. Henry Ford said “Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.” That’s why, when you are thinking and you get a good idea, it’s such a loss to let it slip away. That’s why many great leaders, inventors and successful business people carry a notebook with them all the time. But as John Maxwell tells us, most ideas are not conceived fully formed. Many ideas still require development to reach their full potential, and this step requires time and patience. The way to reach the goals you set, starts with ideas.

TAKE ACTION. For your idea to move from being just an idea, you have to begin taking action. For some, this is an exciting stage, but for others it’s stressful and they never reach it. Starting any new challenge may make you feel excited, apprehensive or nervous, but if you believe the idea is a good one, take action. Don’t let your good ideas go to waste.

Not sure how to start? Sometimes it’s best to just get going. When you actually begin to take action, frequently the path will rise up to meet you. If you can, it’s always better to make a clear plan for how you’ll start, but if not and you believe strongly in the idea, you must start regardless.

FINISH IT. If thinking is hard, and taking action is challenging, staying focused to the finish line can be downright difficult. In a way, it’s nature’s test to determine who deserves the rewards of the goal, by seeing who can not only take action, but stay focused, committed and on track until the goal is achieved. The good news is that most people don’t, or won’t, which means that if you are willing to be that person who stays the course until your idea is completed, you will have set yourself apart from the crowd.

Every worthwhile thing you have ever earned started with an idea and the willingness to take focused, continuous action. It requires hard work and perseverance, the determination to stay engaged until the job is done. This simple formula is effective though, and the good news about it is anyone can do it.

So, let me ask you again, did you just have a ‘light bulb’ moment?

“Simplicity, clarity, singleness: These are the attributes that give our lives power and vividness and joy as they are also the marks of great art. They seem to be the purpose of God for his whole creation.” Richard Holloway, Scottish writer and broadcaster

 
The smart, simple way to pursue your goals are to take them one at a time, and focus relentlessly on them until they’ve been achieved.
 
Most goals are inherently very doable, provided we concentrate sufficient awareness and energy on them until they’ve been achieved. But trying to accomplish two goals at once, e.g. lose weight and get a new relationship, just dilutes the attention, energy and concentration you can devote to either of them. That dilution reduces the likelihood that either will occur.
 
So my advice for your 2011 New Year’s Resolution is (1) to go into it understanding that you are going to experience some failure in the pursuit of it and that you can’t think that means you should quit, and (2) pick one and only one goal to work on, so that your awareness, attention and energy are not diluted and can focus like a laser beam on the one thing that you most want to achieve.

“Succeeding is not really a life experience that does much good. Failing is a much more sobering and enlightening experience.” Michael Eisner

 
There’s a smarter, better way to approach your New Year’s Resolution. I think it’s best expressed in a quote from Thomas J. Watson, the founder of IBM::
 

“The way to succeed is to double your failure rate.”

 
The very spirit of this idea is that failure, or mistakes, are inherent on the path to achieving anything. Rather than expecting to get it perfect the first time, a better idea is to try, fail, learn that lesson and then try again… quickly.
 
There’s no question that this approach correctly mirrors the activity of almost any successful business. Facebook didn’t start out looking like it does today, but they got better as they went along. So can we!
 
Tomorrow’s post: “Keeping Things Simple – part two”