Stick to Your Fitness Regimen by Thinking Like an App Developer
You stick to your fitness regimen much like butter in a Teflon skillet … covered in ghee. So how do you turn fitness into something that grabs your attention? Learn from the most fascinating subject of your life: your smartphone.
Consider how attached people are to mobile devices. Whether it’s a catastrophic terrorist attack or just boredom, we’ve all been trained to respond in the same way: pull out your cell phone and open the app that best suits you. And this is not surprising, because without your knowledge, every successful application developer devotes entire teams to ensure that this is exactly what you are doing.
While these apps employ a variety of tactics to keep users addicted, your first impression has the biggest impact. And while fitness may seem like a completely unrelated area, the same basic principles can be applied to your workout program.
Understand your window of opportunity
Every company wants you to use their app for the rest of your life. But they also know that trying to develop an app that will appeal to you throughout all stages of life is a huge task and, frankly, a waste of time. Instead, they focus on a specific window of opportunity. This is the number of days (based on their data) that users need to use the app continuously before they are connected. If they can get the user to use the app on a daily basis during this period of time, the likelihood of the user staying in the app for a lifetime (or at least for a very long time) will increase dramatically.
For example, if an app’s window of opportunity is one week and you are still tossing birds or swiping right to day seven, then the show running the show knows that the chances are high that you will become a loyal user for a long time. And this also applies to your workouts.
From what I’ve seen, the window of opportunity for fitness is about 21 days. While this aligns with the often cited myth that it takes 21 days to develop a habit , rest assured my conclusion is based on anecdotal evidence, not Tumblr posts.
If you find yourself still excited to lift weights by day 21 (or at least not scold the ground your gym is built on), chances are you can stick with it.
However, I often see how people get it wrong about fitness as a problem that they will have to contend with forever. They will rush into it – fanatical at first – but as they gradually become aware of the true scale of the problem, their resolve weakens until it breaks. Kind of like Saruman and the orcs at the battle in Helm’s Deep .
But you have to be realistic. Sure, it would be great if you stick to an exercise regimen for a lifetime, but it’s a very daunting task to stick to. Instead, try sticking to it for 21 days. This will not scare you off, and you are more likely to create a mindset that will help you keep working.
Focus on automation, not customization
In this window of opportunity, application developers minimize any friction or decision making that is required on the part of the user. Think of the funnest apps: they simplify the user experience the first time and save all the details until later. For example, Tinder has the ability to create “moments” for power users, but it just focuses on getting you to swipe left or right at the start. Snapchat has more advanced features like a discovery and story page, but you probably won’t get that far without getting your feet wet sending messages back and forth.
Fitness is no different. Many have an innate urge to embark on their own individual exercise regimens or buy them using technical jargon. They can even go a step further and tweak the small details themselves. Basically, they focus on the little things rather than finding the basics of nutritional exercise and not paying attention to the little things.
Instead, focus on learning the basics of calories and protein and just find an exercise program that you can stick to . Further reduce the friction in the window of opportunity by automating such things as exercise during lunch or set an alarm to remind you that you need to go to the gym for ten minutes before a workout.
The most important thing is to answer the “what” and “how” questions to get in shape, before diving into the “why” behind everything you do. This is not to say that you shouldn’t learn more about the smallest details of fitness, but if you make exercise a habit for life, you will have all the time in the world for it. The hardest part is making it a habit. After all, Angry Birds wouldn’t be addictive if the app made you spend 90% of your time on the settings screen.
Search tirelessly for your “Aha!” Moment
But all the notifications in the world are not suitable for you, because there is the last important step – activation. I previously wrote about the concept of activation and how it relates to fitness :
The best apps are known for getting users to stick with and create a habit of using them every day. One of the ways they do this is through a concept known as activation – the magical understanding of “aha” that causes someone to start using a product repeatedly. For example, “activating” Facebook gives seven friends in the first ten days, while activating Dropbox downloads your first file.
You can train for 21 days in a row, but if you don’t activate (e.g. increase your run time, lose weight on weights, etc., depending on your goals), you can never get the feeling of achievement that fitness can do. stick.
Of course, once you get your fitness “sticky”, you can (and should) do something like adjusting your diet to macronutrient percentages (like advanced options with the Swole.me Diet Calculator ) or focus more on the process rather than only results.
But this is the easy part; it’s easy to get hung up on the intricacies of something you’re already passionate about. It’s not that you shouldn’t be worried about the long term, but that if you’re worried about your long-term fitness, be disciplined enough to keep the short term in mind.
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