Personal Fitness and Business Agility have a lot in common. Both are about bringing small, sustainable changes in your day to day behaviours, habits and mindset. Many people, when they start their fitness journey expect an elaborate calorie counting scheme, that magic pill or an intense workout framework for 7 days a week from their trainers and coaches. But that couldn't be further from the truth !
What people think :
- Count every calorie and piece of food.
- Diet and restrictions.
- High Intensity Interval Training(HIIT) 7 days a week.
The more sustainable way is :
1) Strength and conditioning training 2-3 days a week.
2) Simple walk 2 days/week.
3) Rest and recovery for 2 days.
4) Adding more nutrient dense foods, not calorie dense.
Any nutrition advice in the first few months of acclimating to their new strength training, is all about what to 'add' to what they are 'currently eating' - more 'vegetables', more 'protein', at least 7 hours of sleep a day, keeping the stress to a minimal level. This strategy as long as it's done "consistently" will work wonders for most people for a long time.
Remember that "consistency" far outweighs "intensity" ! Being successful on your health and fitness journey is all about "sustainability" and "sustainability" is all about finding that "minimum effective" dose. Once you build a strong foundation ( think in terms of years and months, not days and hours); you can always add to what you're currently doing. It's really tough to start at the very peak of your capabilities without having a solid foundation, without working up to it and then expect to sustain that effort for a long period of time.
So, if you are thinking about starting out on your own journey, it might feel less overwhelming to think about finding your personal "minimum effective" dose rather than your maximum.
Same with business agility as well. Find your "effective minimum" dose, build a "strong foundation", change your "habits and behaviour" 1 step at a time, focus on your "goals". Then you can add all other frameworks as a top-up.
Scrum provides you the "minimum effective" dose that you need. Go and embrace it !
The key is "consistency" and putting in the efforts and discipline to co-create that "strong foundation" ! It's simple, but not easy.
Until next time, sweat it out, rinse, recover and repeat !
#MakeFitnessAHabit #ScrumOn
Inspiration and References
- Coach, Achieve Fitness Boston
- Co-founder and Coach Arvind Ashok at The Quad Fitness Pvt. Limited, Madras, India