We all have a to-do list of some sort. Most people make due with a mental one, organizing each day’s plans and priorities inside their head. I prefer to keep a written to-do list so I can do it more methodically and prevent memory lapses. In any case, we all need to sort our priorities each day and cross things off our list as the day progresses.

But alas, we’re all human. Even the most organized and focused among us cannot be maximally productive every waking minute of each day. I try to be, but I confess to falling short frequently. Sometimes fatigue sets in and I take a longer than intended break. Other times, my mind wanders off. But more insidious are the times when I just don’t feel like doing something even though I know it must get done. It’s the age-old coping mechanism we’ve all resorted to before: procrastination.

Personally, I tend to procrastinate on tasks that are mind-numbingly tedious or that I believe will be complicated and confusing. Dictionaries define procrastination merely as the delay or postponement of an action, but I posit that procrastination is more so a mood. It’s really the failure to act due to a dread of getting started. And I realize that the dread is all in my head.

We can’t purport to have pep and procrastinate at the same time, so I think the most effective solution to procrastination is to imagine it as one side of a coin. We just need to visualize a coin with two sides: Dread Getting Started / Look Forward to Getting It Done. Then, when you feel dread about getting started on something, try flipping the coin over in your head and look forward to getting it done instead.

It works because you already imagine being free and clear of the task, and that shifts your intention. “I intend to get started” and “I intend to get it done” are very different attitudes.

Obviously, all you’re doing is reversing your perspective. It’s not a complicated idea, but it takes practice to be able to implement it as a matter of habit. Lastly, remember that the key is to flip the coin immediately so that procrastination has no chance to take root.

Sayonara until next time.

To put it succinctly, being in good shape improves the quality of time you have on this earth. There’s no upside in letting yourself go, and certainly none in becoming puny, rickety, or sickly.

That said, vanity is still alive and well, and the desire to improve appearance is a major motivator for many people. Just glance at social media, and you’ll see no shortage of people preening, prancing, and posing in various stages of undress. So if your main reason for training is to look better, you’re not alone. And when it comes to appearance, a well-balanced physique creates a statuesque silhouette that's easy on the eyes.

Obviously, your genome plays a significant role in how your body develops. Nevertheless, aiming for a balanced physique, or as close as you can get to it, is most likely to yield your best look. The idea of balance is simply that no part of the body is awkwardly large or small in relation to the body as a whole.

If you’re naturally broad-chested with relatively skinny legs, then achieving better balance would entail working out your legs frequently under relatively heavy loads. If you have a pear-shaped physique, with a large lower body and a comparatively small upper body, then slimming your legs down and bulking up your arms and torso will yield better balance. Again, you have to work with the genetics you’re endowed with, and it may not be realistic to achieve perfect balance. And that’s OK. Any improvement you achieve is a victory.

It helps to regularly train all the major muscle groups—think legs, glutes, core, chest, back, arms, and shoulders—and antagonistic muscle pairs, such as biceps and triceps, pecs and lats, and hamstrings and quads. Many people focus on one or two muscle groups and neglect others altogether. It can not only create an imbalance in your physique but also mess up your posture because disproportionately strong muscles will pull joints in a particular direction.

Think about how many people have shoulders that hunch forward. It’s because we tend to push a lot more than we pull and hunch over more than we lean back, so our front delts are typically more developed than our rear delts. In this case, to achieve a more upright posture with pinned back shoulders, you would need to do rows and flies that engage the rear delts.

It doesn’t take an IQ of 150 to figure things out. Honor the age-old approach of exercising frequently and vigorously and minding your dietary habits. And include plenty of strength training because it’s particularly effective for sculpting your body.

Sayonara until next time.

I want to commend all the people who put in the work to stay fit and don’t go out of their way to court attention for it. They’re not inclined to preen, prance, and pose—what I call the Three Ps—but they look good in subtle ways that cannot be missed.

You may know someone like that who’s modest about being in great shape. Although you can see it in their stance, silhouette, and stride, they neither flaunt it nor crave compliments. They’re someone who’s impressive but doesn’t try to impress.

Hopefully, you’re that person. You own your identity, meaning you’re aware of who and what you are and are not. You know that certain thoughts, tendencies, and habits are required to be who you are, while others are unbecoming. Then you behave with intent to validate that awareness.

If so, then keep being who you are because that makes you impressive.

Sayonara until next time.

You probably go to the gym with the intention of working out. After all, you’re paying the membership fee, and the gym is full of weights and expensive equipment to train with. There are mats to perform stretching exercises on, exercise balls, and other accessories placed throughout, clearly indicating that it’s a place for you to build a strong, healthy body and mind.

Of course, people go to the gym for their own reasons. Some train more intensely than others, and training regimens vary among gymgoers. Then again, there’s a subset of gymgoers who are social butterflies. They work out too, just not nearly as much as they talk. I posted a video about this recently on Bounce Pep’s YouTube channel, and I figured it would be a good idea to consolidate my thoughts into a Pep Talk.

The social butterfly shows up at the gym eager for fellowship with other gymgoers. They’re pleasant and always ready to converse, but at the expense of actually exercising. I know social butterflies at the gym who talk for 10 minutes or more for every 1 minute that they exercise. And as long as they’re mingling with other social butterflies, there’s no harm in it because that’s what they’re all there for.

But if you go to the gym for the express purpose of working out, pace matters, and that makes managing your interactions with social butterflies important. When doing a certain number of sets with timed rest intervals, for example, getting sucked into a long-winded conversation with a social butterfly can kill your rhythm, and you run the risk of cooling off before you’re ready to. For that reason, you need to signal subtly to the social butterfly your intent to stay focused on training. All but the most tone-deaf of them will take the hint.

On the flip side, if you’re one of the social butterflies at the gym, try to ascertain the situation before striking up a conversation. Someone who’s in a rhythm and training with intent probably wants to stay in the moment. It’s not the right time to pull them into a conversation, and they're likely going to think you’re intrusive, even if they’re outwardly cordial. It’s fine to be outgoing and say a word or two, but try to keep it short and allow the other person to keep their momentum.

Sayonara until next time.

Some folks can’t help but complain, identify problems, and find fault. We all have known someone like this. It’s not necessarily that they’re wrong in their observations, but problems are a dime a dozen, and it’s all too easy for them to criticize and see blemishes in everything.

Their habitual pessimism and worrying can be insidious. You could be having a great day or a positive experience, and a single negative comment from the habitual pessimist could ruin your mood if you allow it.

Relationships are almost literally magnetic, and misery does, in fact, love company. So be on guard if you must be around someone who’s always complaining or worrying. They’re entitled to their opinions, but you’d be wise to hold them at arm’s length. Be intentional about who you keep in your life, and spend your time with people who are constructive and offer solutions instead.

Your thoughts produce the outcomes in your life. The same can be said of your relationships.  They’re correlated in the same direction, and either one of those factors can taint or enrich the other. Be the person who seeks solutions.

Sayonara until next time.

Is it better to be comfortable or uncomfortable?

It depends. There are appropriate times for both, but let me first clarify what I mean by discomfort. It is not physical pain or strain so severe as to risk injury. Discomfort should not be dangerous, and I don’t advocate anyone pushing themselves to the point of injury. So, let’s think of discomfort more as the experience of struggling.

Comfort is the absence or relief of inconvenience, hardship, pain, or feelings of awkwardness. We all like to be comfortable, and there are times when it is both called for and deserved.

You should be comfortable when you’re relaxing in your own home or eating a nice meal. When traveling, a comfortable journey and nice amenities make the experience all the better. If you’re on a date with someone, you certainly want the time to be comfortable for both of you.

But there’s a flipside. It turns out that stagnation often comes disguised as comfort. Too much comfort in the wrong setting can lull you into complacency, so you need to be mindful of becoming a bit too comfortable.

At no time is this more true than when you work out. That’s when a little struggle is a good thing, as feeling some discomfort ensures your mind and body are being challenged. If it always feels easy, it means you’re leaving too much in the tank and robbing yourself of the opportunity to overcome mental and physical hurdles.

Anytime you persevere through discomfort and cross the finish line, it’s a victory for you. And every victory validates your competence, which builds your confidence. So, appreciate the struggle when you work out because you’ll be better for it.

Sayonara until next time.

People who are unaccustomed to exercising can struggle to get started and keep it up. It’s not because exercising is too hard but rather because sedentary habits can be difficult to break. More so than a physical problem, it’s a mental issue. Lazy impulses infest the mind and easily overwhelm any impulse to be more active if the person is not seriously committed to getting in better shape.

From the get-go, it requires an understanding of momentum and its importance to overcome this challenge. It has a formula, in fact. P is momentum, m is motion, v is velocity, and p=mv. So, motion multiplied by velocity equals momentum.

The same formula must be applied for you to stay in shape, and the key to the equation is that there can be no velocity unless something is moving. If you want to get in shape, then, you must get off your butt and move (i.e., motion) your body frequently (i.e., velocity) enough to build fitness habits (i.e., momentum). You can think of a habit thus formed as momentum manifested.

Frequency is vital if you’re serious about your fitness. Working out once a week or sporadically isn’t going to cut it. You have to do it more frequently and with more consistency. And you can’t allow lazy habits to reassert themselves because sedentariness has negative velocity and will undermine any positive momentum you’ve built.

So, now that you know the formula, be sure you’re always building positive momentum for your fitness. Stick with it, and favorable results are bound to follow.

Sayonara until next time.

Weight training has basic principles and techniques that must be learned and retained, no matter how advanced a person becomes. So if you commit to it, then you commit to practicing the basics.

And then what? What do you do when the basics get monotonous and boring?

When it comes to building strength and muscle, every basic exercise has variations that can be applied to break the monotony and provide new challenges. Something as simple as varying your grip between pronated (palms facing down or outward), supinated (palms facing up or inward), and neutral (palms facing inward towards each other) will alter the effect of an exercise. Arm, hand, leg, and foot spacing can be wide, medium, or narrow.

You can add supersets, where you perform two different exercises in succession with no break in between. Or try some drop sets, where you perform the same exercise until failure, lower the weight, and continue doing the exercise until failure again, and then lower the weight again and continue, with no break between sets. Supersets and drop sets are both for increasing the intensity of your workout.

Speed up or slow down your reps, or pause to add time under tension. Vary your range of motion to engage different muscle fibers. Most exercises require both concentric (contracting/closing motions) and eccentric (extending/opening motions) movements to complete a rep. By trying different ranges of contraction and extension of a body part, you will observe muscles being engaged in different ways.

Your workouts don’t have to become stale. Always be curious and give new tweaks a try.

Sayonara until next time.

My brother Quentin teased me with that question years ago. We were at home having coffee, and I must have put three or so teaspoons of refined sugar in my cup. I don’t remember exactly how much it was, but Quentin always had a wisecrack ready for any situation, and it was just the opening he needed.

I should have said thank you to him, because it’s now decades later and I still remember those words. We consume a lot of sugar, both unnecessarily and habitually. Some people drink soda or juice with every meal as a matter of course. Eating naturally makes us thirsty, so consuming sugary drinks while we eat makes it easy to take in too much sugar too quickly.

If you’ve got a habit of drinking sugary drinks with every meal, how about making a change? Years ago, I stopped having sweetened drinks with my meals because I realized it was a bad choice for my health. I stick with water or tea now and enjoy them quite much. Only rarely do I have a sweetened drink with a meal now, and I’m conscious about keeping the portion small.

So I’m challenging you to cut back on refined sugars a bit, especially from soft drinks and juice during meals. They’re OK as an occasional treat, but every day all the time has consequences such as unhealthy weight gain, diabetes, inflammation, cancer, and heart disease. It’s a modest step you can take to ward off some chronic health problems and protect the quality of the time you have.

If sugary drinks are the automatic choice for you, ask yourself if you’re really in control. Don’t be mindless. I encourage you to cut back a little and live.

Sayonara until next time.

My daughter Julia is 10 years old and into ballet. Every year in November, her class holds a ballet recital, which happened last weekend this year. Some recitals are better than others, and some years there are more slips and falls than in others. But if there’s one thing that’s certain, it’s that the ballerinas are almost all stupendously flexible.

I’ve never been a dancer, and I’m nowhere near as flexible as my daughter, but I do work on it regularly. Every morning after I take a shower, I go into my living room and do some stretches. It’s usually only for a few minutes, but being lithe feels a lot better than being creaky, so I don’t leave the house before completing my stretching ritual.

So, how about you? Try to do something each day to maintain your flexibility. Just don’t let your body get creaky and squeaky.

Flexibility enhances your mobility, so do some stretches every day and never work out without warming up. Keep your body flexible so you can move when you want to move and go where you want to go. It only takes a little effort.

If you’re going to work out, do some stretches and warmups at the beginning. The point is to increase your range of motion by stretching out your muscles before you put a heavy load on them. You’ll want to put a little more focus on your lower body, from the waist downward, if you’re primarily concerned with increasing mobility. But if you’re going to be working out your upper body, be sure to adequately stretch out your back, shoulders, neck, and arms as well.

Be smart. Ensure that mobility and safety are not afterthoughts in your workout. Haphazardly rushing into high-intensity exercise or heavy lifting with no preparation can cause injury and lead to a world of pain and frustration. It’s better to start out flexible and warm. So slow down a little and lay the groundwork.

Little efforts and considerations every day make you your best.

Sayonara until next time.

Being helpful and compassionate to others is honorable. Just don’t neglect to set some boundaries around your time.

I talk and write often about how precious time is because I observe so many people letting it escape their grasp. No one of us lives forever, wish as we may. The pharaohs of Kemet buried treasures and beloved items in their tombs, believing it would all go with them to the eternal afterlife, only to have tomb raiders come along and rob them blind.

So don’t kid yourself. Your time is a finite resource, so don’t get robbed of all you have.

My tax accountant emailed me recently in distress because he’s overworked. He’s not a young man anymore, and it’s bothering him how much his time is being eaten up by everyone else. He expected to be hitting a more relaxed stride at this stage of his life, but he feels nothing but pressure to hit the gas pedal instead.

I emailed him back with an elegant solution: start saying "not now" and "no" more often.

The job, family, friends, and errands—not to mention unproductive distractions—can easily command large chunks of your time. But what about time for you to level yourself up so you can really live life?

Your time is invaluable, and you deserve to have some for yourself. But in order to have it, you need to take it. You can’t always attend to everyone else’s interests and problems, which they often create. Before you know it, you’ll be burned out on matters that you should not have taken on in the first place.

Remember that YES is nice, but sometimes NO is necessary. Be diplomatic about it, but keep some time to attend to yourself.

Sayonara until next time.

I want to send a message to all the men out there. And ladies, I hope you back me up on this.

Over the years, I have observed that a lot of guys are oblivious to how poor their posture is. At least half the grown men I see have unflattering posture, and it often starts during childhood.

I was fortunate because my father, Bill Johnson, would not allow me to have poor posture. If I was ever caught slumping, I would be ordered to stand up straight and take my hands out of my pockets. My father demanded that I carry myself with some dignity.

So, my message to the men today is: make it your policy to maintain good posture. Take a look at your gait in the mirror and ask yourself if there’s room for improvement. If so, work on standing with your back straight and shoulders up, and eliminate any lazy-looking bend in your knees.

Make it your policy to maintain good posture because it means something. Keeping good posture sends a message to yourself that you’re a man with a purpose. And if you don’t already have a purpose, you’ll start to sense the need to find one.

Strength training with useful tools is a great way to improve your posture. Bounce Pep provides compact tools you can use when working out. Our product suites, in particular, give you sets of tools to enhance and level up your workout experience.

A man with a mission should stand as such and walk with purpose. His gaze is aimed ahead and not fixed on the ground below. That man is supposed to be you.

Sayonara until next time.