Over the years I’ve attempted to form exercise habits in spite of my distaste for it. I’ve employed a number of psychological tricks over the years to aid in forming a physical fitness regimen. It has never lasted, however. You may even recall my experiment a few years ago where I set out to walk at least 45-minutes a day for 40-days in a row through the use of a Paper Clip Chain. That worked for about 42 days. I never got to the point where it was a habit or where I really wanted to do it. I’ve tried several other similar things over the years and nothing has ever stood the test of time.

A number of things have conspired to inspire me to add regular physical activity to my life. I normally don’t get a lot of physical activity during my day. I sit at a desk and work on a computer most of the day and I haven’t had any strong desire to be more physically active.

I recently read The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working: The Four Forgotten Needs That Energize Great Performance by Tony Schwartz, and one of the thing he talks about in that book about how our bodies affect our overall work. The book is about brining balance in to all areas of our lives for maximum energy, engagement, and productivity. It’s certainly not a book on health, diet, and exercise, but there are a couple chapters related to this. In chapter 7 he writes, “Experts say we need twenty to forty-five minutes of exercise three to six days a week…” After reading that, it has been in the back of my mind as something I needed to start doing again.

I’ve also shared about how I’ve been dealing with depression in my life. As I’ve talked with others, some have indicated that regular exercise also plays a role in regulating the chemicals in the brain that are related to depression. Some have shared that they can really tell a difference if they don’t work out for a few days. So, I thought that exercising might help me as well.

Along with depression, the medicine that I’m on has a known side effect of weight gain. In fact, I gained 3 pounds the first two weeks that I was on it, and I made a strong effort to eat less because I knew this was a likelihood. I’m already quite over weight and I don’t need anything else to add to it.

So, I’m trying something new now, and it is working so far. A couple weeks ago I decided to go for a 1-mile walk around my neighborhood right after I got up in the morning. I didn’t enjoy it, but it did seem to make me feel better throughout the day. The next morning I changed the route a little bit to a 1.2-mile route that took me about 24-minutes. This was a more challenging route that takes me over steep rolling hills which provides some nice intervals during the time I’m walking. This is the route I’m doing now.

I’ve decided that I’m only going to do this on regular work days (typically Monday through Friday) and not on weekends, holidays, or when weather doesn’t permit. And I’ve decided that I’m not going to feel guilty on those days that I don’t go. There is a good chance that I’ll get more physical activity during the regular course of the day when I’m not working as well.

Another thing that has changed this time is that I’m not doing this to lose weight. I certainly would like to lose weight, and I hope this will help, but weight loss isn’t my goal; I also don’t consider my walks to be a tool for weight loss.

So far, these three things have helped to solve a couple problems with my past experiences. First, in the past I’ve made my walks to be at least 45-minutes to 1-hour; that’s a long time! By cutting that in half to 20- to 25-minutes, it’s much more agreeable. Second, in the past I’ve made it an everyday event with no room for exception. By making it a workday only thing, I can look forward to breaks on weekends and holidays. Third, by eliminating the goal of weight loss I’m not looking for results that I may not see every day.

More than anything, I’m doing this because I seem to feel better because of it. Last Friday I slept later than usual and thought that I would just skip my walk. I felt drawn to go ahead and walk anyway, so I just went later than usual. I don’t know how to describe the feeling exactly, but it is kind of like that feeling where you know you need a shower or need to brush your teeth–you just feel icky if you haven’t done it. I feel physically icky when I don’t walk on the days I should now.

A word to my critics: You may be thinking that 20- to 25-minutes walking isn’t enough exercise. That’s OK. What I’m doing is certainly better than nothing. You might even say that it walking isn’t challenging enough. The route I take is over rolling hills which provides some extra resistance. Also, if you know me in person, you recognize that I weigh nearly twice what the charts say I should. So, I’m moving a lot of extra weight on that walk as well. If you can imagine walking this distance over rolling hills while carrying someone on your back who weighs about the same as you do, you can get idea for what my walk is like. It’s a pretty good work out in my opinion.

So, why am I sharing this? I know how difficult it has been for me to add physical activity to my life over the years. I’m hoping that by sharing what is currently working for me that others will be encouraged as well. Perhaps something similar will work for you as well. Also, by sharing this publicly, it provides a certain amount of accountability–which is always a great motivator. If I’ve inspired you to try something like this too, let me know in the comments! Happy walking!

No. It’s actually Day 31. The truth is that I fell off the wagon back on what would have been Day 24 and Day 25.

On Sunday, August 12th, I taught Sunday School at church, so I decided to polish my lesson that morning instead of walking. I knew that I could make it up later in the day. During the afternoon, temperatures were near 100 degrees, so I decided to wait until it cooled off in the evening. Our dog had been having stomach problems for a few days and by Sunday evening she was dehydrated and unable to keep water down. We had to take her to the Veterinarian Emergency Clinic about 8:30pm, and we didn’t get back until nearly midnight. I had missed my chance to walk during that day.

On Monday, I had my own little pity party over not making my 40-days-in-a-row goal, so I didn’t walk then either. 

On Tuesday, I decided that none of that really mattered very much anyway, so I started walking again. I stressed a little bit over whether I should start back over at Day-1 or not. Over the next few days, I realized that it was no longer about reaching the 40-days-in-a-row goal; it was just about forming the habit, and after 21 days, the habit had been formed. I could break the habit if I chose to, but that would be my choice. I think the 2-day break was a positive thing because it gave me an opportunity to prove to myself that I had really formed the habit.

While walking yesterday morning, I got another great revelation. I don’t have to improve at exercising. Exercise doesn’t have to be challenging or competitive. But I do need to it regularly, and there is benefit in doing so.

When I first started this experiment, I felt that I needed to increase my walking speed, or continually push myself to walk further and to walk more strenuous routes. In retrospect, that was a ridiculous thought. Here is my current perspective. If someone didn’t bathe daily, and wanted to build the habit of showering every day, they wouldn’t likely try to scrub a little harder every day, or try to spend a little longer under the water each day. They would simply bathe at whatever level fit their perception of good hygiene and be done with it. If someone wanted to develop the habit of getting their email inbox to zero every day, they wouldn’t try to get more email so they could process more, nor would they be likely to race against the clock to see if they could get to zero faster than the day before. They would probably be content to just get to zero every day and form the habit, and the associated comfort level, of having an empty inbox.

So, where did I get this warped idea that I had to continually improve at exercise? I was meditating on this during my walk this evening, and the best I can tell, it was taught to me in Physical Education class during my 12-years of school. We weren’t taught to just be active, nor were we taught the benefits of being active at a moderate level. We were taught that to compete against each other, and ourselves, to continually improve. We were taught that by the end of the semester we needed to be able to run faster, or do more push ups, or make more goals than we could at the beginning of the semester.

I was academically aggressive, but I was physically challenged. Physical fitness wasn’t one of my strengths–pardon the pun. It was no problem for me to be able to read a higher level, or do more complex math at the end of a semester, but it was a real challenge for me to do better physically. And it was a challenge that I didn’t like. My poor marks in this area reinforced that.

Schools offered math and English classes for students that had various strengths or weaknesses in those areas, but physical education classes were for everyone. The starting quarterback for the football team, and the kid that was 50-pounds over weight and 6 inches under tall, were likely to be in the same P.E. class. The quarterback learned to continue excelling in his strengths, and the over-weight kid learned that he wasn’t cut out for sports and exercise.

If a student was poor at math, he was placed in a class where he could continue to use math, but at a lower level. If a student was poor at reading, she was placed in a class where she could continue to read, but at a lower level. I believe this may have caused many of those students to continue using the math or reading skills they did have, long after they left school. Students that were poor at physical fitness, on the other hand, were never taught the benefits of continuing to do some physical activity every day, even if it wasn’t at a high level. We were never taught that it was OK to walk for 45-minutes every day. In fact, if we walked around the track when we were told to run, we were scolded and ridiculed by both the teacher and our peers.

There is some challenge to my daily walks, but mostly it’s a matter of just getting started each day. Even if I never get any faster, or make my routine more challenging, yet I walk at least 3 miles every day, I will have walked over 1,000 miles at the end of a year, and probably burned an extra 200,000 calories. That’s no small accomplishment!

If someone didn’t read well, but read 5 pages in a book each day, she would read over 1,800 pages in a year, or probably about 6 or 7 books a year. According to one survey, 58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school, and 42% of college graduates never read another book. Even at a very moderate pace, a poor reader can reap major benefits by reading a small amount each day.

It’s very liberating after all these years to finally realize why I’ve always hated to exercise. Now that I have come to terms with my own weaknesses in that area, I don’t have to compare myself to others, yet I can still reap some benefits of daily exercise. Some people may be fine running for an hour a day, or lifting weights, or playing basketball. I don’t have to measure up to that. I’ve found an activity that works well for me. I’ve joined the ranks of people that exercise daily, even though I’m no athlete. Little by little, over time, I’ll even do more than many people who consider themselves to be athletic. I have the habit of walking every day, and it feels great!

A couple weeks ago I bought an Olympus WS-300M Digital Voice Recorder. I had been having a lot of great thoughts during my walks, but didn’t have a real good way to capture them. I had my Palm T|X in my pocket, but I couldn’t very well use the notepad while I was walking. I also had my cell phone in my pocket, but the voice recorder on it was just too clunky to use. I own a micro cassette tape recorder, but it is bulkier than I wanted to carry around with me. I knew that I needed to get a small light-weight digital voice recorder. I didn’t really want to spend hours trying to figure out which model was best, so I depended on a friend. Back in January, Matthew Cornell posted his Notes on using a digital voice recorder for taking reading notes. In that post he talked about the research he had done and why he chose the Olympus WS-300M. I didn’t see any reason to do all that work again myself, so I bought the same model. Thanks Matt!

Most professional tend to agree that if we do any activity for 21 days in a row that it will become a habit. I am now 2 days past the habit forming stage. I set a 40-day goal, which will give me an extra 19 days of confirmation to myself that the habit has been firmly established. I chose 40-days because, throughout history, 40 has been a number associated with testing and completion.

I have noticed that over the past few days it has actually been much more difficult for me to walk. Part of that has been due to the intense heat wave in our area, but I think there have been other reasons as well. I also haven’t been eating very healthy in the last few days. I have eaten more high-carbohydrate foods such as french fries and bread, I’ve eaten more sweets and deserts, and I’ve even drank some beverages with both sugar and caffeine in them. I tend to think that my diet has been the primary reason that my body has felt tired and my joints have felt stiff. I’m sure that when I would eat like this in the past that it had a negative effect on my overall feeling as well, but I didn’t notice it because I didn’t have a single point that I could focus on to reveal to me how much of an effect it had.

In this sense, the habit of walking has served much like a compass for me. When I am eating well, the walk is easier and my body feels better. As I eat more poorly, the needle of the compass shifts, revealing how much of an effect those poor diet choices actually have.

This past week I was traveling for four days, teaching a class near Nashville, Tennessee. I’m usually there at least once, and sometimes twice, a month, but I rarely leave the little area between the hotel and the office because they are right next to each other. Since I had four different walks this week, I trekked out in a different direction each day. It was really nice to explore the area and see some area I’ve never seen before. I even found some new restaurants that are within walking distance–of course, as Stephen Wright says, “Everything is walking distance if you’ve got the time.”

When I’m at home, I usually walk the same route, and walk it in the morning. When I’m traveling, I typically walk in the evening. This affords me some time to change gears after teaching all day. I also tend to walk further when I walk in the evenings because I don’t usually have time-sensitive things to do in the evenings. I walk in the mornings on my last day because I know I won’t have any other opportunity to fit in an hour for walking that day. Because I have to be in class at a certain time, that walk is usually only an hour long. When I walk in the evenings, it’s not uncommon to walk for two hours or more.

Overall, I don’t feel that I’ve changed much in the last two weeks, but when I look at those things I can quantify, I can see a lot of changes in a small amount of time:

• I’ve lost five pounds.
• I haven’t made a conscious effort to change my eating habits, but I’ve noticed that I’m eating less and making healthier choices. If I really want a desert, or a bigger portion, I’ll get it, but I find that I want these much less than before I was walking daily.
• I’m sleeping better and sleeping less.
• I’ve shaved 8 minutes off my regular 2.7-mile walk around my neighborhood–what used to take me an hour now takes me 52 minutes.

I’ve been thinking about some of my reasons I’ve been particularly successful with this goal. I think the biggest reason is because I’ve made it the perfect size for me. I’ve allowed a lot of flexibility as well. I think that most of us make our goals far too rigid when they don’t have to be. Then we beat ourselves up and get discouraged when we don’t meet those goals. My overall goal is to, “Walk for 45-minutes for 40 days in a row.”

• It includes a relatively short time frame that I ought to be able to work into most days, regardless of how busy I may be.
• I can exceed the specified time frame if I want to, and I have exceeded it every day, but the minimum that I allow myself is very doable.
• It’s not dependent on any particular location. If I had added, “on a treadmill” to the goal, then I would limit myself to only those times and locations where a treadmill was available. By keeping the goal flexible I increase my options and also the likelihood that I’ll be successful.
• I can walk any time that works for me. If I had added, “first thing every morning” to the goal, then that would also be a limiting factor that would discourage me the first time I over slept.
• The goal isn’t dependent on many external pieces. I don’t need much special equipment or a special location. I do need to travel with my walking shoes, athletic socks, and t-shirts now, but other than that, I don’t need much else to be successful. I’ve already proven that I can walk in the rain (after last Friday’s thunderstorm), but I could also walk the halls of a hotel or a local mall if I needed to.

I think there is a clear lesson here that when we are building a habit, we need to be very careful to make those steps the perfect size for us, with the perfect amount of flexibility so that we will stick with them. What have you discovered about  the flexibility with your own goals?

When I posted on Tuesday evening about Day 5, I was out of town; a friend and I had just walked 6 miles round-trip for dinner. It was very encouraging to have this friend with me this week.

Wednesday evening, we went to downtown Naperville and walked 3 miles in about an hour on the Naperville Riverwalk. I really enjoy walking beside water. When I was in 8th and 9th grade, we lived in Long Beach, North Carolina (now called Oak Island). I could walk on the beach for hours–and I still can when I get the chance to go there. I can do the same thing walking through the woods. I guess I just love being out in nature. Naperville’s Riverwalk is a nice bit of nature nestled inside a nice small town.

On Thursday I knew that the class would be over at 2:30pm and I had a 6:06pm flight out of O’Hare. I wouldn’t get home until around 10:30pm, so I knew that I would have to walk early in the morning. I told my friend that he was welcome to meet me in the hotel lobby at 6:00am if he wanted to. When I arrived, he was already there.

When we walked outside it was sprinkling rain, but just a little bit. I hadn’t brought my poncho, but I always keep a plastic sandwich bag in my wallet. I put my Palm and my phone in the sandwich bag so they would stay dry even if it started to rain harder. A few years ago, I had a Palm drown on me in an unexpected downpour–I’ve carried a sandwich bag in my wallet ever since.

We had planned to walk for an hour around a residential neighborhood that is near the hotel. About 40-minutes into our walk, the bottom seemed to fall out of the clouds. It was raining extremely hard, lightening filled the sky, and thunder filled the free space in the air between the raindrops. We were already headed back to the hotel, but after 20-minutes of walking in this downpour, we were as soaked as if we had jumped into the hotel pool fully clothed. I think some of the hotel staff had a good laugh at us as we came in the door.

I had completed my goal for the day though and learned that regardless of the circumstance, I can force myself to push on through. That’s a powerful lesson to learn when you’re building a habit. Most of us slack off at the first sign of difficulty. If we can push through though, we will be much stronger later–smaller challenges will be easy to overcome and we will have more strength for the bigger challenges.

This morning I woke up at home in my own bed and I still didn’t really feel like going walking, so it’s not a habit yet. My first thoughts were, “I need to get up and go for my walk.” I know that I’m moving in the right direction because my mind is expecting me to walk, regardless of whether I feel like it or not.

When I returned from my walk this morning, it felt really great to double the length of my chain by adding FOUR paper clips onto it. Speaking of the chain, I was just reading Zen To Slim: A Simple, 5-Step Weight Loss Plan by Leo over at Zen Habits. The article is well worth reading. One thing he says about exercise is:

It’s important that you try to do it every day. Mark your successes on your calendar — gold stars always work well — and try to keep the marks going every day. If you can do short, easy workouts, and mix up the exercises a little, you can do it every day.

Some of you are starting to post in the comments about how you are starting to build new habits and how you are tracking your progress with some sort of chain (even if it’s marks on a calendar). If you’re inspired to join us in this experiment, drop a comment and let us know!

I’m teaching an Advanced SharePoint class in Naperville, Illinois this week. I usually prefer to travel as light as possible, so I normally don’t bring any extra clothes with me. Because I knew that I planned to walk for at least 45-minutes every day, this time I packed my walking shoes, some shorts, T-shirts, and atheletic socks.

Although I had walked in the thunder yesterday morning, I decided to put on my walking clothes and go explore the area after we finished setting up all our gear for the class. According to the Gmaps pedometer (Man, I love that tool!), I actually walked 5 miles. That was a total of 8 miles walking on purpose, not including all the walking around airports and other places.

My legs were really tired this morning, and I had to be in the classroom earlier than usual, so I decided not to walk. I knew that I would have to walk this evening though to keep up my progress towards my goal. Part of me wanted to say that because I walked extra the day before, I could slide on this day. The goal is to walk AT LEAST 45 minutes each day, so going over doesn’t count towards the goal for the next day.

I asked a friend if he wanted to walk with me and he thought that it sounded like a good idea. Someone had told him there were several nice restaurants about 3 miles up the road. So tonight, we walked a total of 6 miles. My friend walks at a faster pace than I normally do, so it was helpful to have him pushing me to excel more. On the return trip, my feet were getting really sore, my legs were really tired, and my back was really tight. I wanted to stop several times, but since my friend seemed fine, I just pushed on through. I’m really glad that I stuck with it though.

I didn’t bring my paper clip chain with me, but I’m looking forward to adding multiple links at once when I return home. Speaking of the paper clip chain, my friend Brad Isaac wrote a nice guest post over at Lifehacker.com on Jerry Seinfeld’s productivity secret. Jerry’s secret relates very well to the paper clip chain. If you’re intrigued by this motivational tool, you ought to check out his article.

This morning was probably more of a challenge than most mornings will be, but I think that when you’re building a habit, it’s good to be challenged early and for the challenges to be a big ones. If you overcome the challenges early, it will be easier to overcome similar challenges later, and you also prepare yourself for even bigger challenges.

The alarm sounded at 6:30 am this morning. I promptly hit the snooze button. When it sounded again at 6:35 am, I cut it off, but decided that I would get up at 6:45 am. At 6:50 am, I figured that it was either now or never so I got up and quickly put on my walking clothes. Before I got out of the house, I heard thunder. I really didn’t want to walk in the rain. My goal is to walk 45-minutes a day for 40 days in a row, so I don’t have to do it in the morning. I might have been able to walk this evening, but looking at my schedule I didn’t have confidence that I would be able to do that either.

I knew that I would just have to press on through it. I put on an older pair of walking shoes that I didn’t mind getting wet, grabbed the poncho from the closet, and headed out the door. The cool morning air felt great! I was much more lucid this morning, unlike the meditative state that I was in yesterday morning. The storm clouds were a little north of us and appeared to be moving to the east. I was optimistic that it would go around us.

At about 15 minutes into my walk, it started sprinkling rain. I was already kind of hot by that time, so the cool droplets were a pleasant gift. It didn’t last long though and I didn’t need to put on the poncho. About 25 minutes later, it started sprinkling rain again, a little heavier than the first time, but still not quite heavy enough for me to need the poncho. I could have cut my walk short and still made my 45-minute goal, but I’ve been walking for nearly an hour and I decided to go ahead and finish my regular route since I was prepared if it did get worse. It didn’t get any worse though, so I was still glad I didn’t give in early.

When I made it home, I was rather proud of myself for sticking to my resolve and pushing through this. The next time it’s threatening rain, or even raining, it will be easier to “just do it.”

At 6:50 am, I still hadn’t convinced my body to get up and walk out the door. Finally, I decided that I would at least put on my shorts, a T-shirt, and my walking shoes. Once I did this, the rest was pretty easy. In fact, I didn’t have much conscious effort in the walk this morning at all. During most of the walk my mind was in kind of a meditative state. I found myself turning down different roads and following the same route that I have for the past two mornings without giving any thought at all to whether I wanted to take one particular route or another one. Although I crave variety in life, and in the past I’ve gotten quite bored with just walking in my neighborhood, perhaps taking the same route every day is going to help me in building this habit by eliminating some of the conscious thought behind it.

Once I was out on the road, I was really glad that I went, and now that I’m back I’m really glad that I did it as well. It was a good feeling to add that extra paper clip on the chain too.

Statistics from My Daily Walk
According to the Gmaps Pedometer, my regular walking route is roughly 2.75 miles long, and this morning it took me about 57 minutes to walk that route. As I get back in the groove, my time should decrease. It has already dropped one minute each day from the 59 minutes it took me the first day.

I couldn’t find a good walking calculator that allowed me to enter my actual weight and speed while walking, but I using the formula from Calorie Calculator at Health Discovery, it appears that I’m burning about 575 calories on my 57 minute walk. Interestingly, as I lose weight, and my speed increases, the calories burned will decrease if I don’t increase the length of the route, the time I walk, and/or the intensity of the walk.

Yesterday I was reasonably motivated to walk. I’m not sure why, but I was. This morning, I really didn’t want to go. I looked at that little lonely paper clip and decided that I would go ahead and do it. I’m really glad that I did now.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve tried several things to motivate me to walk. For a while I listened to motivational audio books and podcasts on my MP3 player while I walked. For a while I listened to fiction audio books while I walked. My own neighborhood gets a little boring after a few days, so I’ve tried walking other nearby neighborhoods. All of these things have eventually became boring to me.

Right now, it seems like using my walking time as “thinking time” is the best use of my time. I’m not really paying much attention to the neighborhood. As I build the Ricky Spears brand and look to expand Spears Technologies, Inc., I certainly have plenty to think about, and over the past two mornings, this has been very valuable time.

Yesterday at Lifehacker.com, Gina posted a Quote of the Day that seems particularly relevant to this:

“All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.” — Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

I have a high degree of confidence that my morning walking routines is going to have a major impact on my life success, in more ways than one.

My most successful exercise regimen ever was between August 26, 2004 and October 4, 2004. I set a goal to walk for at least 45 minutes every day for 40 days in a row. I met that goal, and then took day 41 off. I noted in my journal that I found myself wanting to walk that day. I walked the day after that, then took a long break from it and never did get back in the groove. Since that time, I’ve had occasional success walking for a few days in a row, but nothing coming close to this stretch and the building of a habit.

I remember that one of the ways I motivated myself was to build a paper clip chain. It was just a simple chain of paper clips that hung by the door of my home office. When I would return from my walk each day, I would add one more paper clip on the chain. When I had added 10 more paper clips, I would change colors. This made it easy to tell how many days I had been successful and how close I was to my goal. Because of this, I found the paper clip chain to be very encouraging.

It’s hard to believe that was three years ago! I’m going to do the same thing again, with the same 40-day goal. I walked around my neighborhood for an hour this morning, so that is Day 1. The chain looks really short today, but in a week it will be a lot longer and more encouraging. Every time I walk out of my office I will see it and should be motivated and encouraged by it.

I’ve tried electronic systems for this, such as Joe’s Goals on the Internet, and HabitSuccess for the Palm (no longer available for purchase). I like the interface of both programs, and they are both enjoyable to use. However, neither one of them seems to motivate and encourage me as much as a paper clip chain. I guess that for some of us, atoms are better than bits, at least for some activities.

So, I’m curious. Have any of my other readers tried building paper clip chains, or other similar methods of charting your success, and motivating and encouraging yourself? If so, how well did they work for you? Is anyone willing to join me in building their own paper clip chain to help them form a habit in some area of their life?