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There are some things in life that are far more important than others. You may value your car and your home may be your most valuable investment. Your friends and family are dear to you but the most valuable thing is the time you have on this earth. Without that time to enjoy what is available nothing is of value.

Without the time to appreciate and enjoy the things we have they lose their value. You cannot take monetary wealth with you when your time runs out. It matters not at all whether you are the richest or the poorest man on earth. When time runs out it is game over.

We throw away time like it was something we had unlimited amounts of yet it is the most precious thing we have. We waste an hour here and there watching tv or shopping and at the time we may be amused but will we look back and regret that we didn’t use that time more wisely?

We are fortunate to be here, living and breathing and able to enjoy wonderful relationships with friends and family. Spending quality time with your family is surely one of the most rewarding things we can experience. Yet, we have to work and by working we are able to support our families and enjoy time with them but we also work long hours to buy TVs, computers and gadgets when we could maybe make much better use of that working time.

When we are trying to decide what we want in life and where we see oursleves in the future how much time do we spend thinking about time? We compromise constantly and don’t do the things we want to do because we have limited time and do the things we have to do. How much time do you spend working just to buy a new car. You have to decide if that is the best way to use the time you have.

Very few of us pay real attention to our time steadily ticking away. We think of time as miutes rather than years. We rush to cash the train on time but we use up our time carelessly not thinking about how satisfying or rewarding our use of that time has been. We should think like a time manager. We are not talking time management for business here. We are talking about time management in our personal life.

Those people who do understand that learning time management can really help them make the most of their lives generally lead happy and rewarding lives. They may, or may not, be wealthy but they know the value of time. Other who do not understand run around in circles always struggling to keep up with the constant demands on their time.

Most people have only ever thought of learning time management for business purposes but in reality it applies to life in general. The better and more satisfying use we make of our time the happier we will be. It will probably make us more successful too with all the benefits that can bring.

If you’re having difficulty completing tasks that you assign yourself on your to-do list, you’re not alone. Many people have trouble keeping up with their to-do lists, and these are tips that will benefit both them and you. There are a number of relatively simple steps you can take so that you’re much more effective when you try to accomplish the tasks you have on your to-do list. Here are two suggestions to help you complete your tasks much more efficiently and quickly than you had been able to before you implemented them.

Don’t Bite off More Than You Can Chew. If tasks on your to-do list are too big to accomplish at once, they might leave you feeling overwhelmed so that you can’t even get started. By contrast, smaller steps are much easier to take care of and still move you closer to the results you want. Take a moment to sit down and take a look at the big tasks on your to-do list and then break them down into smaller steps; these will be much more manageable and easier to accomplish for you. Once you’ve broken them down, assign them to your to-do list on different days; some will stay on today’s list, while others can move to another day.

Even these smaller steps will feel like accomplishments, and you won’t feel trapped or overwhelmed by having to try to accomplish a much larger task you might not have time to do all at once. For example, instead of saying that you’re going to “do some marketing-related work,” you could say instead, “Do some research on my top three competitors,” “plan the first three steps of my sales process,” “get in touch with clients or potential clients,” or, “write a press release.”

Forgo Things That Waste Your Time. You probably have a lot to do every day; even so, you can find yourself wasting time by doing things that can wait until later. This type of “time wasting” behavior can severely cut into the time you have so that you don’t have enough to do what you really need to do. Consider such Time wasters as distractions, interruptions, telephone calls or e-mails, meetings, or a simple distraction; and other things can waste time you could be using better.

Take a moment to sit down and figure out which are your biggest time wasters, then eliminate them one by one so that you have more time to do what you need to do. These time wasters can also waste both energy and productivity, so that you have less time to get done what you need to do, and you are much less efficient besides.

Junk food can rightfully take its place as one of the many causes of overweight and obesity, not because it’s necessarily bad, but because people, especially children, are eating it too often.

The main problem isn’t even so much the junk food itself, but the lack of time for food preparation that sees stressed parents picking up or ordering in, instead of cooking. But as Jamie Oliver says, there is really no faster “fast food” than home-prepared food, because it takes longer to go and get or wait for purchased meals than it does to throw something exciting together in your own kitchen.

As well as home-cooked meals being faster than “fast food”, they can pack a flavour punch that the junk is seriously short on. And with families under the pump with rising food costs, learning to knock up superb meals in just minutes can shred the family food bill and give the children in the family a true health advantage.

Home-prepared food is the fastest, tastiest, cheapest, and all-round best way to go - if you know how to prepare it.

A brand new Australian web site hopes to have a global impact by helping parents to be more confident about ripping into some truly fast meals. They’ve started a “Fast Food Bank”, seeded it with a few great recipes, and hope that families will get with the spirit and post up their own fast favourites for everyone to share.

To be included on the site each recipe must pack a great flavour punch, must be 100% healthy, and must be prepared in 30 minutes or less. Look out for “Eastern Turkey Wrap with Tabouleh” - it’ll set your taste buds zinging just reading about it!

FastFoodBank.com is part of the Kind Communities Initiative, with a mission of giving families everything they need to support individual and family health and wellbeing, to drive down rates of overweight, obesity, diabetes and depression and give them their lives back in an overly hectic world.

“Who’s the Boss?” 10 ways to start taking control (time management, goal setting, record tracking)

At first glance, it would seem that positive thinking and Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) have nothing to do with one another. But many of us with ADD develop negative thinking patterns because we become frustrated by our challenges and frequent feelings of being overwhelmed. This negative outlook then makes it even harder for us to manage those challenges and move forward.

Practicing positive thinking allows people with ADD to focus on our strengths and accomplishments, which increases happiness and motivation. This, in turn, allows us to spend more time making progress, and less time feeling down and stuck. The following tips provide practical suggestions that you can use to help you shift into more positive thinking patterns:

1. Take Good Care of Yourself It’s much easier to be positive when you are eating well, exercising, and getting enough rest.

2. Remind Yourself of the Things You Are Grateful For Stresses and challenges don’t seem quite as bad when you are constantly reminding yourself of the things that are right in life. Taking just 60 seconds a day to stop and appreciate the good things will make a huge difference.

3. Look for the Proof Instead of Making Assumptions A fear of not being liked or accepted sometimes leads us to assume that we know what others are thinking, but our fears are usually not reality. If you have a fear that a friend or family member’s bad mood is due to something you did, or that your co-workers are secretly gossiping about you when you turn your back, speak up and ask them. Don’t waste time worrying that you did something wrong unless you have proof that there is something to worry about.

4. Refrain from Using Absolutes Have you ever told a partner “You’re ALWAYS late!” or complained to a friend “You NEVER call me!”? Thinking and speaking in absolutes like ‘always’ and ‘never’ makes the situation seem worse than it is, and programs your brain into believing that certain people are incapable of delivering.

5. Detach From Negative Thoughts Your thoughts can’t hold any power over you if you don’t judge them. If you notice yourself having a negative thought, detach from it, witness it, and don’t follow it.

6. Squash the “ANTs” In his book “Change Your Brain, Change Your Life,” Dr. Daniel Amen talks about “ANTs” - Automatic Negative Thoughts. These are the bad thoughts that are usually reactionary, like “Those people are laughing, they must be talking about me,” or “The boss wants to see me? It must be bad!” When you notice these thoughts, realize that they are nothing more than ANTs and squash them!

7. Practice Lovin’, Touchin’ & Squeezin’ (Your Friends and Family) You don’t have to be an expert to know the benefits of a good hug. Positive physical contact with friends, loved ones, and even pets, is an instant pick-me-up. One research study on this subject had a waitress touch some of her customers on the arm as she handed them their checks. She received higher tips from these customers than from the ones she didn’t touch!

8. Increase Your Social Activity By increasing social activity, you decrease loneliness. Surround yourself with healthy, happy people, and their positive energy will affect you in a positive way!

9. Volunteer for an Organization, or Help another Person Everyone feels good after helping. You can volunteer your time, your money, or your resources. The more positive energy you put out into the world, the more you will receive in return.

10. Use Pattern Interrupts to Combat Rumination If you find yourself ruminating, a great way to stop it is to interrupt the pattern and force yourself to do something completely different. Rumination is like hyper-focus on something negative. It’s never productive, because it’s not rational or solution-oriented, it’s just excessive worry. Try changing your physical environment - go for a walk or sit outside. You could also call a friend, pick up a book, or turn on some music.

When it comes to the corporate world, protocol is pretty much the religion. To know the things needed to do are the basics of productivity, but interaction and having a steady mind makes up the entire thing to true productivity. There are those who seem to work well even under pressure, but they’re uncommon ones and we are human and imperfect. To get these little things like stress under our skins won’t solve our problems. Sometimes it takes a bit of courage to admit that we’re turning to be workaholics than tell ourselves that we’re not doing our best.

Sometimes all that it takes for you to get the promotion that you have been looking for at work is a little bit of extra efficiency.

Taking steps to advance your career isn’t as hard as it seems. If you adopt a few of these straightforward time management techniques, you’ll see some real and positive improvements in the work you do and the results you get. Your boss will notice and this is a good thing when it comes time for him to hand out promotions and raises. Here are a few suggested techniques to get you started.

1. Get rid of the clutter in your office. When you have a cluttered office, everyone notices, even if they don’t say something to you. Sure a cluttered office may be a sign of an organized mind, but your boss probably won’t take that into account the next time it comes to promoting someone. Look at it from his or her point of view for a moment and you’ll see what I mean. All things being equal, would he/she rather promote someone who is neat or someone who has a cluttered desk?

Rather than wait any longer, just clean up your messy desk and office. You’ll see two good things happen when you do. First, your productivity and efficiency will go up because you’re no longer having to dig through a messy workspace just to find your important documents. Second, your boss and everyone else will notice your nice and clean office the next time they come by. Your now clean office is a good conversation started, especially as you talk to your boss about wanting to be promoted. Don’t wait any longer, just do it and you’ll be happy you did.

2. Create an environment that supports your productivity. Rather than rely solely on your own will power to be productive and efficient, structure your environment to give you a “leg-up” in achieving your time management goals. Here’s a simple exercise for you to do. Pick 5 objects currently in your office. One by one, look at each and ask your the simple question of whether that object supports your productivity or detracts from it. Just be honest with yourself when you answer. It’s your life and your time. You need to take it seriously and be honest.

When you tell yourself the truth, you’ll see what you should do with each object. You want to eliminate any object in your environment that does not clearly support your time management and efficiency goals. You should listen to your own answers and follow through. You only want objects in your office which support your goals, nothing else. So right now bite the bullet and get rid of any “non-supportive” objects in your environment and you’ll immediately feel the difference.

Managers look for higher productivity and an abundance of energy when it comes time to award promotions.

3. Handle emails, calls, and request efficiently. So much communication happens all day at the office and it’s easy to get buried and let things like email pile up in your inbox. You can improve your chances for promotion if you respond quickly and efficiently to any and all emails, phone messages and conversations.

An overflowing inbox is a problem for everyone these days, but if you want to improve your chances of being promoted, you have to figure out a way to keep it under control. Every email client has sorting or organization features you can use to sort your email according to where it comes from. The simplest thing you can do is sort mail from your boss, your peers and your friends into separate categories. From there, you should answer the emails from your boss first, writing short, intelligent and effective messages that demonstrate how you are keeping your commitment and will take care of the matters under discussion.

After you handle the emails from your boss, go ahead and answer the emails to your peers or other employees at your level. Use the same efficient and effective language you use with your boss and don’t worry if these people wonder why you always answer the boss first. That’s the way it supposed to be done and when it is time for your boss to give a promotion, he will see you as the person who communicates well and good communication is critical in the work place.

Here’s a quick note about emails from your friends. First off, if an email from your friend is sitting on the company email server, your company will be able to open it and read it. If your friend decides to send too many jokes or even offensive information to you, your company will find out and this will damage your chances for promotion. This means you should have a private, non-work email address that your friends use when they want to email you.

So there you have it. Those were easy and simple tips you can use to improve your chances of getting promoted at work. By following these time management tips, you’ll improve your productivity and efficiency and in the process let everyone know, especially your boss, that you are the person to pick for the next promotion. Enjoy yourself and get working on them right away.

The Practice of Delegation

Not too long ago, as I was sitting at my desk working - it was so late that it was actually the regular work day for my team in Asia. This was common. I was working so many hours, that I was working during two shifts (US and Asia). My frustration was rising with the project and with my team. However, the team was bewildered by my reaction. They were doing everything I assigned to them - why would I be upset with that?

I had fallen into a common trap. I thought I was delegating, but really I was just assigning tasks and not relinquishing ownership. It was during one of these marathon work sessions that I realized I needed to make big changes to how I was working. I looked at when projects worked, seemingly without my intervention, and when they didn’t. Once I broke it down, the solution jumped out clearly. There are five steps to successful delegation.

1. Clearly define the task. What needs to happen? What’s the desired result?

2. Second, select the team or the individual that you think can best accomplish your desired result.

3. Third, tell the individual what’s being delegated to them. It’s also important to let other people in the organization know that this person is now responsible for the task, so they know not to keep coming to you about it.

4. Keep in place a monitoring system, so you can ensure that progress is being made.

5. And finally, after the task is complete, complete the final review. Look at lessons learned and look at ways to improve moving forward.

The key is putting these five steps into practice. I began with the project that was causing me to work so many hours then I examined the members of my Asia team to determine who had the ability to best drive the deliverables per the plan. Before assigning the team member the task I set clear objectives and goals so everybody understood what results were expected.

I found that Helen had strong skills and a willingness (as well as bandwidth) to take on additional responsibilities. Now that I had the right person, I had to provide the authority needed so she could actually achieve it. This is a vital point. Trying to retain authority while expecting her to deliver will never work. You may also need to teach her how to do what you want her to do. You can’t just delegate and walk away. You must ensure that the rest of the team understands this shift in ownership.

Once you’ve delegated, you’ll need to monitor progress. Look at the plan and make sure there are some scheduled goals and meetings to ensure that the tasks are done. I usually do this in a one on one meeting. This is a scheduled time for us to talk about anything that may be of concern: upcoming due dates, milestones, etc. These discussions provide an excellent framework for feedback and to provide direction. Give your team the objectives and the clear goals needed to keep them on track. Provide encouragement. High morale helps make sure that people are making forward progress. A good way to do this is by monitoring with milestones.

Often, it helps to create a series of small, interim deliverables that will serve as checks-and-balances on the progress of a larger task. These milestones can then be used as a basis for progress reports (1:1 sessions).

What happens when there are problems? The key is organization and follow up. Make sure you know where they are in the process and that they know and can track their milestones. In this case, Helen got behind on a key deliverable. To head off the problem we worked together until she was back on track. It was difficult for me personally, because I just wanted to fix it. In the short term, it would have been much faster. However, I needed Helen to maintain her authority over the Asia team - this required her to find the solution and implement it. But how?

Structure. If the people you’re delegating to are having trouble, help them, train them. Establish the monitoring systems we talked about. Have milestones in place that will keep the task on track. Make sure they know that if they run into a problem, they can contact you. This may seem like extra effort but it will be short term and the long term benefits are many, including not only the deliverable at risk, but the entire delegated ownership and, who knows - bigger and better projects in the future. As for Helen, she overcame the short term concern and the project went on to deliver on time. Even better, I was back to just working the USA day shift!

Ultimately, performance and deliverables are in your control. Are you ready to make it happen? Go to http://www.delegatesuccess.com and take the readiness quiz.

Part of “Project Management” involves managing the time of project team members and the time it takes to complete project tasks.

When I manage a project, I emphasize that each team member is responsible for developing their own abilities to manage their time and set schedule of their work. Beyond helping team members tune their ability to estimate how long a task will take for them, I’m often involved in reviewing their work and helping to make schedule adjustments along the way.

One of the biggest traps I’ve seen individuals fall into is what I call the “80/20 trap”.

Before continuing, I have to explain that I work with software developers. What I’m going to describe is my experience working with software developers, but is also something that other project and time managers can apply to their own situation or projects.

A common application of the 80/20 rule in software is described in these terms: “For any software task, the last 20% of the work takes up to 80% of the total time for the task”.

It’s a separate discussion whether the 80/20 rule I just described is truly the Pareto Principle, but suffice to say, I’ve seen it hold true more often than not during software development. The main reason it holds true is that as a feature is completed, there is usually a period of polish work and usability testing that must happen. This extra time can often take up to 3x or 4x the time it took to create the feature in the first place.

Smart project managers schedule usability and polish work as separate tasks from just implementing a feature, but most don’t. Even if you do though, there is often a certain amount of debugging and clean up time a programmer needs to do just to get the feature ready for usability testing.

Knowing what you know now, consider the situation for a moment.

When a software developer comes to me and tells me that he is 80% done with a feature and on track with his schedule, because he has only spent 80% of the scheduled time so far, I now that he’s late and doesn’t even realize it. I also know that the team member is very unlikely to finish his feature within the scheduled 5 days.

Programming can a difficult job, but when neither the programmer or the manager understand this 80/20 rule, software delivery dates can slip wildly and repeatedly until things get under control.

It’s not actually that hard to fall into the “80/20 Trap”. I’ve even seen it happen to experienced people. The best thing to do when you see it is to address it right away, in a calm cool and professional manner.

When you see it and don’t address it, you’re just pushing your problems in front of you, and things will get worse each day the project progresses. In other words, you’ll pay for it at some point so you might as well deal with it as soon as possible.

The concept of the “80/20 Trap” can be applied across a wide range of projects. It makes sense to adopt it to whatever you’re working on, whether it is a multi-million dollar project or just managing your own time.

Time management for many of us seems to be full of un-fun things like following a boring process, mental discipline, stale techniques to help avoid procrastination so we can be more productive with our time.

Sure all of those things can and do work, but at what cost? Wouldn’t it be more fun to learn other ways of improving your time management that cost very little in terms of time and mental discipline? Let’s skip those “Brute Force Time Management” techniques and instead try something easier.

Buckminster Fuller (or “Bucky Fuller” as he was called by his friends) is reported to have said “Environment is stronger than will power”. Sounds smart, doesn’t it? Consider this. If you’re out of shape and want to improve your health, how hard would that be to do if you’re locked in room full of delicious sugar cookies. On the flip side, how easy would that be to do if you lived inside of a fitness center? Pretty easy don’t you think?

This same sort of idea goes for almost everything, yet most people don’t think about setting up the right environment for efficient time management. In fact, most people kind of think of anything having to do with time management as a chore. Let’s turn that around.

Take a look around your work space. Pick out 5 easy to indentify objects in it and ask yourself “Does this support my goal to be better at time management or detract from my goal to be better at time management?”

No “maybe” answers allowed. If an item you picked does not explicitly support your time management and productivity goals, immediately toss it out or otherwise remove it from your workspace.

If you’re honest with yourself, you probably have a few easy things you can eliminate. Televisions sets are famous for being a major distraction. Beyond just distracting you for a moment, they also entice you to keep watching for hours upon hours, thus making it much hard to get your goals accomplished for the day. If there is a television in your workspace, get rid of it right away by disconnecting it or even relocating it to another room.

Something as simple as a messy pile of papers can also distract from your productivity and ruin your time management efforts. Realistically, how can a messy desk support your goals? Aesthetics aside, having a pile of papers makes it hard to find the important ones and can even spill over onto the floor, causing further loss of productivity as you have to clean them up.

These two examples might seem silly, but you get the point. Eliminating the non-supportive elements in your environment is the first step to creating an environment that supports your goals to be better at time management.

If we were to take this one step further, the next step would be to improve your environment by actually adding things which add to and make it easier for you to accomplish your time management efforts. We’ll share hints on how to do this in other articles.

By: Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
TurbulenceTrainingSystem.com

Do you know the 2 biggest reasons men and women stop exercising?

1) Lack of time
2) Lack of motivation

Let’s tackle “Lack of Time” today with 5 ways you can get your
workouts done faster. After all, no one should spend more than 50 minutes in the gym.

Here are 5 ways to cut time from your workouts.

a) Supersets

I use “non-competing” supersets. This means, choose two exercises for different muscle groups - and preferably completely opposite movements. For example, choose a push and a pull. That way, one muscle group rests while the other works…and you cut the rest time you need between sets.

b) Choose a better warm-up strategy

Don’t waste 10 minutes walking on the treadmill. Instead, use a
total body circuit of bodyweight exercises as a general warm-up, and then move directly into specific warm-up sets for your first two exercises.

c) Pair dumbbell and bodyweight exercises together in your supersets

This saves you time at home (you don’t need to change the dumbbell weight between exercises) and in the gym (you don’t need to fight for 2 sets of dumbbells).

d) Choose Intervals over slow cardio

The latest research shows more weight loss when people use
intervals, and intervals take half as long to do.

e) Limit the use of isolation exercises

Pick multi-muscle exercises, such as squats, pulls, pushes, and
rows. If you have time, you can squeeze in some drop-sets for arms and shoulders if you want. However, if you only have 3 sessions of 45 minutes per week, isolation exercises must be the first to go.

In addition, don’t spend more than 10 minutes per week on direct ab training. It’s not efficient and won’t give you rock hard abs alone.

Workout less, live life more,

Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
Creator of Turbulence Training

PS - Don’t know where to start?

If you are a beginner, start by reading Dr. Mohr’s nutrition
guidelines…eating properly will be the biggest factor in your
early success.

Beginners should also start with the Introductory TT workouts to prepare their muscles for the upcoming intense training.

For others, it’s best to start with the Intermediate Level TT
workouts. If those aren’t enough of a challenge, you can move onto the Original TT workout and follow the 16-week advanced program right through.

If at any time you need a break, try the TT Bodyweight 4-week plan.

And then finish off with the TT Fusion Fat Loss program followed by the 30-day Maximum Fat Loss program to cap off a full 24 weeks of Advanced TT fat loss workouts.

After that, choose between the TT for Women or TT for Muscle
programs to help put the finishing touches on your physique. All of these are included as bonuses with the Turbulence Training System.

by Mike Geary -CPT, Founder - Truth About Abs .com

Warning: this style of workout is WAY different than anything you’ve ever tried before and may result in a dramatically leaner, stronger body so that your friends no longer recognize you in a matter of weeks!

Alright, I exaggerated about your friends recognizing you, but this workout is still great for busy people that always use the excuse that they don’t have time to go to the gym, or even for the normal gym rat to try out for a few weeks to break out of a plateau.

Please keep an open-mind and don’t worry so much about what other people think, because this is quite different and you may get some funny looks, but you’ll get the last laugh with your new rock hard body! To be honest, most people are too self conscious to try something like this. If that’s the case for you, then that’s your loss.

Here’s how it works:

Instead of doing your traditional workouts of going to the gym 3-4 times a week and doing your normal weight training and cardio routines for an hour at a shot, with this program, you will be working out for just a couple minutes at a time, several times throughout each day, 5 days/week.

The program will consist of only bodyweight exercises done for about 2-3 minutes, 6-8 times per day, throughout each day. Now obviously if you work a normal office job, you are going to have to not be shy about doing a few exercises in your office and having your cube-mates watch you. Actually, I’ve found that some people that have tried this have actually gotten their co-workers to join them!

If you have a private office, then you don’t have to worry about anybody watching you. If you work from home, or are a stay at home mom, there’s no reason you can’t fit these in throughout the day while at home. If you end up having a busy day with meetings and so forth, and can only fit a couple of these 2-minute workouts in, then so be it, but try to get as many done each day as you can.

If you’re on a normal 9-5 office schedule, I recommend doing your 2-minute workouts every hour, on the hour, with the exception of lunch. For example, you could try 9 am, 10 am, 11 am, 1 pm, 2 pm, 3 pm, and 4 pm.

Some of the exercises that are the best to focus on are:

• bodyweight squats (and variations)
• pushups (and variations)
• forward, reverse, or walking lunges
• up & down a staircase if one is available
• floor planks (holding plank position from forearms and feet)
• floor abs exercises such as lying leg thrusts, ab bicycles, etc.
• one-legged bodyweight Romanian deadlifts

This list is not fully comprehensive, but I wanted to keep it relatively simple. If you know other good bodyweight exercises, you can add those to your routine also. If you want to keep it real simple and don’t want to get down on the floor for anything, you can stick to squats, lunges, and pushups and still get great results.

The good thing about these workouts is that you do enough in 2-3 minutes to get your blood pumping, heart rate up a bit, a large portion of your body’s muscles worked, and body temperature raised. However, it’s usually not enough to break a sweat in only 2 or 3 minutes, so you don’t have to worry about sweating in the office or where ever you may be. At most, you might just get a little moist on the skin.

Here’s an example routine (adjust the reps up or down based on your capabilities):

Mon/Wed/Fri
9 am - 10 pushups/15 bodyweight squats, repeat 1X for 2 sets
10 am - plank holds (hold the planks as long as you can taking short rest breaks for a total of 3 minutes)
11 am - 5 pushups/10 bodyweight squats, repeat for 4 sets
1 pm - plank holds (hold as long as possible in 3 minutes)
2 pm - 8 pushups/12 bodyweight squats, repeat for 3 sets
3 pm - plank holds (hold as long as possible in 3 minutes)
4 pm - max pushups/max bodyweight squats in one set (no repeat)

Tues/Thurs
9 am - 6 fwd lunges each leg/6 rev lunges, repeat 1X for 2 sets
10 am - one legged bw Romanian deadlifts (RDL) 6 each leg/floor abs for 20 sec, repeat 1X for 2 sets
11 am - 3 fwd lunges each leg/3 rev lunges, repeat for 4 sets
1 pm - one legged bw RDL 3 each leg/floor abs for 20 sec, repeat for 4 sets
2 pm - 5 fwd lunges each leg/5 rev lunges, repeat for 3 sets
3 pm - one legged bw RDL 10 each leg/floor abs for 30 sec (no repeat)
4 pm - max fwd lunges each leg/max rev lunges in one set (no repeat)

In order to progress on these workouts, you could either add 1 or 2 reps to each set per week, or you could progress to more difficult versions of each exercise each week (for example, close grip pushups, one leg raised pushups, squats with arms raised straight over head, etc.).

The above routines are just a couple examples of how you can use this very unique style of training. Use your creativity and come up with your own. Think about what you’ve accomplished with these “mini” workouts completed throughout each day… You’ve increased your heart rate and pumped up your muscles 6-8 different times throughout each day, burning a lot of extra calories and stimulating your metabolism.

Even though each “mini” workout was a very short duration, you’ve accumulated lots of repetitions for almost every muscle throughout your entire body, and you didn’t even have to break a sweat during any of the “mini” workouts. And there’s hardly any excuse for not being able to take a 2-minute break once per hour and do a couple of exercises.

Another benefit of this style of training is that now you don’t have to devote any time before or after work to going to the gym because you already got your workouts little by little throughout the day. You’ve now got some extra free time on your hands!

Try this type of routine out for 3-4 weeks and then go back to your normal gym routines. I think you’ll find that it was a great way to break out of a plateau and stimulate new results in your body. You can try mixing in a cycle of these “mini” workouts every couple of months to keep things fresh.

Keep in mind that this is only one method of training and doesn’t mean that you should only stick to this method for eternity. You will hit a plateau on any given training method, so I’d recommend just rotating it into your arsenal of various training methods. And by all means, don’t worry so much about what other people think…have the courage to try something a little different. In the end, you’ll be the one laughing back at all of the “blubber-bellies” that are giving you funny looks while they eat their donuts!

If you liked these training ideas, my internationally popular ebook The Truth about Six Pack Abs contains gobs and gobs more innovative training ideas to lose stubborn body fat and carve out a rock hard set of abs.