7 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Keep (or Get) Fit, Happy and Productive Thinking outside the box is great but don't underestimate the power of doing the fundamentals every day.
By Julian Hayes II Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Being an entrepreneur isn't a cake walk. Between running a business, juggling a personal life and dealing with unforeseen obstacles that come your way, many entrepreneurs, unfortunately, end up sacrificing their health for profits.
With the amount of information available at your fingertips, you most likely understand that exercising, sleeping and eating healthy are important. Beyond your appearance, exercising and maintaining a healthy lifestyle is beneficial for your cognitive and emotional health.
Related: This Employee Took Off Work for Mental Health Reasons, and Her Boss Thanked Her
People don't neglect their health and fitness on purpose. Instead, many fall short with their health and fitness goals because they haven't found a way to implement a regimen that meshes with their professional and personal lives.
Here are seven ways to help you become a fit, happy, and productive entrepreneur.
1. Have a plan.
Successful businesses start with a plan. This serves as their blueprint, which guides them on the correct actions needed for success. Without a blueprint, you won't have a plan to guide you, and this increases the risk of getting lost and giving up.
If you desire to lose weight, take a step back and develop a blueprint for how you'll go about this. While developing your health and fitness blueprint, think about your business and personal life. The ideal fitness plan meshes with your professional and personal life while still supporting your physical and performance goals.
2. Tiny is your friend.
As a busy entrepreneur, you don't have countless hours to spend in the gym. This is why the Kaizen philosophy of continuous improvement is your best friend.
Tiny -- think 1 percent -- and almost effortless steps become monumental feats over the long run. Utilizing this approach ensures that you won't run the risk of overwhelming yourself and possibly interfering with running your business.
3. Reduce your decisions.
Adding unnecessary decisions to your day-to-day life isn't ideal and will only increase the chances of you suffering from decision fatigue. But, by reducing your decisions, you're improving your mental and emotional fitness while saving your brain power for the big decisions within your business.
So how can you reduce your decisions while getting healthier? An easy one for your nutrition is to look into using a meal delivery service for your eating. This takes away the guesswork and saves you time and energy.
Having your workouts prepared before you walk into the gym is a great way to save time and brain power since you know exactly what to do.
4. Intensity over duration.
"I'm too busy" is one of the most popular excuses for many entrepreneurs not exercising. While you may be busy, this isn't a good enough excuse to not take care of your health.
When it comes to improving your fitness and physique, the quality of your exercise selections matters more than the duration and quantity of exercises performed. Shortening your rest periods and using supersets (performing exercises back-to-back) are great options for reducing your time in the gym.
Related: How Can You Reverse Your Company's Work-Life Imbalance? Through Yoga.
5. Assess your environment.
Whether you're bored in the office, stressed from the latest reports or need something to keep your mind off of what you're doing in the current moment -- environmental behaviors can make or break your fitness goals.
A vital area to take care of is your work environment (after all, you spend a lot of time here) and the foods you snack on.
Instead of wasting your willpower on trying to avoid snacking on the office foods, place better foods in your sight. Instead of candy and other not so good foods lying around, swap out for healthier options such as fruit and nuts.
6. Get some headspace.
A great way to help your emotional and mental fitness is to start meditating. This doesn't need to be fancy or complicated, just set aside 5-10 minutes, and get some headspace.
Meditation makes you a better entrepreneur by improving your work-related stress, eating habits, immune system, focus, mood and creativity -- which in turn helps your bottom line. To get started, look into using an app such as Calm.
7. Establish some form of accountability and metrics.
In your business, there is specific metrics that you track to gauge the progress of your company. This keeps everyone in the organization accountable for showing up and doing their job while helping to see what is and isn't working. Just as you establish these tactics in business, it's important that you do this with your health.
A couple of ways to establish metrics with your nutrition is to write down what you eat for a few weeks to help build awareness for the food decisions that you're making on a daily basis. Jot down your workouts so you can track if you're getting stronger and building up your endurance.
Related: 10 Things Healthy People Have in Common
Accountability could be using a program such as Stickk and placing bets with your friends. Another option as an entrepreneur, which I always recommend, is to involve your employees. As an entrepreneur, you're the leader, and people go as you go. What better way to keep yourself accountable with your fitness than to get everyone else involved at your company? And you're improving your companies bottom line as well.
Being a fit, happy, and productive entrepreneur doesn't require complexity. Being a fit, happy, and productive entrepreneur requires a focus on the fundamentals just as building a successful business requires a focus on the fundamentals.
