Now that you’re back home, you put together your workout plan based on a few “have killer abs in 10 days” and “flab no more in 25.2 days” type articles in the magazines you bought. The next morning you pop out of bed and head to the gym.  A few exercises in and you’re exhausted. Remember, you haven’t worked out in forever.  You head home, take all of your new supplements and cook a healthy meal.

You maintain this routine for the next week or so with your motivation at an all-time high. Saturday comes around and you’re ready to weigh yourself. You *must* have lost a bunch of weight since you’ve gone to the gym with your new clothes, superhuman sneakers, fitness magazines, supplements and healthy eating (minus the occasional grazing of snacks). You step on the scale and you’re horrified to see you only lost a couple pounds. Disappointed you walk away and wonder why. You’ve been so focused on getting healthy so what happened?

The problem is that you were focused on the wrong things. You were focused on feeling like you were getting healthy instead of actually working on getting healthy. You got caught up in the cool clothes, supplements and quick fixes that the fitness magazines told you would work. See any correlations to social media?

We get caught up in fiddling around with the spacing between our social sharing buttons or the fastest shortcut to more followers or to having the newest gadgets that will make your content amazing. We become frustrated when we’re not in the “Top 25 Twitter Users for the First Week of January” list. We become disenchanted, blow social media off and claim that it doesn’t work.

Getting in shape (and staying in shape!) and long-term success in social media both require the same thing: focusing on what matters. The people who I know that are really in shape rely on a basic set of equipment and exercises. Every day they have to make a conscious decision to make time to workout, cook healthy and other things such as getting enough sleep, take supplements or however else they lead a healthy lifestyle. They grind on an ongoing basis with a focus on small wins (e.g. trimming a few seconds off their mile) and achieving long-term goals (e.g. lowered blood pressure).

This holds true for social media, as well. Many of the folks that are looked up to in social media have gotten there because they grind it out every day. Whether it’s writing new blog posts, doing research, engaging in social channels or any number of other tasks, they are consistent. They didn’t buy their followers, they earned them. They just didn’t get a keynote speech handed to them, they worked their tails off for years producing content and building their resume as a professional speaker.

You may be shaking your head at this point saying that you know all of this – it’s all old-news. However, every morning I see people at the gym focused on the wrong things. And every day I see people in social media who are focused on unimportant tasks or hunting for the next shortcut.

There is no magic pill.  Stop trying to take shortcuts. Understand what really matters. Stay consistent. Stay focused. Any questions?

Working out doesn’t have to be that difficult.  First of all, if you’re intimidated, embarrassed or concerned, try hiring a trainer, even if it’s just for a single hour.  I promise, it will be helpful.  Even though I workout 4-6 times per week, I still try to add in other ways to stay healthy and get in a little extra workout whenever possible.  It helps to keep me focused and as long as it doesn’t interrupt the rest of my life, why not?

So, today I have 7 tips for you that are simple, fast, and won’t take longer than a few minutes extra each day, if even that long.

7 Simple Fitness Tips

1. Unless you work on the 103rd floor, consider taking the stairs.  Just by taking the stairs to the 4th floor where I live, I add an extra approximately 11,000 stairs to my daily routine per month.  For me, it is usually faster than the elevator, doesn’t make me tired, but does keep me active.

2. Unless you’re going to a professional sports game where the parking lots are miles long, park a ways away from the front door.  I park approximately 500 steps away from my truck at my house even though there is parking approximately 50-100 steps from the front door.  This adds an additional 22,400 steps per month to my activity, if you account deduct the 100 steps per day I could be walking.

3. Buy a pedometer.  You can find them for relatively cheap, around $20 or so, and if you’re a competitive person like I am, it will become a game against yourself.  Set your goal for 10,000 steps per day.  If you buy a little fancier one it will even calculate miles and calories burned.  Track your progress in a simple Google Docs spreadsheet and try to improve a little more each day.

4. Buy a bluetooth headset for your office.  If you’re usually stuck at your desk all day long on conference calls, buy a bluetooth headset for your office phone.  Then, take your calls from the headset and walk around your office if you don’t need to be behind a computer screen.  If you’re going to try this, make sure you get a Plantronics set.  They’re the best, bottom line.

5. Pick up workout bands.  You can hide these easily in a desk drawer or carry them in your bag when you’re traveling.  These little bands will allow you to get in a decently intense workout when you can’t make it to the gym.  Even if you do make it to the gym regularly, you should add these into your workout.

6. Go for a walk around the building at lunch.  Take 10 minutes at lunch time and take a walk around your building.  Just this little additional exercise will help to energize for the long afternoon ahead and will add a couple more thousand steps into your daily routine.

7. Do a set of pushups or situps.  It’s mid-day and you’re tired.  You’ve been staring at your screen for what feels like 60 hours and it’s not even lunch time yet.  Hop out of your chair, pop down and knock out a set of pushups.  Nothing crazy so you don’t mess up your office attire, just 10-25.  Even if you did 25 pushups only 3 times per week, it would add up 300 extra pushups per month.

As you can see, none of these suggestions are particularly hard, take up a lot of time, and are all meant to give you an extra burst of energy.  Whether you workout constantly or don’t even know what the word “gym” really means, adding any one of these tips into your daily routine will help you out.

What easy things do you do to try to keep in shape, stay healthy, and stay energized?

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Photo by: Phillip Klinger