I’m starting my fourth week of morning workouts, and I wanted to write a few thoughts down.

First, I wouldn’t be able to keep up if these workouts weren’t very short. Each “workout” consists of stretches, two (only two) exercises, and meditation.

For stretching, I focus on my back. First, there’s arms against the wall (this video explains it pretty well, especially the second part). Then toe-touches (side to side), then to the floor (well, my rug), with cat-cow for a few repetitions. I repeat this whole thing twice.

For the actual exercises, I just do slow push-ups and then crunches (a combination of straight and side-to-side). Again I repeat it twice, so two sets for stretching and two sets for exercises.

After I’m done with both, I finish up with meditation of five minutes, which at this point is mostly a breathing exercise while looking out the window at the start and then closing my eyes for the rest of the time.

The more “serious” exercises happen sporadically throughout the week in the afternoon. For these, I don’t have a routine yet. That’s what I’m trying to work on next.

Another critical factor in maintaining a routine is to repeat the same exercises in a familiar and simple pattern (this is why doing it every day in the morning works well). Progress in exercises is something that, in my opinion, needs to be completely on hold until there is a routine, and then it comes on its own. If you do a certain number of push-ups, for example, you’ll find that after a couple of weeks it’s easier to push forward automatically and do more. The same is true for everything else.

This is why the key to advancing my afternoon routines (which is a bit longer and a bit more intense) needs to be “docked” into persistence, and I’m trying to figure out what that is. For example, if I had lunch at a fixed period, or if I had an event happening every day at 15:00 or 16:00, it would be helpful, but the nature of my work and life balance means it’s flexible and changing. It’s also not helping that I don’t do these every day (at least not for now), so I need to figure out dedicated workout days.