Cultivating Clarity

​​Read Time: 3 Minutes

Welcome to Cultivating Clarity, where I share a weekly lesson to build your health so you can live life on your terms. This is week 4/4 focused on maintaining your health when you feel like you don't have the time to do so. During this "season", I'll discuss tactics I've developed out of necessity in my own life. You'll have tools to train hard, eat clean, and balance your personal responsibilities with your health.

Background

I've been going on for a month now about how you can stay in shape when you simply don't have time to go to the gym. And this week's letter is the capstone issue, sharing with you a technique that's been transformative for me over the last year. It'll keep you from losing the fitness you've built when life happens. It'll make fitness more accessible. And if you've been reading Cultivating Clarity for a while now, you know it doesn't require you to go to the gym.

The approach: The Daily Minimum

I've used this approach when I'm traveling, working long days, and feeling less than my best. It's quite simple: the daily minimum is the exercise you'll do, no matter what else happens that day. For me, its 100 push-ups and 100 squats. I've been told I should add pull-ups and crunches to my minimum, as well.

But there's a reason I haven't: I want this to be ultra-accessible. I won't always have access to something I can do pull-ups on. And sit-ups force you to the ground. So if I'm wearing a suit for an all-day event, sit-ups are out of the picture. But I can always do push-ups and squats, even if I'm spending the day wearing a suit.

The other thing about the daily minimum is the mental edge it gives you. When you have a 12+ hour workday and you still manage to complete a short workout, you realize that you're unstoppable. And that confidence carries over into other areas of your life.

The sheet below is an overview of my Foundational Fitness approach, which leverages the Daily Minimum technique to help you stay fit even when it feels like you're too busy.

4 guidelines:

A few things to keep in mind as you establish your own daily minimum.

1. Do less than you want

The point of the daily minimum is that you must be able to do it no matter how busy you are. Keep it to less than 10 minutes. Do only the essential exercises. Sure, it would be nice to get a full workout in, but if you turn your daily minimum into a 30-minute workout, you won't do it every day. The goal here is to make it so brief it's impossible to miss a day.

2. Always do it

Even if you're sick. There will be plenty of days when you don't feel like doing it. But there's a mental edge you build by doing this small workout even when you don't really want to. My rule for when I'm feeling under the weather or injured: I have to get down and start doing push-ups. If I get through 25 push-ups and I'm feeling worse, I have permission to stop. More often than not, though, once you start moving, you'll find that your mind was playing tricks on you. It'll feel good, and you'll finish your daily minimum.

3. Become location-agnostic

Don't worry about making a scene. Easier said than done, yes. But this is your health! Which is your freedom. It's your life.​It's worth doing, no matter how "silly" it might look.​​ I do air squats while getting gas. Push-ups while waiting for a flight. As far as I'm concerned, everyone else is weird for sitting there on their phone when they could be moving their body.

Once you open your mind to moving no matter where you are, it's impossible to not find 10 minutes to execute your daily minimum.

4. Align it with your goals

You'll notice that I haven't told you what exercises you should do for your daily minimum. And that's because everyone has unique goals.

If you're interested in maintaining muscle mass (you should be), you'll want to consider strength-oriented exercises (this is why I'm focused on squats and push-ups).

If you're more interested in cardio, tailor your exercises to that goal. Maybe your daily minimum is 10 minutes of running every day.

Everyone has different goals. So everyone needs to have different approaches to training, too.

That's all for this week. A simple technique to keep you moving even on your busiest days.

If this newsletter struck a chord, I'd love to hear from you. Send me a note--I reply to every email.​

See you next Saturday.

Marcus

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