It’s About One Jump at a Time
Overcoming morning laziness by jumping rope
Thursday Morning, 5 am Central European Time
My alarm went off precisely at 5 o’clock in the morning.
I knew I needed to get up immediately to repeat my weekday morning routine:
Go to the bathroom. Pray. Making instant oatmeal with honey and a few dates — as toppings. Waiting for my stomach to digest my breakfast for around 90 minutes. Working out. Take a shower. Then, go to the office.
But this morning, I felt like a heavy gravity was pulling my body — making waking up from bed the most difficult thing to do.
Though I was successfully waking up, praying, and making my breakfast, I still felt lethargic.
At my dining table, 10 minutes after I’ve eaten my breakfast, my mind wrestled:
Do I need to work out?
Should I go back to sleep?
With about 30% energy and my remaining sleepiness, I got up. Walked down to the couch.
I then succumbed to laziness by sleeping upright on my couch.
This was a typical morning when I was so lazy to start my day.
I wrote lazy because there was no injury, soreness, fever, or any illness that could be a valid reason for me to stay longer in my bed.
After waking up for the second time, this situation gave me two options:
- Doing my pre-office routine includes taking a shower, wearing working attire, preparing meals, and going to the office by bus or taxi.
- Doing the pre-office routine, but preceded by a 45-minute workout.
More often than not, if I did the latter, my lethargic feeling and laziness went away bit by bit — then I could turn around my morning feeling in the right direction.
But how did I exercise when I was super-duper lazy?
Turning around my morning feeling in the right direction, from lethargic to enthusiastic, through working out, is easier said than done.
When I was lazy on some mornings, I did not have any motivation to do anything, let alone work out.
But it’s not a motivation that becomes a problem, as the author of the best-selling book Atomic Habits, James Clear, said in one of his talks:
Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity
Yes, I didn’t have clarity on what to do next when I was lazy.
Even though I knew that working out was an antidote to my lethargic feeling, my 45-minute morning workout seemed like climbing Mount Everest to me when laziness hijacked my mind.
To overcome this situation, I have to trick my mind. I need to break down my a-seemed-impossible goal into “the pebble”.
Instead of pushing myself to do a 45-minute morning workout, I jotted down in my phone notes app:
What is next: one jump with skipping rope
This simple task is effortless. And there’s no reason for my mind to complain or negotiate with me — not doing this a-piece-of-cake-task.
This clarity of what I should be doing next then forced my body to do the other activities that led to my next goal:
Get up. Walk down. Grab my skipping rope. Put my training shoes on. Open my apartment door. Go downstairs. Unlocking the entrance door. Breathing the fresh air from outside. Standing below the sunshine.
Even before my one jump, my body had done a “warming up” — from getting up to standing below the sunshine.
The initial lethargic feeling went away, bit by bit, during that “warming up” process.
What’s more, after I swung my skipping rope overhead, I felt guilty if I immediately stopped my workout — even though I’d accomplished my goal of jumping one time.
Then I did 10 jump. 100 jump. 500 jump.
After jumping hundreds of times, if I still had much time before going to the office, I continued my other go-to workouts like stretching, hanging, and pull-ups.
By the end, usually, I’d finished my 45-minute workout, and I felt great.
I was more than ready to start my day.
You might be skeptical that the example of turning around my morning feeling might be impossible for you .
You might be thinking that building momentum like the abovementioned story is only applicable to me as a sports enthusiast — so working out feels natural to me.
But, speaking of building momentum, can you reflect on the doom-scrolling habit that you’ve done once, if not every day?
Do you remember when you decided to see just one Instagram story, but you ended up scrolling a dozen stories for minutes, if not an hour?
Or, the binge-movie habit that you’ve done during your spare time?
Do you remember when you decided to watch only 1 episode of your favorite series, but you ended up finishing one season, if not a whole season?
You see, I believe, the same thing applies to exercise in the morning.
Why don’t you apply the same principle to exercise in the morning that we all agree can benefit our well-being?
By jumping one time with your skipping rope, you might end up with hundreds of jumps or 10 minutes of jumping — improving your cardiovascular health like those who jog for 30 minutes.
By deciding to do the insignificant workout, you might end up with high-intensity training that forces you to sweat.
By forcing your body to walk for 1 minute, you might end up walking for 10 minutes — because your body will ask you to walk more than just merely 60 seconds.
And, more importantly, you can feel better by the end of the exercise.
Then, you can start the day feeling enthusiastic, not lethargic.
Derian Antonio Daniswara is an Indonesian junior diplomat currently posted in Zagreb, Croatia. He loves sports, especially football, and playing them is a second nature to him.
