You work, you get home, dinner needs making, there’s a load of washing to put on, someone needs something from you.
And when you finally sit down….. you’ve got nothing left in you.
“I don’t have time” isn’t an excuse. It’s true. But there’s an uncomfortable sum worth doing once.
Look at your screen time
Seriously, now. Settings → Screen Time on iPhone, Digital Wellbeing on Android.
The average sits somewhere between 3 and 4 hours a day.
I don’t need to say anything else. You’re already thinking it.
And to be clear, this isn’t about guilt. That stretch of phone on the sofa is often the only thing in the whole day that feels like yours, and it makes complete sense that you take it.
The point is different: if there are 3 hours there, the problem wasn’t time. It was energy and arrangement.
Forget the one-hour session
The picture we have of “exercising” is: sports kit, going somewhere, a full hour, a shower.
That’s nearly two hours of your day. Of course you don’t have it. Almost nobody does.
Which is why a lot of people do nothing at all: since they can’t do “the proper thing”, they do zero.
But your body doesn’t know whether you did twenty squats in a row or four sets of five across the day. It adds up the same.
What fits into an impossible day
None of this needs sports kit, leaving the house, or a shower afterwards:
- Ten squats while the kettle boils. Literally that gap.
- Push-ups on your knees, five of them, while something heats in the microwave.
- Walking while on the phone instead of sitting.
- The stairs, when you’re not carrying anything.
- Getting off one stop early. Ten minutes you won’t even notice.
It sounds like very little. And it is, compared to proper training.
But compared to zero….. it’s infinitely more. And above all: it’s the only thing you’ll keep up for six months straight.
The real trick: hook it to something you already do
A new habit on its own falls over. One hooked to a habit you already have holds.
“I’m going to exercise” is an intention. “When I put the coffee on, I do ten squats” is a plan, because you put the coffee on every day anyway.
Pick a moment that repeats no matter what and hook something small to it. One thing. Not five.
And now the two things together
Back to those three hours of phone.
There’s your moment that repeats every single day without fail: opening Instagram. Or TikTok. Or whatever it is you open without thinking.
That’s the idea behind earning your screen time: the apps are locked and they open when you move. A few squats and you’re in.
You don’t have to find a slot, because the slot already exists: it’s the same stretch you were going to spend looking at the screen.
And you don’t have to remember, because the app reminds you when you try to open it.
Start with something ridiculously small
So small you’d be embarrassed to say it out loud.
Five squats a day. Five. If one day you fancy twenty, do twenty, but the commitment is five.
Because the goal of the first month isn’t getting strong: it’s becoming someone who does something every day. That’s the hard part. Raising the number afterwards is the easy bit.
And the day you miss, nothing has happened. You carry on the next day, with nothing to make up and no guilt.
The question isn’t whether you have time any more. It’s what you do with the ten minutes you already had.
Always adapt exercise to your physical condition and stop if you feel pain or dizziness. If you have a medical condition, are pregnant, or haven’t moved much in a long time, check with a healthcare professional first.
You already have the slot
Nitor Fit turns the stretch you were going to spend on your phone into a few squats. Without finding time you don’t have.
