Your health is more important than your résumé, checklist, bucket list, or achievement ranking system.
Adopting a health‐first approach is a sure‐fire strategy to guarantee you can achieve your most ambitious goals far into the future.
I am as guilty of neglecting this as anyone.
Over the last few years, I have noticed a trend in my habits and calendaring methods: I am good at prioritizing work or working out, but never both at the same time.
During one season, I can exercise like a champ six to seven days a week, lose weight, build muscle, and feel better than ever.
In another season, I can wake up early and dominate my task list, getting more work accomplished in a few hours than most do all day.
However, it appears that these two seasons have always remained independent. There is little or no overlap, and I wind up either being in the best shape of my life or making tremendous growth in my work, but not both.
This is silly.
It is not only possible to remain healthy while pursuing your goals, but it is also the only way you will be able to pursue them long term.
Think of it this way, if you do not adopt a health‐first approach, where does health fall on your list of priorities? When will you take care of yourself? When will you eat better, get off the couch and go the gym, or stop smoking?
If health is not number one, where is it?
When anything supersedes your physical and mental health, you take a hit. You withdraw from your health savings account, so to speak.
Additionally, to ensure you have free time on your calendar, a few things must be true:
Without your health, you have nothing. Without taking care of yourself, your free time will not be free—it will cost a tremendous amount in lost hours spent playing catch up.
You can accomplish your ambitious goals AND be incredibly healthy. Both are possible with a simple plan and a burning desire to live like you never have before.
The third step of The Free‐Time Formula is to flex your muscles, and it is divided into two parts: fitness for busy people and mental bicep curls.
This is where you begin to truly enjoy the fruits of your labor because you will have the energy, enthusiasm, and mental clarity to pursue not only your current goals but even bigger dreams yet to come.
There are few things, if any, that I value more than my health.
More than my work, more than my goals, more than my relationship with my wife, I value taking care of myself to the best of my ability.
Why?
Because without my health I will not have the capacity to work, accomplish goals, or give myself fully to my closest relationships.
Your health is your ticket to everything.
In a very literal sense, without your health you are dead. How much work do you plan to accomplish at the cemetery?
This is not a trite question—I mean it. How do you plan to stay happy, focused, and productive when your mind and body are failing you?
Fatigue, stress, and burnout are only a few examples of physical reactions you may experience when pushing too hard or simply avoiding the replenishing work that brings you back to life.
Eating healthy foods, working out, and sleeping soundly are widely known but extraordinarily undervalued life‐producing strategies.
There was a season of my life in my mid‐twenties that I frequently think about because it stands out as the healthiest season of my life. I made radical changes to my diet, lost weight, began running marathons at a vigorous pace, and had more energy than at any point I can remember.
I had a trim waistline, a passion for hitting the trails whenever I could, and enthusiasm for just about everything because I just felt so good, so often.
The changes I made were simple. The “work” I put in was not unmanageable, and it rarely felt like work at all.
I was exploring parks, signing up for races, trying new foods, and experimenting with a health‐first approach that proved again and again to be the best choice for my life, goals, and morale that I had ever made.
Prioritizing me was no longer an afterthought, but instead was becoming my go‐to strategy for living my best life.
In the Introduction of this book, I told a rough story of my trip to the emergency room. This event not only served as a staunch wake‐up call to me that I had let my priorities slip, but that there are serious consequences for doing so.
My goal is to help you free up time for what matters most, and I firmly believe that one of the best ways to carve out more time on your calendar—and optimize the time you already have—is to be in the best shape of your life.
Repeatedly engaging in life‐enhancing activities, those that bring about more energy, passion, and enthusiasm, is the secret to living a more full and productive life.
When your time is filled with projects that boost your spirit, you may also find that you are less inclined to waste the free time you already have. In other words, couch‐potato time is less sexy when you could be climbing mountains, surfing ocean waves, or kayaking through the Grand Canyon.
As a busy person, I can imagine that you may be inclined to think that I am recommending you spend hours a day in the gym or preparing complex healthy meals, when in fact this process can (and should) be so much easier.
Instead of thinking about all of the many ways you could get healthy, or what professional athletes do to reach their optimal state, think about how to pack the biggest punch in the smallest time frame.
Freeing up time means allowing every precious moment to reach its highest potential. You can exercise for ten minutes and make real progress. You can eat healthier foods instead of diving into your normal meal. You can eliminate one small task a day and replace it with a healthier alternative.
You can get incredible value in small doses if you play your cards right.
Focus on doing the fewest number of healthy activities that you can to improve your current situation. Make it your goal to get as much value from every minute as you can.
I see too many people engaging in pointless exercises at the gym, or simply socializing, instead of maximizing the precious time they have to get the results they came there to acquire.
As you free up more time on your calendar and improve your energy, you can “up your game” and increase the intensity. Starting slow and small is best to build the habit of movement as you embrace a health‐first approach.
Small habits can become large, powerful, and enormously effective with time.
Today, start small but make it count. Little victories can produce tremendous outcomes.
If you are too busy to work out, you are too busy. This is my mantra and one you can feel free to adopt.
Ideally, you should have time on most days for three essential activities:
Daily movement is one thing, intelligently accelerating your heart rate, flexing your muscles, and actively managing your physical well‐being is something else. It does not take multiple hours of your time each day to be fit. You can make a big difference with a small, but well‐chosen, set of movements.
Being busy is never the goal—making direct progress on your vital few goals is a much better approach that leads to tremendous results down the road. With a short but well‐chosen task list, you can consistently advance your position in whatever you choose to pursue.
Free time can be stress‐free time. When you have taken care of your work, and yourself, you will have the capacity, energy, and time on your calendar to be fully present and alert for whatever activities you choose to pursue.
If you do not have time for all three of these on a recurring basis, you are too busy, or your priorities are out of order.
The goal is not necessarily to guarantee time for all three of these activities seven days a week, but aiming for five to six would create a solid rhythm.
Exercise time does not replace productivity time; it enhances it.
If you operate with the false belief that time spent working out is time spent NOT checking items off your to‐do list, your to‐do list or your workout routine is too long, or both.
There is an ideal and flexible weekly routine we are aiming for if our goal is to ensure time for our vital few goals AND exercise.
There is a rhythm that can be achieved on your calendar that allows you the opportunity to take care of yourself and your most important work each day.
The key is a health‐first approach. I cannot see your calendar at the moment, so I cannot coach you through how your exact circumstances will ebb and flow around your workout goals.
However, I can tell you that if you booked work on your calendar first, and tried to squeeze in exercise in the margins, you are doing it backward. A health‐first approach means scheduling your “me time” first, and everything else outside that time.
Taking into account that you likely have prescheduled on‐the‐clock hours with your employer, and other essentials in your life, the approach still holds true.
As soon as something replaces health on your calendar as the most important objective, your health slips.
This is a hard pill to swallow; I get it. Your mind is likely racing with arguments why this approach cannot work for you, or anyone with a job, kids, or other highly important obligations.
So, think of this way, if you continue to do what you have been doing, will you get the results you want?
No? Then it is time for a new approach.
A health‐first approach is a mindset strategy first and a scheduling strategy second. Let that idea sink in, and when you are on board, take another look at your calendar.
What can move? What can be postponed? What are you doing now that you do not absolutely have to do?
If exercise was nonnegotiable (e.g., my doctor told me I had to exercise for thirty minutes every day), what would have to change to make that possible?
The answers may not appear right away, so hold this thought until we tackle cutting the nonsense in Step IV. Scheduling is an ongoing challenge, but there is always something that can be done—always.
Guaranteeing fitness time for busy people means making the very most of the few precious minutes you have available.
If you have ten minutes, you have enough to begin. Consider these two approaches with your next workout session.
If you are going to lift weights, lift hard and then stop.
Michael Matthews, author of the popular fitness books Bigger, Leaner, Stronger: The Simple Science of Building the Ultimate Male Body and Thinner, Leaner, Stronger: The Simple Science of Building the Ultimate Female Body, advocates many effective strategies, four of which are notable with our focus on minimizing time and maximizing results (Matthews, 2015).
If you want to build strength and save time, these simple strategies will point you in the right direction. For more information and clarity on these principles, I highly recommend reading Matthews' books.
Intensity beats mediocrity, especially when it comes to cardiovascular fitness.
I spent years running marathons, and my own experience proved that the days I pushed hard were the days I grew. The days I ran at a moderate pace without challenging myself were the days I stayed busy but went nowhere.
The goal here is not to train for an endurance race—those take significant time per week, and per workout. The goal is to boost our level of fitness quickly, and then hit the showers and move on with our work for the day.
Interval training is a highly effective cardiovascular workout that requires a tiny fraction of the time you may be envisioning.
The key is to focus on a quick rhythm, pushing hard for a short period and then backing off significantly. For example, you could sprint for thirty seconds, and then slow jog for sixty seconds, repeating that set a few times.
The total workout could be no more than fifteen minutes, and yet you have the potential to make tremendous progress.
High‐Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), trail running, and other forms of exercise that focus on the rhythm of pushing hard and then pausing … pushing hard and then pausing, return phenomenal results in significantly less time than what many of us do when we work out.
The Free‐Time Formula mantra for fitness is clear: minimize time and maximize results by pushing yourself and then resting. Work hard and then play hard—you have earned it.
As a busy high achiever, adopting a few key habits (while simultaneously limiting your most destructive ones) is a powerful strategy to squeeze more time out of your day without radically changing your entire life.
To supplement your daily workout, adding or removing the right habits will help boost your productivity and health in a big way.
I have a love‐hate relationship with caffeine. I love it as much as it helps me, which lasts until the tables turn and I find myself stuck in a jittery chaotic loop or a useless afternoon slump. If you choose to consume caffeine, carefully study its true effect on your whole life and its impact on your focus, sleep, energy levels, stress levels, mood, dietary choices, and actual productivity output.
You are going to eat, so you may as well eat healthy food to boost your energy and feel your best all day long. When planning your day, plan to only allow yourself access to nutrient‐dense foods and plenty of clean water to boost your energy. I often pack a bag full of fresh produce when I travel or leave the house to work so that I am not limited to vending machines or fast‐food restaurants. I am choosing the green pepper or the banana, the blueberries or the peaches, the purified water or the orange juice.
Setting strict limitations on the hours you allow yourself to work will directly affect the hours you allow yourself to get high‐quality rest each night. Your overall health is affected tremendously by how well you sleep, which makes it imperative to prioritize getting to sleep on time or early every night.
I frequently challenge myself to let go of my addictions on a regular basis to see the true impact of my choices on my daily health and productivity. If you need a break from alcohol, junk food, or surfing the Internet, try a detox day. The quick results of giving up a single vice for just twenty‐four hours can spark new momentum and have a profound effect on your daily habits moving forward.
One of the best ways to ensure you stick to the key habits you have chosen is to adopt the habit of reviewing your habits. Begin by analyzing the results of your habits on a daily basis, determining which habits were effective and which were not, which habits you stuck to and which you found an excuse for, which habits were easy to maintain and which were challenging to accomplish.
Repeatedly engaging in life‐enhancing activities, those that bring about more energy, passion, and enthusiasm, is the secret to living a more full and productive life. When your time is filled with projects that boost your spirit, energy, and overall health, you may also find that you are less inclined to waste the free time you already have.
Ideally, you should have time on most days for three essential activities: physical fitness, working on your craft, and enjoying the fruits of your labor. If you do not have time for all three of these on a recurring basis, you are too busy, or your priorities are out of order.
As a busy high achiever, adopting a few key habits (while simultaneously limiting your most destructive ones), is a powerful strategy to squeeze more time out of your day without radically changing your entire life. To supplement your daily workout, adding or removing the right habits will help boost your productivity and health in a big way.
If you are going to continue your high‐achievement lifestyle for the foreseeable future, you will not get far without your health. Taking care of yourself is not only a priority, but it is also an absolute necessity, or your goals will never get done. Defeating recurring stress, overwhelm, and anxiety are dependent upon you managing your health alongside your responsibilities.
If you are too busy to work out, you are too busy. It does not take much—even as little as ten (intense) minutes a day can make a dramatic difference in your energy and level of fitness. Of course, you can feel free to do more than ten minutes, but start there and see where it gets you.
We all have them, and they hold us back more than we realize. It could be alcohol, junk food, TV, or some other bad habit that is creeping into your life and preventing you from having the abundance of energy, vitality, and enthusiasm you know you could have. Try letting one thing go for a week and track your results. Significant transformation begins with tiny changes.