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Make exercise a habit and part of a routine              2022-06-11
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A habit is something that a person does often, in a regular and
repeated way.

A routine is a specific set of habits done in a particular order.

For instance, a regular morning routine could be: wake up, go to
the toilet, brush your teeth, get dressed, eat breakfast, drink
coffee, go out the door. The whole is a routine, the individual
aspects are habits.

If your days are more or less the same every day, with perhaps some
deviation over the weekend, then you have a daily routine. A common
one would be: wake up, breakfast, go to work, lunch, more work, go
home, dinner, watch TV, go to sleep. Day in, day out... More
specific, however, your daily routine, will consist of multiple
shorter routines: morning routine, daytime routine, and evening
routine, each containing various habits.

Ideally you would make exercise a habit and incorporate it into an
existing routine. If you are, like me, a morning person, then you
could add the exercise habit to your morning routine. My morning
routine is: wake up, toilet, exercise, tea. Likewise you could add
it to your daytime or evening routine. Doing things this way is by
far easier to maintain and adhere to then it is to 'wing it' and
tell yourself that you'll exercise 'later today', 'tomorrow
morning', or 'in the weekend'... A specific time or period of the
day helps you to keep yourself accountable.

What may also help you prioritize exercise and turn it into a good
habit are some simple techniques:

- schedule time for exercise in your agenda / block time off in
  your agenda

- treat exercise like you would an appointment, an appointment with
  your health, and add it to your agenda

- commit to the scheduled time

- identify your triggers and obstacles
  - what motivates you to go out and exercise? -> do that before
    your next exercise
  - what makes you stay in and inactive? -> stop doing that

- stop caring about what other people may think