OK, so now that you have your priorities in order (please read previous post) you have to actually find the time or more importantly make the time to exercise.  We all have a calendar or schedule that have our business appointments, family commitments, kids schedules and the like.  We look at those and it is so overwhelming that we just say, "I don't have time this week, but maybe next week."

You do have time, you just have to make time or more importantly, get the important stuff on your schedule first.  For me, I have my Outlook calendar that has everything, my work, wife's schedule and personal.  I sit down on Sunday, look at the 10 day weather forecast and start planning.  Days it is going to rain or snow, I plan to swim, lift or find an indoor workout.  Days when it is nice, I am outside.  Then I look to find the free blocks and get those on my schedule.  That may mean out at 5am for a run or a lunchtime bike ride or an after dinner rollerblade session while the munchkin rides her bike (we will talk about getting creative later.)  I work in conjunction with my wife so we plan who picks up who when, who does shopping, who does laundry and what nights I cook dinner and what nights we nuke leftovers.  If I need to go swim, she takes the munchkin, but I agree to pick up.  We work together to get the important stuff done.  Then once it is on my schedule, nobody messes with it, without loosing a limb.  Not even work.  Think about it, how many times have you planed to go to the gm after work, then a conference call pops up at 6pm and you have to stay late so you skip your workout, again.  Ask yourself this, did you have to do the call at 6pm?  Was the company going to fold or someone going to die if you didn't do the call?  What would happen if you said, "sorry, I can't do the call at 6, how about first thing in the morning."  Do they have to know why you can't do the call.  I have gotten so bold with co-workers that I tell them I am going for a run, but would be more than happy to do the call at 7pm after my run or at 5am before my bike ride.  Amazing how many times it is not important and can wait until the next day or another time.  Would you let someone make you move your family vacation, date night or your kids play?  Why should a workout that is important to you be any different.  I always look at it this way.  When I am 90 years old on my death bed, who is going to be there with me.  Those are the people that get my time first.  Twisted, I know, but a great way to put priorities in order.

So now that you are going to try to schedule your workouts, some will be easy to schedule, others will be a challenge and sometimes require you to get creative, and we will talk about that in part 4.  But we will have to talk about part 3 first.

This is the beginning of a multi-part post with tips and guidance on how I find the time to workout.  I have gotten a lot of questions on this and this is one of the hardest parts of trying to get weight under control.  Before you can find time, you have to first decide how important it is to you.  Excuses are usually the biggest barrier to an exercise program, because there is always something more important to do or take care of. 

"I can't go for a run. because the house is a mess."
"I would have to get up early and that will be inconvenient for the family"
"I have too much work to do"

And the list could go on and on.  Why do we say those things?  Because it is an excuse for other priorities.  The house will always be a mess (especially for those of us with kids) so I can clean it when I get back from a run.  Yep, everyone gets up a little earlier so I can head to the gym, but I am the parent or I make a deal with my spouse.  I will always have too much work to do, but they don't pay me to work 24/7.  If my workout is higher up on the priority list above laundry (for example), then it will get done.  Make a list of your priorities.  Where does exercise fall?  What isn't important does not get done.  If given the choice between fixing broken tiles in the basement ceiling and going for a run, I go for a run.  The projects are a lower priority for me until I need to sell the house.  The only person that sees the broken tiles is our family and the occasional guest and I could care less what they think about my house.  Nobody ever comes to visit my house, they come to visit us.  My workout or exercise is actually one of the highest priorities on my list.  It typically gets done before anything else does.  It is one of the reasons I do it first (we will talk about that in another post) and I actually feel better, have more energy and get more done when I get my workout in.

For me, it was exercise and lose weight or be fat, have a heart attack and die.  That will shift priorities, because "die" was not very high on my list and I wanted to do whatever I could to put it at the bottom of the list.

So if you are wanting to or trying to loose weight or be healthier, where is that on your priority list?  Some people are afraid the put themselves before their family, but I believe sometimes you have to.  By being healthy and being around longer for your family, who benefits?  The family.  By feeling better and having more energy to play with my daughter, who benefits?  We all do.  So it is really up to you.  Set your priorities.

One of the things that always seems to happen.  You find time to go get a workout in, but you have to scramble around and get your gym bag ready, find your running shoes, charge the iPod, put air in the tires grab pre or post workout food.  By the time you do all of that, the hour you had to workout is now whittled away to 30 minutes or you just say forget it, because it takes too long to get ready.

The Solution - always be ready.  Make sure your gym bag is always ready to go and have pre and post food items included (granola bars, almonds, energy drinks, or whatever)  My gym bag is always ready with a Gatorade, Clif Bar and protein bar.  I just have to grab and go.  Then when you get back from the workout, restock, reload and it is ready for the next time

I keep my bike by the back door with shoes, sunglasses, helmet and water bottles ready to go.  The bike pump is right there, so I can top off if need be and I am out the door in seconds.  Clif bar or gel in the helmet so I can eat on the ride if need be.

Running shoes and running clothes are also by the back door ready for a quick change and off I go.  I keep a gel and bar there as well for the same reason.

Rollerblade gear is in my closet, but socks and wrist guards are stuffed inside, ready to head out.

iPod and Garmin GPS is always charged up and when I get back, I slap them back on the charger so they are ready for the next time.

A little forethought and planning can save me time so when I get a chance to slam an hour workout in, I don't waste a minute of it hunting for gear.

So it is time for another time saving tip.  For those that have not read all of the tame saving tips to this point, you can see them all at the left.  But you are also probably wondering, "what does email have to do with exercise and weight loss?"  Well, I have to free up time to exercise and if I am working 10-12 hours a day, then I need to reduce that so I can make sure I have time to exercise.  Make sense?  I get 100-200 email per day.  I could live in Outlook all day long reading email, but I don't.  Now, my auto filters do most of the heavy work for me (talked about earlier.)  When I go through my inbox, I make a few quick decisions

DELETE - This is actually the first thing I decide.  Do I need this?  Is it junk?  Is it relevant to me?  If not, it goes.  Not filed, no flagged, not read, DELETE.  Why waste time reading stuff that I don't need.

FILE - Do I need to do this right now?  Is this something I can read later, like on a plane or during a boring conference call?  Does this need action right now or can I schedule it for later in the week?  To many times we don't prioritize and just work based on what was the last think to come into the inbox.  I actually have a folder called someday maybe that I throw stuff into that I read when I have time or when I schedule time to go through that folder.

READ - Then there are those that I know I need to read.  Things from my boss or team.  Things marked urgent or things that are based on the current projects that I am working on. 

Once I let the filters file things away, I delete the stuff that I don't need and then file away the stuff that I don't need to read now.  That really is only about 15-30 emails out of 100 that I will need to deal with.  That doesn't take as much time out of my day.  I spend more time actually working and less time reading email.  I get it all done in 8-9 hours instead of 10-12.  I actually keep track of how much time I am in email.  It is now 2-3 hours, but it used to be 4-5.  I now have that time back.  I get more done in less time and use that time back to exercise.

I get about 100-200 email per day.  As we discussed from a previous tip, there is no way I am going to get through all of that in the 1 hour chunks that I spend in email.  Also, most of it is not important or does not need my attention right now.  But most of us read it and then file it away for later, but we spend all of this time in our digital file cabinet when most email systems are smart enough to do it for us.  I am an Outlook user and I use the Outlook Rules to handle these tasks for me.  For newsletters or things that I subscribe to, I have them automatically go to a folder for reading when I have time.  For emails from my boss, they go right to a folder so I can see what he needs.  Emails from my co-workers do the same thing, but a different folder.  My junk mail filters run full tilt and I even have a rule to file emails where I am CCd.  CC stands for carbon copy, but it really means CYA or Cover Your A**.  As far as I am concerned, a CC email is an FYI, not something that needs my immediate attention, so I can read or deal with them later.  I setup folders and rules for certain projects and those people that i am working with and even certain Customers.  This allows me to find emails quickly and deal with them when I need to and not have to organize.  I let the technology organize for me.  The final rule I have is when emails come it as Important or High Priority.  I have those forward to my cell phone.  That way if it is critical and it came in, I can see it there and not have to worry that some critical email from a Customer is sitting there while I am offline working on other work.  Now I spend no time filing, and only 3 hours a day dealing with the actions in the email.

Has your 8 hour day at work turned into 10-14?  Do you go to the office, put in the hours and then take the laptop home and put in another 2 hours because you didn't get it all done?  Yea, been there, done that.  Email is one of the life changing technologies of our time, but it is also what causes us to spend more time working.  We sit in front of our email and our day is controlled by the inbox flow.  You get and email, you read it, you take action and then you go on to the next one.  You keep working because the emails keep coming in and they never stop, so neither do you. 

One of the things I do is unhook from email.  It is never going to stop coming in, so I have to change the way I work within email.  One of the things I do is to schedule my email time.  That's right, I don't have it up and connected all of the time.  I connect and do email at certain times and then disconnect and go do work without the interruption of new email and the distraction of getting dragged off the important work and onto something un-important.  So I schedule email time 30 minutes after I start work (the first 30 are spent prioritizing my day, that is another tip) for an hour.  After lunch for an hour and then 2 hours before my day is done (that leaves the last hour of the day working on stuff and not getting distracted, dragged into something I don't need to be and then I am working 2 hours longer than I need to.

I know what you are thinking.  How can you do that?  What if someone needs to get a hold of you?  Well, there is a great invention that was created by Alexander Graham Bell called the phone.  I communicate my work habits to my team and my Customers and they know that if they need to get a hold of me quickly, then they can call my phone and cell phone.  So for me, 8:30-9:30, 12:30-1:30, and 3:00-4:00 are my email times.  Yep, just 3 hours spent in email vs living in it all day.  But I know the next question, how can you get through it all in just those little 1 hour chunks?  That is another tip for another day.

I can usually find the time to get 6-10 hours per week of exercise.  The biggest thing that people ask me when I tell them how much time I exercise is, "how do you find the time."  First off, I make the time.  There are only 24 hours in a day and I make sure I get at least 7-8 hours of sleep per night since sleep is critical.  So that leaves 16 hours for time with the family, work, errands, reading, cooking, laundry, and everything else I have to cram it.  So what I have learned is that every minute is precious and I can't get more, so I learn to utilize the time wisely.  I thought I would share some of the simple every day tips that I use to free up that hour per day to get the workout in.  So this will be on ongoing tip sharing exercise.

My first time saving tip is checking the weather.  Most of the time I plan my workouts around the weather since I can't control that.  If the sun is going to be up at 5:30am on Monday and the temp is nice, then I will plan to workout then.  If it is going to rain on Tuesday, then I will plan to go to the gym or treadmill in the basement.  If it is crummy in the morning on Wednesday, but going to be nice at lunch, then a noon bike ride might be the plan that day.  I don't want to plan to workout after work and then find out it is raining and then it gets skipped.  I check the 7 day forecast and come up with my game plan for the week.  Then, most important ... I schedule it.  I put it in my Outlook calendar so I see that from 5:30-6:30am on Monday I am biking, running, lifting, swimming, blading, or whatever.