"I don't have time to exercise..."

The lack of time is the main excuse that's given when I provide training to people or companies. There are actually two questions there: 

1. do you REALLY lack time?
2. how much time do you need to correct your posture?

Is it really just a lack of time?
It is true that we all have a busy life, myself included. But now, let's play a game and count for a day or a week how much time we spend on

• useless activities (e.g. checking our Facebook, Instagram or Twitter accounts more than once),
• re-doing what we haven't done correctly the first time,
• inefficient processes (e.g., walking back and forth because we're disorganized, or manipulating the same object more than once without any added value),
• being slower than we should because we don't master the tools that we use?

Industrial engineers have a method to hunt and fix these wastes of time: the Japanese 5S methodology, which would be applicable to many daily life situations. Busy people need more than anything to gain expertise in using time efficiently.

Is it always bad to be inefficient?

Some inefficiencies can be beneficial if they allow your body to rest. But if they prevent you from achieving what you should to get better, or from reaching your targets and thereby be less stressed, they cause more harm than good. It's actually a matter of proportions...

​How much time do you need to exercise?
Posture training does not take a lot of time in a row: frequency matters much more than length. For example, my famous upper body reset lasts only 40 seconds, and there's even a 10 seconds version. It's effectiveness comes from how often you repeat it: ideally, once per hour.

Other exercises won't even take a second off your time: after some time, they will form part of your normal way of doing things. Furthermore, you will learn that your day is full of biomechanical breaks: you are at work with your mind, but your body is actually free to move (e.g., when you're on a Zoom conference, when the coffee is being prepared, when you watch the TV journal).

All in all, I ask my clients to free up to 10 min per day in one block. The rest is just about micro-moments here and there, often whilst doing something else.

"This new technique is slower"
Here is another common argument used by those who hate change. I often hear it in my manual handling courses. There are several counter-arguments:

• you're slower right now, because you're not fully trained yet: automating a new posture or technique always takes a bit of time at the beginning. But it gets better by time, and you'll see that using your body properly isn't actually slower;
• instead of looking at the last 5 minutes, how about looking at your entire day or week? When misusing your body, it gets tired quickly. This results in a massive drop in your productivity. Hence, you just need to take another time scale to realize that good posture isn't slower;
• even if these two arguments would prove to be wrong, how much time would you loose if you would fall sick like many of your coworkers do? A shoulder surgery will keep you off work for 3-6 months at least, and chances are big that you remain impaired for years. Same for back surgery. Where is the waste of time, then: in the new technique or in the ill health??

So, what's the main obstacle?
There are two common obstacles to correcting one's habits:

• remembering what you should do: this is the reason why my online posture programs are built around the salami technique, i.e. the idea that we should only set one goal at a time. You can handle one thing to remember... two is much more difficult, three even more, and so on;
• finding motivation: very few people come to me just for prevention. Usually, they have pain and they haven't managed to fix it with a chiropractor, physiotherapist or osteopath. Worrying for their future makes them motivated. The difficult part is when the symptoms start to fade off... This is why we must anchor some new habits before this happens.

Cost vs. benefits analysis: the art of finding excuses...
Whenever you have to implement a change to your life, you will automatically assess the expected costs and the expected benefits. Maximizing the costs and minimizing the benefits is the usual strategy when you don't really want to implement change.

​Regaining objectivity and defining strategies to minimize the costs without impairing the benefits will help you shift your perspective...