Structure and Success

Routine. Structure. Patterns. Whatever you want to call it. I'm a creature of habit, and these things are perhaps the only reason I do relatively okay at managing my time (when I do).

It's as simple as this - when I break my structure, I usually fail.

This means the moment the clock moves a second past midnight and I'm still awake and I know I'm not getting more than 6 hours sleep before I need to get up for the gym - most of the time I'll either hit snooze on my alarm or just have a terrible workout.

Now, don't get me wrong, I've been pretty good at pushing through and crawling my way to the gym regardless of how much sleep I get, but it's always detrimental to the quality of the session. This is why sticking to being asleep by 10:30 is always the goal. That way I know I'll get 7+ hours of sleep and be ready to hit the weights at 6am. Plus, on the nights before a rest day, it makes that extra hour and a half of chilling before bed, a complete luxury.

If there's one thing I've learned from morning workouts - a bad sleeping pattern will kill any hopes of a good session or a good week.

Structure being a necessity for success extends further than just the gym for me too.

If I don't do my weekly shop and I run out of food in the fridge or freezer, I find it so easy to turn to Uber Eats. (If you've read any of my other blogs, you'll know that ordering takeaways has always been an issue for me.)

Now, I don't mind a few here and there - everything in moderation, right? But the problem is that the moment I run out of food to cook with because I forgot to a Tesco's order, I'll have to go three days with takeaways before the next delivery slot. And even if it's not KFC or Dominos, and I do manage to drag myself to the Tesco Express instead, I end up spending 3 times the price compared to the standard supermarkets, and that adds up very quickly.

I know there's only downsides to veering from my structure or plan. I accept that sometimes I'll be a few hours late to bed, or a couple days late to ordering food shops, but if I want to be as successful as I can at maintaining my health and fitness, structure is the key.

So, if you're anything like me - set reminders, a lot of them. My phone has an endless list of daily, weekly and monthly reminders - honestly, it's a complete mess. But I cannot stress how useful it is.

Now, I'd be very surprised if I have any regular readers here, but if you keep up at all with my blog, you've probably noticed that the posts have been very inconsistent (oh the irony). In truth, other things got in the way and writing the blog slipped my mind... Perhpas I should have set a reminder?

I'm sorry if you've felt deprived of my usual bi-weekly ranting, but from here on I'll be sticking to monthly blog posts. At least you'll all have some time away from me spewing nonsense on a webpage.