Macro versus micro level thinking

Feelin brain dead?


After a long day of program design and template creation, I will be the first to admit I cant write a workout to save my life. But after hours of staring at spreadsheets and inputting numbers, it is no wonder I cant distinguish a push press from a push up.

In order to ramp up my efficiency, I have found much more success with devoting one day to writing templates and formats another to actually programming exercises

The above is an example of one of the most valuable pieces of insight I have come across from numerous fitness coaches recently: the concept of batching. For those unfamiliar with this concept, batching involves choosing an item on your to do list and completing everything involved with this item before moving on the next.

Much like warming up for a workout, I find that I always produce my best work after several hours of thoroughly covering one issue. Whether this means writing fitness programs or doing my laundry (which luckily takes all of ten minutes), this concept of simply doing one thing at a time is flys in the face of the American mantra of quantity versus quality.

While it can be easy to get overloaded when we see a thousand things on our "to do lists", what I found to be helpful is to assign these items in to categories which can be executed step by step.

An example may look something like this:

Fitness:
1. Weekly workout templates
2. Client weigh-in day
3. Trainer continuing education

Marketing:
1. Pass out flyers
2. Send letters to old clients
3. Daily blog post (thought this evidently hasnt been very high on my list)

In my experience, keeping the list to three things which are associated with one another in some way helps things to flow without forcing my mind to shift gears. By limiting each category to three topics per day, I am forced to prioritize what must be done that day without over kill.

On a weekly basis, I will put together a larger to do list and simply assign the three most urgent items for each day until reaching the end. Though this is always a work in progress, I have found this methods to be useful in conserving my much needed brainpower during a long day.