The behavior I decided to track was working out/stretching as advised by my physical therapist. I tracked myself starting on Thursday and ending on Monday since this is not a behavior that typically happens multiple times per day. I chose this behavior because it is especially personally important to me right now as I really do need to commit to the full treatment if I want physical therapy to work. I started on Thursday because that is when my PT appointments are (right after class), so I wanted to have a full idea of what happens after a full workout and what is stopping me from consistency. As for the tracking, I tracked every time I did any physical activity, including chores, showering, walking. I also tracked any soreness and fatigue. Lastly, I treated some of the tracking as a sort of journaling exercise, where I tracked moments when working out came to mind, but I decided to do something else, and what led me to that decision.
Since Thursday was an abnormally tough day for me in PT, I noticed that I was sore for 2 days instead of the usual 1. I noticed that after the soreness was gone, mental fatigue played a huge role in my sensation of physical fatigue. Sunday was an especially insightful day as all I did was homework on my laptop, I did not even step outside. However, in the evening, when I had the time to work out, I felt extremely physically tired because of how mentally drained I was.
In drawing the connection circle and iceberg I identified 2 interesting things that provide friction to my desire to work out. One was the yoga mat issue. I need the yoga mat to work out from home. To put the yoga mat down, the floor needs to be tidy. For the floor to be tidy I need to have the energy to clean it, or “feel ok” as noted in my connection circle. Working out makes me feel better, which would give me the energy to clean it, but if I don’t work out I don’t feel good, so I don’t clean the floor, so I have nowhere to put the yoga mat down, and so on and so forth. The second issue that I truly did not realize was even an issue is showering. I always shower in the morning because I’m way too tired to shower at night. After I shower in the morning, I don’t want to workout and then go to class. But I also am way too tired to workout in the evenings. As I’m typing this I realize that there is an extremely obvious solution to this in that I could workout in the morning, then shower, then go to class. However, this would mean that some days I need to wake up even earlier than I do now (8 AM), and I don’t think that’s possible.
I really enjoyed this exercise, I never realized how circular this problem had become and how things like this are never really a matter of motivation or willpower. Maybe I’ll start working out at 7AM this week and see what happens :’)
