52 Lives

Good intensions are sometimes hard to convert to action. Take for example gym training. It’s the most common training I usually skip. Whenever I’m busy at work or just feel tired, gym can be skipped with a half-of-a-second decision/promise (“I won’t go there today, tomorrow is better for me”). Then tomorrow comes, I get a sudden meeting request and there’s stuff to do, so I make the same decision/promise to myself. Then weeks later I notice I haven’t been doing weight training for ages!

Nobody Wants To Skip Gym But We All Do It

One way to hang on to the training plan is to train with a friend. I go to the gym with my colleagues as often as I can, but since we all have different daily routines, we have been switching the training days according to our changing schedules. And as there’s no specific gym day, it’s been easy to skip training if the others weren’t coming either.

One day I was at the gym with two of my colleagues and we were talking about that we should come there more often to get in shape before the summer. We were choosing which days we would dedicate for training and how could we motivate ourselves . Then the other colleague came up with an idea.

Show Up And Collect Money From Others Who Didn’t Show Up

He suggested that we would start coming to the gym twice a week and if you would skip a session, you’d need to pay the other guy 5 euros.

The guy’s a genious!

At first, I was a bit sceptic about the idea. With my current “commitment level” I would lose money every week and finally be in debt forever! Would I my kids ever get a new pair of shoes again???

After giving it another thought I realised how excellent this idea is. Hit it where it hurts, as the old saying goes. Can you name a more sensitive spot than a guy’s wallet?

It was time to convert this idea to action.

Convert Talk To Action - Schedule Time For Training And Keep Track Of The Money

Couple of hours later as we had left the gym, I made a recurring meeting request to our Outlook calendars. To test drive the idea and to be in shape before summer the meeting request was set until June 1st for each Tuesday and Friday. Since the training time is now reserved from our calendars, it’s easier to schedule other tasks and make it to the gym.

After the request was sent, I created an Excel workbook for the money flow to our network hard drive. The workbook contains 3 columns: training dates and our names. Here’s how it works:

• If you come to the gym, you’ll get an X mark in your column.
• If you’re sick or have some other bullet-proof reason to skip training, you get an 0 (zero).
• If you’re lazy and don’t show up, you get the number 5 in your column.
• At the end of the columns I added the SUM function, so it calculates the amount of money the person needs to pay to the other.

Meeting requests and Excels might sound a bit… geeky… but if it works, I don’t mind

Rinse And Repeat Until It’s A Habit!

We’re just starting to use this system, but I can imagine this to be succesfull. If it works the way we wanted (to get us train more), I think we’ll continue the same train-or-pay system. This could also be transferred to other areas, e.g. eat junk only on Saturday or pay 5 euros a piece. I hope that over time the money steps aside and working out twice a week turns into a habit.

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