I’ve been exercising the last 4 weeks and today I had a bit of a ah-ha moment on my morning run. Starting a running routine is tough work, and I get frustrated often when I cannot make my goal and have to slow down. However, there are a few things I do that have helped me stick with it more this time than any other time I’ve attempted to run seriously. These few simple steps have been a great help and I’m on track with my goals. These steps also have parallels in Agile development, and I’d like to share my experience and insight with you, dear reader.
Commit with a Team
The first thing I did was to make a commitment with friends to exercise together and to sign up for Tough Mudder. The registration fee for this event is $150, so it’s an end goal that has both financial and health strings attached to it. Difficult exercise of any kind is very hard to do solo, but in a team – we have 3 regular people who are doing this now – it is much easier to stay motivated.
I associate this with the end goal of a software development project. Someone has invested some serious time and money commitments to see a project through, but it will often fail if attempted alone. It’s very easy to lose motivation on a difficult or long project when working solo. It is also easy to lose sight of that longer term goal and find it just too difficult to move forward. And, we all know that stress is bad for you, so it too has health implications (okay that’s a stretch, but go with it). Working with a small team of dedicated team members help keep everyone motivated and in the game. The team has a collective goal and when someone loses sight of the end goal, others are there for support and guidance.
Set a Goal, Form a Plan, Meet the Goal, Evaluate, Rinse and Repeat
As I mentioned above, I’ve committed myself to completing the Tough Mudder event. This is my goal, and it’s a very defined set of physical requirements that must be met. Now there is no way I could achieve what I need to without a plan. I could run, and I could workout, but I don’t know the best way to do those things, so I sought advice and found a great workout that is both challenging and meets my requirements. This makes me much more likely to stick with it – I have a time boxed goal and I know what I have to do to reach that goal.
In our exercise routine, we measure success by the week, and being in the 4th week of a 9 week initial program (the Navy Seal BUD/S Warning Order Workout) and on target is making me feel great. At the end of the week we realize and discuss our accomplishments, discuss what we could change, and then plan for the next week. For our exercise routine, this may mean changing the order in which we complete our daily workout, or it may mean adjusting meeting times or places to allow us to complete the next set of goals. In either case, this gives us short, measurable time periods in which to track our progress and readjust as necessary. This week we run a total of 9 miles (3 miles / 3 days a week), and we’re right on target! Rock on!
In agile software projects, we do much the same thing. We commit ourselves to an end goal and typically the clients have a time boxed window for the project to fit into. In some other methodologies, a lot of up front planning is done to document the whole project, and it’s not until the end that success is truly measured. I find this difficult to deal with because going such long periods without reflecting on the current state of things seems like a bad idea. So in agile, we do sprints – my current project is doing 2 week sprints – in which we bite off a small chuck of the overall goal, commit to it, and at the end we look back and measure our successes and failures. This brings failures and areas to improve upon to the surface much quicker and ultimately keeps the team on track for the end goal. It also feels good to meet these goals (in exercise and software development), and it keeps the motivation high.
High Five Those Who Are In It With You
I have a habit now of reaching my hand out to high five other runners (strangers) I see on our path! Some respond and smile, some ignore me, but I will continue to do this. I also make it a point to high five those who exercise with me – at the end of a hard workout, and at the end of a week. A salute to their hard work, and a confirmation of my hard work.
I feel it’s a recognition of their dedication and effort, and it’s a motivation for me to keep up the hard work – if they can do it, so can I! I don’t mind those who don’t respond in this context – maybe they are very focused, or just afraid to touch a sweaty overweight guy. But I really enjoy those who do respond. It gives me a burst of energy to know that I can help someone else feel good about their accomplishments (and running at 6 am in Texas is an accomplishment at any distance!), and I hope it does the same for them. I also get energy from the fact that they are encouraging me as well.
I see this as the same thing as the task board, daily standups, and retrospectives in an agile project. It feels really good to move a task from backlog to in progress to completed. It feels really good to tell everyone about the accomplishment during the standup and receive typically very positive feedback. And at the end of the sprint, these things are recognized again in the retrospective. It all goes towards the idea that small accomplishments can be recognized and motivate the team to keep going. Even if I’m really tired from a hard workout, getting positive feedback in my daily standup gives me the strength to give it my all for that days work. And during the retrospective, we make it a point to highlight the positive efforts of the team and address the negatives.
Fin
So, those are my thoughts on exercise and agile! Now if only I could apply this to nutrition and agile, I’d really be rocking! Anyway, the next time someone does something that deserves a positive acknowledgement – in any part of your day – give them a smile and a high five! It may seem pretty goofy to high five (that’s old school cool right?) – my wife is constantly embarrassed when I do it with her – but I guarantee the person receiving and you will walk off with a hint of a smile on your face! 
Excellent parallels, Ben! I’m also in the middle of a workout regimen and definitely agree with some of these parallels. I’ve been the most successful I’ve ever been at keeping up a workout routine because we’ve (finally) set goals. We completed our first set of goals – being able to run a 5K (at least the distance of a 5K) in 30 minutes. It was no doubt hard, but to be able to stick to a regimen for 9 weeks was a true accomplishment for us.
So, in the spirit of continuous improvement, we (the team which consists of myself, my wife, and a friend of ours) discussed and agreed to move into the Bridge to 10K program – the goal of which being to run a 10K in 60 minutes. We picked this up and continued onto the next path almost immediately after the completion of our first goal. This has allowed us to maintain velocity. The results, both physically and mentally, are visible.
One other thing that I think is very useful is constant engagement during the workout. You can commit to being a team and working out “together”, but to constantly interact while the workout is in progress has other parallels with Agile – constant communication. Being able to interact with others on the team keeps up motivation as the workout commences. But even more importantly, we let each other know when one of us is having problems (whether it be physical or mental anguish), which is a signal to the others to be supportive and help that one person so we can all keep up the same pace and progress.
Great post, again!