Finding Time To Workout With A Busy Schedule [12 Proven Tips]

We don’t all have the same 24 hours, when it comes to day to day requirements for our lives. But there are some tried and true solutions to help with finding time to exercise. Talking with many busy runners, we’ve pulled together 12 tips to help get you back on track.

We know how lame it sounds to say we’re too busy when it comes to finding time for something like exercise or self care.

So we blame life circumstances for why we aren’t getting done the things we keep saying we NEED to do…
I need to go for a run
I need to stretch
I need to take care of myself

…well your need isn’t enough to get it done. You have to want to or you’ll continue to find reasons to be TOO BUSY.

How do busy people find time to exercise?

Let’s get real about finding time to exercise without sacrificing the final shreds of your sanity, sleep or work.

How Can I Find Time To Exercise

Step one is best defined by Zen Habits:

Freeing up your time starts with taking a step back to take a good look at your life. You need to block off at least an hour. Several hours or half a day is better…With this block of time, take a look at your life with some perspective.

Is it what you’ve always wanted?
How would you get to where you’ve always wanted to be?
What do you enjoy doing, but don’t have enough time to do?
What things actually fill up your day? Are there things you could drop or minimize to make more time?

Will this lead to zen running, I’m not sure, but it’s certainly important. If you aren’t willing to look at how you’re currently spending your time, how will you make any changes.

12 Tips for Finding Time to Exercise

All right, let’s take a look at some tips for making extra time in your day to workout. Not every single tip will apply to your life, but if even 1 or 2 help you sneak in an extra 10-20 minutes of movement that’s a win!

Remember the goal on day one isn’t perfection, it’s just to get the ball rolling and overcome inertia.

And yes for the question of how do busy moms workout, these are the tips we heard from so many of them. LOTS of planning and scheduling and then not being afraid to ask for what you need!!!

1. Create a Schedule

Once you’ve found some time to look at your week, then give yourself a schedule to follow!

I’ll give you a fabulous example: My mum is now retired giving her all the time in the world for a daily walk {or to call her daughter, cough}, but for awhile I heard her saying frequently “she just didn’t have time for a walk“.

Listen, she is having a ball with card groups and crafts and decorating their new home, but really what she didn’t have was a schedule.

Parkinson’s Law: work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion

Get yourself on a schedule! And yes once again I’m talking about the benefit of habits…

• Eliminates decision fatigue
• Planning ahead means being prepared
• Gives you deadlines
• Gives you a foundation to plan from when other things arise

Put your workouts into your calendar—plan out which days you’ll do your long runs (weekends are great for these!), which days you’ll incorporate cross-training and strength training, and which days are your rest days (these are super important!).

And remember, it’s okay to move things around a bit to fit your lifestyle. Tuesdays don’t always have to be your strength training days. If you have a Tuesday evening commitment one week, switch it up and make that your rest day.

Time savings: 1-2 hours per week

How to Exercise When You Work a 9 to 5?

As you start going through your schedule, you’ll have to take in to account commute time, shower needs, eating, etc.

That means suddenly the hours you though were available become a lot less.

One thing that has worked for so many is to begin waking up a bit earlier and transition to morning workouts. I give a lot of tips in that article to help you make it happen, but again remember that everything adds up. The walk at lunch, the 10 minutes of core after work, etc.

2. Be Prepared

Once you have a workout schedule, make it easy on yourself by preparing ahead of time. Early-morning workouts are so much easier to stick to if you have to put very little effort into getting out the door.

This might mean laying your workout clothes out the night before a morning run, or throwing your gym bag in the car before bedtime so it’s already there for an after-work gym session.

I can’t function without coffee first thing in the morning—even before a run—so I use the delay start on my coffee pot so it’s already made and waiting for me when I wake up in the morning. That way I can quickly have my cup of coffee and get out the door before I find a dozen other things to fill up my morning.

Time savings: 15-30 minutes per day

How Do I Exercise After Working All Day?

Admittedly in my 20’s I could work all day and head to the gym without issue. Partially because I’d created a habit, I always had my gear in the car and just got it done.

But now in my 40’s my brain is taxed by the end of the day. It’s one of the many reasons that I switched to morning workouts. If that’s not an option for you, then a couple other things to consider:

• Per the above have a plan and be prepared
• Start with some lower intensity, do your warm up or take a walk for 10-15 minutes
• Just getting the body moving often helps overcome that feeling of fatigue and then you can move in to a harder workout
• Play the 10 minute game – “I’ll just do 10 minutes and then I can stop”. Some days you will, but most days you’ll decide to keep going

3. Create Intentional Focus

With the exception of walk and talk (listed below), stop multi-tasking. Stop procrastinating.

People aren’t just cooking anymore — they’re cooking, texting, talking on the phone, watching YouTube and uploading photos of the awesome meal they just made. Designer Paolo Cardini questions the efficiency of our multitasking world and makes the case for — gasp — “monotasking.” Paolo Cardini – Ted Talk

• Task switching requires up to 40% of a person’s productive abilities
• Multitasking can lead to significant anxiety
• Monotasking helps people feel more relaxed and less busy
• Eliminate distractions while you work (shut all those browsers, put away the phone)
• Set a time limit (same Parkinson’s law at work)

If staying focused means getting a project done faster, that not only means giving you more time, but studies show it gives you a feeling of permission to shut off and relax.

And sometimes, isn’t that what you need as much as the time? Permission to spend an hour at the gym or 20 minutes doing a few more hip exercises?

In fact, one of the reasons runners make such great employees is because we WANT to fit in our daily run, so we stay focused at work to get it done faster!

Time savings: Depends on the project.

4. Stop the Binge Watching

OH my gawd you guys, we started watching Dexter (yes like a decade late) and it was a black hole from which I wasn’t sure we would emerge. I had to know how it was going to end, surely he was going to get caught, was Debra going to kill him…WHATTTTT.

Hours that could be spent working out are lost to TV, Netflix, and yes even YouTube. It’s true, you’ve definitely found yourself heading online to look for one thing and suddenly an hour later looking up from a YouTube induced haze.

I’m not saying to NEVER watch tv, man I love to relax with a show. But be realistic about if you’re not getting real goals done like say your run because you’re stuck to the tube.

BONUS: The best idea is to save some of your favorites to watch WHILE working out. I know I just told you to stop multitasking, but I feel like TV gets a pass. This is the perfect time to binge watch your favorite TV shows while you run on the treadmill or foam roll or do any of the bajillion hip exercises I keep preaching to make your knee feel better.

Time savings: 1-2 hours per show

5. Embrace The Ease of Online Shopping

When was the last time you ever made a QUICK stop at Target? You just needed toothpaste, but somehow ended up with an adorable yellow purse, new concealer and a cartoon of Vanilla almond milk. (What??! They were on sale!)

But now you need to get home and put it away because it can’t sit out in the hot car, which totally derails the other plans you had, so you start rescheduling and it’s kind of overwhelming and hell you might as well just watch more Housewives.

Skip the lines, the driving, the checkout splurges.

• Try grocery delivery.
• Try a meal delivery service like HelloFresh if you’re eating out too much.
• Set up auto reship for household items like toilet paper and paper towels and umm Cheerios.
• Use your schedule to plan a bunch of errands on one day and knock a bunch off your to do list.
• Literally run your errands! I absolutely do this using my hydration pack.

Savings 1-2 hours per shopping trip

6. Stop Posting Every Workout

I have found recently a bizarre phenomenon where we want to workout so we can post it to social media, but in order to make time for that we are actually cutting the workout short…true story, I’ve seen it and FELT IT.

Part of my job is being on social and I know it takes time to get an image that I feel like is worth sharing, but none of that means squat if I’m short changing my actual goals.

• Take a bunch of images 1 day so you can do plenty of other workouts without stopping
• Maybe post less so you can take time to engage with others when you do post
• Remember your workout counted even if no one online saw it
• Perhaps, check the clock that tells you how many hours you spent on Instagram for the week and see if you can drop that number

Time savings: 1.5 hours per week

Ok really in my case it would probably save like 2 hours a day, but I love you too much to leave Instagram.

7. Take Advantage of Commute Time

I DO NOT mean being on your phone while driving. Gah, nothing chuffs me more than people trying to text and drive, cause it’s my life they are toying with, but enough about that.

• Listen to podcasts or audiobooks that are going to mentally get you fired up OR help you ease out of the work day.
• Do a hands free call to connect with someone you haven’t seen, we know loneliness is one of the biggest issues in America right now and it’s deadly!
• Turn on some of your favorite music to boost your mood or get you fired up to head straight to the gym and not the couch.
• Turn everything off and give yourself some mindfulness time to just breathe without the distraction of your phone.

Time Savings: Really more of a life enjoyment gain rather than time saving.

8. Have Walk and Talk Dates

Listen I don’t call my random life updates walk and talks for nothing. It’s a GREAT way to multi-task…instead of meeting a friend for dinner or coffee, meet for a run or just for a walk. In fact, this is exactly what I’m doing with a brand new friend next week.

I’ve talked about the benefit of how moving together allows you to open up…so it might just be the best way to have a difficult conversation!

This is one of my favorite ways to get in 10,000 steps a day because it just makes the whole day better.

Time savings: 1 hour per week

9. Involve Your Kids and Family

How do busy parents find time to workout?

I hear a LOT of parents of young kids say they don’t have time for exercise. And I get it, it’s not like you can just leave the little ones at home by themselves so you can stick to your exercise routine.

If you’re in the stage of life where much of your schedule is dependent on what you’re kids need, involve them in the workout with you!

Some ideas:

• go for a family bike ride
• use a jogging stroller and take the kiddos with you on your run
• take a hike as a family
• workout at home while your kid snap
• or checkout these tips for fun running games with kids

Check out these other fun workout ideas that you can do together as a family.

Time savings: varies depending on the activity

10. Utilize Your Lunch Break

Okay, so your lunch hour might not be the best time for a super intense sweat session or a long run (though I am a huge fan of the RUNCH), but you can absolutely get a quick and effective workout in during your lunch break.

One of my favorite quick ones is a “ladder workout.” It’s a bodyweight workout, so you don’t need any equipment. You can modify this to fit your needs, but basically it looks something like this:

• 10 burpees
• 20 push ups
• 30 lunges
• 40 squats
• 50 crunches
• 40 squats
• 30 lunges
• 20 push ups
• 10 burpees

It seems like a lot, but it really doesn’t take that much time. You can get this entire workout done in about 20 minutes. Keep some body wipes and deodorant in your office or at your desk to freshen up a bit afterwards and you’re good to go!

Time savings: 30 minutes per day

11. Workout At Home

“I just don’t have time to get to the gym every day.” It’s one of the most common excuses for not exercising regularly.

Here’s a super easy solution: workout at home instead. You might even be able to cut your workout time in half just by removing your commute to the gym.

And I get it, not everyone has the space or money to put in a home gym. But you don’t need fancy or expensive equipment to workout at home. A little bit of floor space and access to YouTube is all you need.

I absolutely LOVE Yoga With Adriene. She has a ton of free yoga videos, varying in length and intensity. There’s everything from a 15-minute early morning yoga session to a short, 7-minute post-run yoga video. Literally anyone can find an extra 15 minutes out of their day.

• Checkout our complete 8 week progressive bodyweight strength program
• Or the 30 Day Core that’s just 10 minutes a day
• Great  At Home Online Fitness Classes

Time savings: 30 minutes to an hour per workout, depending on your commute

12. Not Every Workout Has to Be Long

As you can see, I’ve already provided several short but effective workouts you can do without needing to take a whole hour out of your day.

Even 10-15 minutes of high-intensity interval training (HIIT workouts) or multiple short walks, can have significant benefits on your overall health.

From University Hospitals: “Short bursts of activity burn more calories, increase metabolic rate, and improve endurance and strength – all in less time. Simply ramping up your activity for a few minutes, a few times a day can improve health,” says University Hospitals sports medicine specialist Joshua Beer, DO.

Time savings: 2-3 hours per week

What Will You Incorporate to Find Time to Exercise?

All right, we just found you way more than 5 hours to find time to workout or even the 5 minutes need to increase your hip stability. Finding time to exercise definitely requires the upfront look at your life, but small minutes carved out are going to do so much for you mentally that you’ll want to keep going!

So the next time you find yourself saying “I’m too busy,” ask yourself why you aren’t willing to put time towards your run, strength, or whatever the task might be?

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