You participated in an ultra race and, quite rightly, feel pleased about it. But, there are many reasons I do not care much about it. Here’s one reason – tell me, have you thought about how big your ROTI is?

When I tell people that “I spend less than 30 minutes per day on exercise” or that “I spend less than 20 minutes per day on running” they look at me disbelievingly. Just like when I said I never do an ab workout, they think I am making up ‘facts’. But the ‘fact’ is that I am very passionate about time efficiency.

A few months ago, I took part in a reasonably tough 10km race. I was fortunate to come second. (As you probably know, I enjoy a podium finish but don’t care about it too much.) The friend who came first, deserved to. He was noticeably faster than I was and faster than I will ever be. A brief conversation around then revealed that his weekly running mileage was between 4 and 6 times what I was clocking in a typical week. Although the reason for that incredibly high mileage was justified because he was training for some very long races, it struck me that so often we spend too much time in the wrong way and produce time inefficient results.

Let’s go back to the very simple idea
The Denominator

It is clear that the one thing that all of us always wish we have more of is time! Getting sufficient hours of sleep is very important for our well-being and what we all look forward to is to have many more alert waking hours in our typical week. And, we look to have many healthy and happy years ahead of us. In all cases, it is natural to want the same return for less time invested. That would leave us with extra time to invest in other ways we desire.

Unless you are one of those sad people who is happy having no real friendships, you are likely to have a bunch of things in life that you are interested in. First there is spending time with your family – grandparents, parents, uncles and aunts, cousins, spouse, siblings, children, nephews and nieces and grandchildren…and I’m out of breath! Then there are your friends – recent friends, old friends, new friends that you will make, work colleagues, romantic partners. And then there are activities that you enjoy, sedentary and those involving some physical movement – sleep and rest, prayer and meditation, indoor and outdoor hobbies.

All these that you enjoy need you to invest time in them for an appropriate return. Would it not be great to have sufficient time for all of them and to get the most from each of them with whatever time you could invest in each of them?

The Numerator

The return can be captured neatly with the branches of the Wellness Tree. If you are not foolish enough to be chasing money (medium maximization) and wise enough to be enjoying the experiences that your money buys, then your focus will be on physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health.

When it comes to recreational distance running, the primary focus when investing time is to improve your cardiorespiratory endurance and muscular endurance. You also hope to have good flexibility, not lose absolute muscular strength and benefit from an improvement in body composition. (You may already know my thoughts on why you need not run.)

Numerator over Denominator

The refined question to then ask is – given the amount of time being invested in recreational distance running, how much are you getting back in terms of the primary goals of the activity? It is worth answering this question relative to your GPF (Genetic Potential Fitness), given that time is a severely constrained resource and there are so many more life enhancing activities that it could be invested toward.

Keeping Track

If you are going to maximize your return from any investment then you need to keep track of how much you are investing not just what you are getting back in return. Specifically, how much time are you investing in exercise? And, I have spoken about recording information in the past.

What is a good return on investment?

If you have been following my conversations over the last few years you will not be surprised to hear that I have no absolute recommendation for this question. What is more important to focus on is measuring it, and then trying to improve it. Remember, your GPF (Genetic Potential Fitness) plays an important benchmark here.

I want to stress again, that chasing higher absolute returns is a decent activity, but what will make it super for you is to also consider the returns relative to the time invested. If you are spending twice as much time on something for only a tiny improvement in results, it is time to rethink your strategy! Remember, Balance is True Mastery!

It may be that if you are in the early stages of a particular activity that your ROTI is high and that as time progresses and you start to get closer to your GPF, your ROTI drops. In that case my simple and effective advice would be this – consider just staying close to your GPF with a sensibly small amount of effort.

If you run, swim or bike an ultra race every once in a while, but the average stranger on the street does not look at you and think “athlete” then there’s something going wrong. Balance is True Mastery!

Consider your Capital

Whenever investing it is worthwhile to examine the promised (or expected) return from the deployment of capital. That capital need not be just financial capital, but could be human capital too. This human capital you invest could be physical effort (actual physical labour, or even exercise) or intellectual capital, or even emotional capital. And, I would like you to also think of spiritual capital.

[Read about Time Optimized Living]

The variable being considered in today’s conversation is time which translates almost directly to the physical labour capital. Given that good health is multifactorial, it is worth stopping and thinking if, perhaps, less time could be invested in the activity for better results. Or if time in that activity could be replaced with an improved focus on one of the other input factors. For instance, the fact that I achieve what I do in terms of fitness is clearly not only about the time I spend on exercise, but also the details in the many other things that I pay attention to in 24 hours  – including french fries.

It does not matter how many hours you spend with your head buried in books – what matters is what comes out of your head when it matters.

It does not matter how many hours you spend in Church – what matters is how you treat the world around you when you are out of Church.

I do not care about your ultra – how big can you make your ROTI?

Puru

Dr Purnendu Nath spends his waking hours focusing on helping individuals and organizations reach their goals, to make the world a better place. He speaks, writes and advises on topics such as finance, investment management, discipline, education, self-improvement, exercise, nutrition, health and fitness, leadership and parenting.