| When I started working remotely in March of 2020, I was worried about keeping up my fitness routine. Then, two things conspired to help me figure out a way to do so. First, a friend and neighbor who had worked from home for 15 years, gave me some advice: While you're on a large conference call, do household chores or exercise. You'll be moving, or getting something done, and you'll find it easier to focus on what people are saying. At about the same time, I realized something about myself: I'm not an online workout person. Give me a group class time, and I'll make it to the gym. Tell me to go to the gym sometime during the day and work out by myself, and I probably won't. This did not bode well for maintaining a fitness routine during the pandemic. But then, I had an epiphany. There was a daily morning Zoom meeting that I could listen in on with my camera off. I decided to try taking a short walk or streaming a silent dumbbell workout during the meeting. I aimed for three 20-minute workouts a week and putting the walking toward my goal of two miles a day. I kept it up for a long time – more than a year. But, slowly, although I stuck with walking, I became bored with the workout. I tried switching routines, and it didn't help. I moved to simply completing sets of squats and curls and deadlifts and presses during the meeting, though I often lost count. I found myself cutting the workouts shorter and shorter. Next, the format of the meeting changed, and it wasn't as helpful for me to listen to, so that meant I was exercising less often. And then I went back to the office several days a week and had less time to exercise overall. Nowadays, forcing myself to just pick up the dumbbells seems to require more energy than actually doing a workout. I am officially in a fitness slump. Searching the Internet for a solution, I found some tips that seemed potentially helpful: Get an exercise buddy or accountability partner; try a new kind of workout; change your surface (this would be a great idea if I could balance on a Bosu without dumbbells); exercise with your eyes closed (helps you focus on the movement). But the best tip wasn't a tip at all but a way to look at things, from habits guru James Clear. I like it so much I want to share it. Clear refers to the energy it takes to build and maintain a habit as activation energy. This is a term borrowed from chemistry, where activation energy is "the minimum amount of energy that must be available for a chemical reaction to occur," he writes. The reason I can't even pick up the dumbbells, then, is that the activation energy required is too high. The solution, according to Clear, is a catalyst, which, in chemistry, "lowers the activation energy and makes it easier for a reaction to occur." He says the best catalyst is having an environment conducive to maintaining your habit. Now, the effort required for me to do a dumbbell routine in my home environment is already just about as low as it can be: Turn on computer, find workout, pick up dumbbells. I can't do much more to make things easier. So, I'm wondering if what I need regarding my environment is a new one. At the beginning of April, my gym membership starts up again. Maybe going back to group classes, with an instructor cheering me on and other people suffering along with me, will be the catalyst I need to start up my workouts again. If not, I can always try closing my eyes. Take care. | 
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