Here are my actionable tips to finally find time to exercise with a busy schedule and turn working out into as much of a part of your day as brushing your teeth.

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I spend a ton of time talking about methods for fitting your fitness into your busy schedule. From how to make it work as a parent of small kids, to simple lifestyle approaches you can add to your daily routine, to providing simple life hacks for the minimum effective dose of exercise throughout the day.

It’s my passion to show you how to create a healthy relationship with fitness and food and to help you understand that the traditional 60-minute gym session might not be what you need in your life to get the most out of fitness.

But what if you’ve tried all of the above and your life still feels like a chaotic mess?

Perhaps you’ve been haphazardly bouncing around in a cycle of kids, work, kids, random bootcamp classes and then shuttling kids from activity to playdate to activity?

Or maybe you’re so slammed with work, or building your own business, that you simply can’t think hard enough for methods to fit in room for play time, let alone working out?

Then this article is for you.

Today, I’m going to share my strategies to find more time to exercise with a busy schedule. I’m going to breakdown:

• The importance of performing a personal time audit
• How to find a little more focus on that goal you want
• Creative ways to build more structure into your day
• How to build your perfect day

Let’s get into it.

The importance of performing a personal time audit

Before you can start plotting out your day to cram all of your work and hobbies and potential down time into a 24 hour period, you’ve got to understand what you’re working with, and then build around that.

This exercise takes some brutal honesty from yourself, but it’s worth the 10 minutes to do it as accurately and truthfully as possible.

WARNING: Math is about to happen. But, I promise it’ll be relatively easy.

Start by jotting down 168 in big, bold print at the top of your paper. And then we can get to work.

You see, there are 168 hours in a week. And your goal is to find time to exercise with a busy schedule, or plan meals, or focus on “me time,” or whatever it is that you need and/or want to add to your weekly arsenal within those 168 hours.

As I’ve laid out in the past, we aren’t looking for marathon sessions in the gym. As little as 15-20 minutes per day is enough to make significant progress, especially if you’re just getting started on your weight loss journey.

Start by listing out your entire day’s worth of activities from the time you pop out of bed to the time you hit the pillow for sleepy time. And estimate how much actual time you spend doing for everything.

Important note: Do this for a weekday and a weekend, as well. You’ll notice trends and gaps in both schedules. And you likely have some extra time over the weekend that you typically do not account for anyway.

Start with sleep

Let’s say you get an average of seven hours per night. Pretty solid and in line with the generally recommended 7-9 hours of shuteye per night.

That’s 49 hours per week devoted to sleep.

Now to work

In this always-plugged-in world, the office hours bleed right into our home life. So we’ll go overboard here and assume 70 hours of work per week.

That’s 14 hours per day on Monday to Friday. 

Between the 49 hours of sleep and the 70 hours of work, that’s 119 hours used out of your allotted 168 weekly total. For the math majors out there, that’s another 49 hours of time left throughout your week. 

That’s over two day’s worth of time that most people tell me they don’t have.

“But Pete, I have kids and a life … where the hell does that fit into this equation?”

No need to get all hyped up over it. But, you’re right. We didn’t account for that yet. So let’s break that down, too.

Factor in commuting, home life, family time and errands

Let’s go ahead and give you an additional 90 minutes per weekday to commute to work, that’s 7.5 hours total.

Top that off with an extra three hours of shopping/chores.

And then toss in 20 additional hours for family life and quality time for binge watching.

Add it all up and that’s 30-31 hours for “life stuff.”

You still have 19 hours per week left over.

That’s still almost a full day of excuses that you’re making for yourself, despite a pretty robust and busy schedule. 

What can you do with that extra time? Well, you could sleep an extra hour per day. Add in another 20-30 minutes per day to spend with your kids. And still have time for 30-40 minutes of daily activity.

In other words, you really do have time to exercise with a busy schedule. It’s up to you to stop waiting for motivation to get moving and to start building the routine habits into your day and finally make this a priority.

Now it’s your turn … fill this out and get started figuring out your total time during the week and how much actual time you have leftover:

Work: ______ Weekly Hours
Sleep: ______ Weekly Hours
Commute: ______ Weekly Hours
Errands: ______ Weekly Hours
Family Time: ______ Weekly Hours

Add the above numbers. That’s your “Total Hours.”

Now do this equation: 168 – (Total Hours) = Weekly hours you have for [insert your activity or goal here].

Once you’ve done this, it’s time to get realistic with the time you have and how to make it work within your limited schedule to build more structure into your day and finally find time to workout with a busy schedule.

How to find a little more focus on that goal you actually want

I’ve talked quite a bit about goal setting, because I obviously think it’s important. Duh. And I’m a big fan of setting up goals from a behavioral point of view, rather than the traditional lofty pie in the sky dreamscape.

In other words, a goal of losing 10 pounds in 60 days is awesome. But it offers no real path to measurement or accountability. Which means, it’s tough to actually achieve that goal.

And when we’re talking about building in new ways to find time to exercise with a busy schedule, you must be efficient with everything you do. That includes goal setting.

You ain’t got time for those vague goals, you’ve got to drill them down.

So a better approach for the 10 pound weight loss goal would look like: 

• Committing to establishing a calorie deficit (you can find my tips for that in this article: How to set up your weight loss diet)
• Performing 2-3 workouts per week for the next two months (if you need a refresher on some fun workout ideas on a busy schedule, you’ll like this one: How to Use Micro Workouts for Weight Loss)
• Increase daily steps by 2-3,000 per day (here’s why walking is so important for weight loss)
• Reduce restaurant meal consumption to 1-2 takeout/dine in options per week (here’s a guide to eating out at restaurants that you might find handy––and why those meals are soooo tough on your fat loss progress)

I just listed out a bunch of performance and behavioral goals.

But at the end of the day, all of them are manageable and totally doable, despite a crazy busy schedule. And the roadmap that you’ve laid out with this approach would go a long way towards holding you accountable towards that 10 pound weight loss goal.

This is a long and drawn out way to say, it’s cool to have something you’d like to do … but you must actually want to do it and have a plan to achieve it.

Once that happens, you can count that hobby, plan, goal in your newfound scheduling setup.

What can you realistically do in the time you have

Goals are fun. Having a passion to do something is great.

One day, I’d love to run a marathon and finish with a halfway respectable time. But right now, I ain’t got the time to be training and running with the dedication it takes to make that happen. 

My point here is that having some goals is fantastic. But, you’ve got to be realistic with your schedule, too.

So if your goal is to look like the cover model of a fitness magazine, you need to understand the incredible time commitment and dedication to make that happen. So it might not be the best use of your time right now.

You’ve got to match your goals with the time allotted and you must be realistic in doing so. In fairness, this might be one of those exercises that you’ll have to try out and see if it sticks and fits before you can make a judgement.

A few tips can help you narrow things down on some focused approaches to adding that newfound productive habit to your daily regimen:

• Take bite sized chunks to get things done. Instead of a robust goal to write an entire book in a week, be okay with settling for 1-2 good pages per day.
• Be okay with just 20-30 minutes of time to do something. Just make sure that time is truly focused on what it is that you are striving to do. In other words, put the phone down (unless you’re reading my articles or social media posts, in which case, carry on).
• It will not always be perfect, that is not the end game. The goal is consistency. This is true whether it’s executing a proper calorie deficit, performing a quick paced workout, writing a book, picking a reading habit or trying to learn a new language.

I also advise trying to make the time earlier in your day. Own the morning (here’s a great article about learning how to make the most of your mornings) and conquer that one creative or important task that you’d like to add.

Otherwise, life and kids and work or all of the above might end up influencing your ability to get this task done later in your day.

Of course, if that’s just how you roll, cool. Do you. But I know that the more time flies in my day, the least likely I am to strive to be creative or really productive. 

Creative ways to find time to exercise with a busy schedule

Structure isn’t just about nailing down a regular routine and schedule. It’s about the environment(s) you set up to allow that to happen.

Let’s say you’ve finished the time audit in hopes of freeing up room in your schedule to meal prep on Saturday morning. You’ve given yourself 90 minutes in between the grocery store run and your kids’ extracurricular activities for some cooking and general prep for the week ahead.

Fantastic.

However, if you’ve got approximately 15 million dishes from the night before left in the sink to clear out just so you can even start thinking about getting ready to cook, you’ve set yourself up for failure before you even started.

In this case, you’d want to have the kitchen or preparatory area mostly clear and ready for you to dive right in.

This is building efficiency into your newfound practice.

Here’s another example: You’ve finally decided that you’ve got about 30 minutes every week day to crank out a quick workout before hitting the shower and heading out to the office.

Perfect.

But, if you need to scrounge up your workout gear, shake up that pre-workout snack or dose of protein, or if you’ve got to put together your post-shower workout clothes, you’re cutting into your time to actually train.

This leads to a harried and hectic rush to workout, it builds anxiety, and it can lead to you being behind schedule. All of this promotes a negative relationship with the workout altogether. Which in turn means you’re less likely to want to keep going.

Consistency and sustainability are two of the most important aspects of the fitness game.

It won’t be motivation that keeps you going to the gym or cranking out those squats, it’s habits you build that keep you accountable and consistent to the long term.

One way to make this work is to stack your new habit with a pre-existing one

Let’s take the gym prep option for example.

Say you’ve got the bedtime routine down: It’s a quick slug of water to take some multivitamins and fish oil, hit the bathroom and brush your teeth. This habit is baked into your routine. You don’t even think about it.

Stack this habit with a new habit of taking just 3-5 minutes to lay out clothes for the next day and getting the protein powder handy for that morning pre-workout shake.

This approach of habit stacking is a great tool to help you build new habits and structure into your day.

Once you’ve got the structure in place, it’s time to put it all down on paper with the final exercise of this process. Let’s make a game plan for success to really find time to workout with a busy schedule.

How to plan out the perfect day

The next exercise is to map out the perfect day. If all of the stars aligned and you were able to complete every single task, hobby and assignment on your To Do List, this is how the day would unfold.

You’ll start from the time you wake up in the morning and continue all of the way through bedtime.

It’s going to include the activities and goal-setting that you’ve already laid out, whether that was finding more time for working out or reading or meditating or even just family time. Whatever it is that you desperately needed to build more structure into your day to open up room for, this is the time to incorporate it into your schedule.

Map out each hour by hour.

And then know that it will not always come to fruition like this. But, if you’ve been following me for sometime, you’ll know that I’m a big believer in determining a best case scenario roadmap for success. Along with understanding and expecting that the obstacles will come and divert our attention from time to time.

Building this structure into your day promotes freedom. You’ve completed the time audit, so now you know you actually do have the time.

If you’d like the schedule to vary for weekdays versus weekends, awesome. You can create a separate schedule for each. Or if you’ve got different activities or commitments for specific days of the week, you can absolutely work around those, too.

This is your schedule. Your time. Take control of it. Take back the power of your day and your week and your life and you’ll open up so much more.

Just understand that things evolve and change, so you’ll need to be nimble and adapt accordingly. So this might not be the only time you perform this exercise. Go back and check in with it every few weeks or months and see if you need to make a few tweaks.

But having the structure in place creates that foundation to make this so much easier in the future.

Putting it all together

The goal here is to really open up the possibilities of your current schedule. Look, I’m terribly busy with my own coaching business and parenting and life itself, so I understand first hand the rigors of making everything fit into a crammed day.

But it is possible.

It requires some real tough talk and brutal honesty to get to the bottom of the time you spend wasting away on certain things like social media or even when you waste time by randomly flipping channels on the TV to pass the time.

Be true to yourself here. You’ll see that there is actually time in the day to get a lot of things done, as long as you prioritize and allow for a bit of creativity.

Let me help you figure out how to find time to exercise with a busy schedule … 

Finding the right time and right workout plan can be incredibly overwhelming. But, I’m here to help you out.

If you have any questions, reach out. I answer all of my emails at pete [at] petecataldo [.] com … Hit me up with the subject line “Help Me Find Time to Exercise with a Busy Schedule” and I’ll answer any questions you have about training.

Or you can hit me up anytime on the socialz on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

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