I’ve always had this idea that you’re supposed to get stuff you need to get done because it needs to get done. Which is true as far as it goes, but when I feel unmotivated to do a task, I sometimes reward myself.
I often felt like a dork doing that. I mean, come on, grownups just get it done, right?
I missed a part. Grownups do what they need to to make sure they get it done, and self-motivation can take plenty of forms.
Right now I’m rather obsessed with sewing myself a new wardrobe. But I also have work to take care of — a book for a client, studying to teach a class, what have you. Because I work for myself, I could choose to spend most of my day on whatever my current obsession is.
If I made a habit of that, I’d have to get a “real job”. While I will if I must, I really, really don’t want to.
So, to keep myself on task, I reward myself when I get the day’s work done. I reward myself for working out with a Dr. Who episode, and that’s been quite a motivator for me.
I’m rewarding myself for getting work done with sewing time. I have a project that I have to complete a certain amount on each day to get it done, so I agree with myself that after I do that (and any other routine work), I’m allowed to go ahead and do some work on my wardrobe.
Because I’m so obsessed with getting my wardrobe done, it’s been a big motivator for me. It’s not even noon yet, and I got everything business-related I planned to get done today finished. So, I have a few hours to sew before I go for my swim, then have some fun with friends and family this evening.
I have to laugh a little. My mother’s reward for herself when I was growing up was downtime with a craft tray on her lap and the soaps playing in the afternoon. She took being a homemaker pretty seriously, and that meant a morning’s worth of housework, shopping, meal planning and what have you every morning. She moved fast and got it done quick because she wanted to do her painting (or whatever it was she was working on at the time).
I still have the “Housework should be done by noon” mentality, but I’ve had to throw that off because for me it’s business projects. (Which means more hours of work for me because I’m a much earlier riser than my mother!)
I also note that if I have a mentality that says, “Okay, you have to do X thing to earn X pleasure” not only does more stuff get done, the fun stuff has a sharper edge of pleasure to it.
As I’ve mentioned countless times, swimming is an excellent time to ponder.
I was looking forward to a breakfast of fresh-from-the-farm eggs and a nice espresso when the title phrase of this post fluttered through my mind.
Now, I’ve never been thin. I really wouldn’t know. But I’m trying to imagine how it’s gonna feel great.
All my mind can go to is, “Well, it’d be easier to do pullups, and probably with less drag my swim times will improve” and then my mind goes blank.
Being thin won’t feel like anything that I can imagine. I don’t live in front of a mirror, so I won’t have any real, consistent feedback. My body will just feel like my body because I live in it. Whatever you get used to just feels normal. It won’t feel like a constant orgasm of thin. Possibly I’ll get more male attention. I know it sounds weird, but I’m not actually looking forward to that part1.
I used to be a diet counselor. I’ve watched many women lose large amounts of weight. Accomplishing a big goal? Hell yeah, that feels really good — for about twenty minutes. Then you move on to the next thing.
But, I never noticed that their lives necessarily improved from losing weight. They still had issues with their husbands, or had the same sour tempers they started with, or still hated their jobs, or found their children frustrating, or were scared their husbands were having affairs…
Or if they were happy and had positive attitudes (as many did. I don’t want to imply that all my clients were miserable. They weren’t), they were about as cheerful as they always were, laughed about the same amount and there really wasn’t a significant change in their basic attitude.
I know the phrase is supposed to help people focus on their goals. And you know what, “Don’t sacrifice a long-term goal for a momentary distraction” is a good thing to keep in mind. The thing is: “Being thin will feel good” is a lousy motivation. It won’t feel like anything. It’ll just be you and your body. The change is gonna be gradual and it’s just gonna feel normal after awhile. It’ll be your life and you’ll take it for granted after some small period of time.
1It’s not that I don’t like being flirted with. I do. A LOT. But, that sort of attention becomes less attractive when you’ve seen someone trying to ask a girl for a date when she’s at the squat rack. Free advice to the men that wanna date women who lift: Do not distract a person who is lifting enough weight to cause an injury if it is lifted wrong. You won’t score any points that way. Promise. Wait’ll she’s done. It’ll improve your chances.
Whenever those “work at home” scams hit my inbox, working at home in your underwear is often one of the “selling points” of the scam.
I won’t say I’ve never worked in a state of dishabille. I do sometimes.
But you know, Flylady has a point when she talks about “dressing to your shoes”. You do need a mental cue that says, “Okay, this is worktime![1]”
Do I ever work sitting propped up in bed? Goodness me, yes, I do! Finished my last project exactly that way. Sounds pretty cool, dunnit? I’m not saying it isn’t fun. It’s a lot of fun. Knowing that my “office” is my laptop, and can go anywhere is really, really cool. I’m not gonna lie to you.
But friends, work is still work. I might be working naked,[2] but I’m still working. The project still has to get done. If I take off to flit around all day because no-one is staring over my shoulder and my deadline isn’t for another week, work doesn’t get done. Cyberloafing in a formal office? Dandy. Go for it. Work isn’t getting done there, either.
But there’s a big difference between me and the person who practices the 5 Habits of the Highly Successful Slacker. He’s figured out a way to get paid without producing much.
I can’t.
I get paid when the job is done[3]. How I did it, when I did it,[4] what I was wearing when I did it… None of that matters. All that matters is “Did you finish?” and “Was it of good quality?”
Sure, sure, ideally you’ll treat your office job like that. If you do, you’ll probably have a really good, successful career and that’s awesome. The reality is that it’s awfully easy not to.
I like being my own boss and working to the job rather than to the clock.
But those “Work at home in your underwear” scams just make me roll my eyes. It makes it sound like you’ll be making a lot of money, but you won’t be working.
Don’t fall for that nonsense. You know, TANSTAAFL and all that smack.
[1] Mine is turning off my email, getting off the social networking sites, and closing chat.
[2] Though living as I do in Northern New England, it really hasn’t warmed up enough that I want to do that!
[3] Or more likely at specific milestones of the job.
I’d been oscillating since doing the 50 mile challenge at my gym whether or not to swim 1500 yards or 2000 yards as my workout. My normal swim was 1650. The last two times, I decided to do a 1500.
I woke up grumpy as all hell and feeling down on myself, so I chose to try a challenge and swam 2000.
I’d never done that before. Felt kinda good.
A lady in the gym got on the scales and commented (right beside me), “No way have I gained four pounds in a day!”
I laughed and said, “Don’t sweat it. It’s probably water weight.”
Another woman near us spoke up and said, “She’s working out, it’s probably muscle weight.”
In one day.
You wish.
A hard-training, unsupplemented1, young, genetically-gifted beginner female might put on about half a pound of muscle a week for the first five months or so if she specifically lifts to failure. If you’ve been following my listed workouts you will note this is considerably harder than I train2. I’m also hardly genetically gifted.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, strength training is important. But let’s be accurate with the numbers, ‘kay?
You’re probably not gonna jump four pounds of muscle doing aqua aerobics. Oh, do the aqua aerobics! It’s fantastic exercise, easy on the joints, gets your heart rate up, gives you some strength work. Absolutely. But it ain’t gonna turn you into a monster. It’ll help you be a little more healthy, and that’s great. It’s a wonderfully valid reason for doing it.
I don’t wanna be Captain Buzzkill here. I really do believe in exercise and I’m all for doing what you can. I mean, c’mon, I got my start swimming 400 yards three times a week, and lifting less than the weight of an empty barbell for my workouts. It’s taken me coming on to two years to get where I am. Doing what you can is something to be proud of. You don’t have to make anything up or distort it for it to be worthy and valuable.
If you think pop magazine articles on exercise get under my fingernails, you’re right.
1 A euphemism for “not taking anabolic steroids”. 2At the best I can estimate, I’ve put on about four pounds of muscle in the past eighteen months. In a way, we women are lucky at how little it takes to make wonderful changes.
When I signed up to do the whole 50 mile swim, I didn’t think anything of it. I swim a specific yardage three times a week without really being too concerned about it. Habit.
When your name is on a bulletin board and there’s a mileage increment chart where you’ll be getting a marker when you reach a certain number of miles, it puts it into another perspective.
There are people who’ve already swum 10 miles since this started on May 1. I’m so nuts I actually considered trying to swim a mile every single day.
The thing is, that’s absurd. My workout routine of swimming three days a week and lifting three days a week works out fine. I don’t need to add more just because I’m feeling competitive. I might quit or get discouraged. Quitting bad. Working out good. I only “win” if I keep the workout habit.
Certainly I could choose to make swimming my sole workout. But I really don’t want to. I like lifting, want to continue with it and don’t want to devote more time to working out than I already do. Yes, the option’s there, but I don’t want to.
Not “I can’t” or “I shouldn’t” or “I have to…” That’s it’s just a choice with no big moral attachment to it feels really good.
One of the fitness writers I really like is reluctant to post her numbers much. You know, how much weight she’s lifting. With her position as a fitness educator, it makes a lot of sense. Either you’d look at them and be too intimidated to want to start lifting, or as an experienced lifter might say, “She ain’t all that.”
I posted my numbers recently to a board where exercise was under discussion and got called a powerlifter, or had people really surprised I could lift that much, or compared themselves and what they could do to what I am doing and feeling discouraged –especially when they find out how much I weigh.
I like the ego boo of “Damn, you’re strong!” I’ll admit that. But I’m not by any stretch of the imagination a powerlifter. Nor should anyone look at my own weights and be discouraged.
The comparison thing can be just gawdawful stupid. I do it in the gym, myself. What’s worse, I don’t tend to compare myself to the female lifters, I compare myself to the men.
I was lifting this morning and there was one other person lifting there, too. This guy really was a powerlifter. He was working out with 250lbs on the bench press. I felt apologetic about my pitiful 70 lbs on my own bench. Dumb? Of course.
Chances are slim, indeed, that I’ll ever be working out regularly with 250 lbs benching. Well, okay, let’s rephrase that. That’s not even a goal for me. There are women who can bench 200+ and most of them are professional bodybuilders or weightlifters. (These are the drug-free stats. There are enhanced women who lift more than twice that).
For ordinary fitness (rather than as a competitive athlete), comparing yourself to anything but your last (recent) workout is absurd.
I had a martial arts instructor once who put it this way, “Don’t worry about whether or not you’re better than the guy next to you. Worry about whether or not you’re better than yesterday.”
This is gonna talk about body, weight and weight loss issues. Stop reading now if that stuff offends you.
I’m thinking about this because I’m feeling unmotivated to go to the gym. One day, more or less, really doesn’t make a big difference in health or fitness or weight loss. I’m going to do it anyway because I’m interested in keeping my habits strong. It may be a real slacker workout. Who knows. But it’ll be a workout, by damn.
I’m in a funny place body-wise right now. While I am, indeed, trying to take off some excess adipose tissue, I don’t look in the mirror and hate what I see. I look fine. I’m using the clinical term because it’s not too terribly emotionally charged.
I don’t look at my eating habits with any disgust. I’ve switched to doing No S and ya know, it’s a nice, sustainable and sane way to eat. It contains excess, is non-invasive, and I can have treats on weekends if I want them. I’ve been losing about a pound a week, which is about as fast as I care to do so. (Much faster and you’re risking losing muscle. I run my thumb over the calluses on my palms and shudder that the work might be wasted. No thanks).
So where is the funny coming from?
Well, I’m writing a book about getting fit without getting too caught up in the weight loss aspects. I almost feel like I shouldn’t lose weight because of the book. On the one hand, I’m saying, “Look, you can get fit without being focused on getting skinny/thin/whatever.” and on the other? Well, while I’m changing my eating patterns about as moderately as is humanly possible, that change is causing a loss of adipose tissue, and that’s kind of why I chose to do it.
Am I thinking about getting thin when I’m working out? Not at all. If I’m in the weight room, I’m thinking about form. I’m doing the arithmetic twice to make sure I’m lifting the correct amount of weight for my workout. If I’m walking, I’m probably listening to music and thinking about what I’m going to be writing next. In the pool, I’m probably also mentally composing something I’ll be writing — a Misanthrope article, making notes about how the workout is making me feel to talk about motivation to get fit, working out a scene in Stoneflower.
Does, “This will help you lose weight” get me into the gym? No. Not even a little. I have a fair idea of the calories burned by my workouts and they’re not high enough to be a great immediate motivator. (Exercise is important, but it’s not the big calorie burner people think it is). I’m actually feeling unmotivated today. I’m visualizing how much I liked the feeling of accomplishment after a great set of bench presses. I’m running my thumb over the calluses in my hands with a certain measure of pride. I’m thinking about how cool it feels to have Dream Theater’s “Learning to Live” playing on my iPod while I’m doing squats, and the anticipatory rush I feel as I hear the keyboard intro, flip my ponytail over the bar and load the iron on my shoulders. (I have a “weights” playlist and for some reason my iPod will trip to “Learning to Live” when I start my squat set about 80% of the time).
If I feel unmotivated to swim, I visualize the moments where it felt good. I imagine being an Orca, moving sleekly through the water. I think about how I love the blue of the water and the way the light plays off the ripples when I’m doing breaststroke. I think about how the water feels moving past my body. I visualize the stroke technique and the way the stretch and reach feels good when I get the crawl correct. I think about the sense of accomplishment I feel when I haul my exhausted butt out of the water after completing a mile. I think about sensation of my hair coming down with a hot slap on my back when I pull off my cap — and the feeling of pride at how hard I had to work out for my hair to be hot in the cool water.
That is what motivates me on a daily basis, even if I have other long-term effects. The scale? It’s a number. Body shape? I only spend about a few minutes a day in front of a mirror. Doing? Ahhhh, that does feel good.
I tore my left ACL (knee ligament) in the early summer of 2004 attempting a flying side kick. Yes, yes, that wasn’t the wisest of things for an overfat woman in her mid thirties to try. I know, I know.
I didn’t even realize the ligament was ruptured until the lack of stability was causing me problems a couple of years later. I got an MRI and was cautioned that surgery would indeed help and probably solve my stability issues, but that it wouldn’t solve any issues of pain I might have — in fact, I might have more trouble in that area.
Pain, I’m used to. The lack of stability was not something I’m okay with. So I got the surgery and wound up having the medial meniscus repaired at the same time. (We didn’t know it’d been torn until they opened my knee up). Lack of mobility freaks me out, and recovery from the surgery has to rank up there with the scariest experiences in my life after a couple of incidents where my children were severely ill or injured.
It’s been a year on since I’ve had the repair done.
I still never do anything much that requires jumping or torque on my knee, even though that ligament is probably stronger than the one I was born with. Because I’d had to spend so much time being cautious on stairs and uneven ground, it’s become an ingrained habit. In the winter, I walk on ice as if I were in my eighties rather than half that.
I’m starting to plod rather than leap. I’m not light on my feet. This isn’t a weight issue. I’ve been quite light on my feet at considerably heavier than I am now –probably not as strong, either! Hell, I’m not even doing dance moves that I used to.
I’ve been playing a little with plyometrics and doing (careful!) jumping exercises on my stairs. Thing is, it’s a hit or miss, catch as catch can type of thing. I think it would be useful to develop a definite program with gentle progression and make it a habit.
If I get used to certain moves, maybe I’ll be getting my physical courage and faith in my body back.
I have to say I have to frown a little at this one. Not that I’m not still excited that I finally can swim a mile. I freely admit I get a big ole kick out of it. I worked a long time to do it, and that it’s my usual swimming workout is kinda cool to me. It was a big <ahem> milestone.
It doesn’t stop me from hurting when I’m on my feet all day. Hell, it doesn’t stop me from hurting when I’m in the water on my bad days. My joints are so bad right now my hands hurt while I was swimming, never mind how my hips, knees and ankles feel walking home from the gym. This means I’m not exactly gonna be able to hike a few miles even if I need to.
I see fitness as being able to cope with random emergencies and get through one’s day comfortably. When I have flares like this, it does interfere with my day, by damn! Forget running away from danger.
Does this mean I can’t get “fit”? To a degree, that’s about right. I really can’t.
But I do what I can. “Can” is swimming a mile (and used to be swimming 400 yards), or walking two or three (and used to be a couple of blocks). “Can” is lifting heavy weights a few times a week. I can prevent muscle atrophy. I can get my heart pumping harder for a half hour or so to keep my cardiovascular system healthy. I can lift heavy stuff to maintain my bone density. I’m certainly far fitter than I would be if I did not attempt to move on a regular basis.
Do I find it discouraging that I’m never going to get to the point where I can run an easy 5K or be able to go all day like a lumberjack? Kinda. I just try to ignore that, though, and keep on with what I’m doing because I know that working out is what I need to do.
