Everyday life is typically packed with all kinds of activities – time sinks seem to emerge from all kinds of directions. If only there was more time, more hours in a day.
Here’s a list of practical life hacks to make time for running. Note, I’m talking about making time, not finding time…. The guiding principle of all these hacks is that you don’t need to sacrifice any time for running, instead you make more time for running. Sounds like magic, you can’t make more time? No magic unfortunately, just have a look at the hacks and you’ll see.
These hacks only apply if your life situation is suitable. I’ve used them all. Some more frequently, some less frequently.
Disclaimer: there could be some joking involved especially in the profit calculations.
Commute by running
On 2020 I was planning to run to work and back home once per week, but then came the new normal and there was no more commuting. But until that happened, I was following the plan.
The math is simple, forget the actual values in the equation, it’s the principle that matters. If your commute normally takes 30 minutes but you could run the commute in 45 mins, and you can shower in 15 mins, it takes 2 * (run time + shower time) = 2 * 60 = 120 mins per day to commute by running. That is 120 – 2 * 30 = 60 mins more than if not running. Since you can skip the evening shower of 15 mins, the net time spent is 60 – 15 = 45 mins. Essentially, you spend 45 minutes daily but run for 1,5h. That 100% profit. Magic. Oh, you also save the public transport or car costs. More magic!
There’s a variation. If your commute is short and you can run so slow that you won’t sweat then you don’t need to take a shower. This is the approach I was having. It’s super nice to have e.g. 15 mins run twice a day.
Listen and run
If you have a listen-only work meeting, e.g. an all hands meeting or a company update, you can instead of sitting down and listening, run and listen. Let’s say the meeting lasts 1h. You can run for 45 mins and shower 15 mins. Zero minutes invested, 45 mins of profit. The profit percentage is infinite. Magic!
Walk and talk
When training running, you don’t need to always run. Sometimes it’s a good idea just to walk to recover. This hack is like the listen and run hack. You can participate the meeting normally, because you’re not breathing heavily. If somebody’s presenting something worth seeing you can just stop and have a look at the phone. This doesn’t work too well if you have to present yourself.
Quick lunch
Forget the one hour lunch break.
Instead bring the lunch to the office in the morning, go running for 30 mins during lunch break, take a 15 mins shower and eat the lunch in 15 mins. 1h for the whole drill. If your lunch normally takes 1h (walking to a restaurant, queueing, ordering, waiting, eating, walking back), this whole drill takes the same time. Zero wall clock time invested, 30 mins of running as profit. So, infinite profit percentage. Magic!
Learn and run
If you want to learn or study something, the odds are there’s something for you in audio format, e.g. a podcast. You can run e.g. for an hour and listen to an hour long podcast (that you’d anyways need to listen to) simultaneously. You don’t spend any time running, but 1h listening to a podcast. Infinite profit!
Push the baby
If you have a baby in the family and the baby likes to sleep outside in a pram (they all do AFAIK), go running with the pram. There are super cool running buggies in the market, but you can try out running with the baby with a normal pram. Done that.
It’s much harder to run while pushing the baby so you’ll get a different kind of running exercise for free.
Park life with the family
If your family has the habit of visiting a playground or a park somewhere nearby, you can wear you running clothes in the playground and return home running while the rest of the family takes the car, walks or takes public transport. If you leave slightly before the rest of the family, you’ll be back home at the same time with them.
If the weather is colder, it’s going to be difficult to hang around in the park with the family wearing the thin running clothes. The hack is that you can wear extra clothes on top of the running clothes in the park, thicker gloves and warmer should and just before leaving for the run you can peel off the extra layer of clothes and leave those to the family. The family then takes the clothes back home.
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