The practice for this week is called your Minimum Effective Dose (MED). This medical term was adopted by lifestyle and fitness writer Tim Ferris and simply describes the smallest dose required to produce the desired outcome.
This week I urge you to explore the Minimum Effective Dose in one (or both) of the following ways.
Exercise:
Apply it to your fitness routine. As AWAL contributor Andy Clark wrote in his column last week: “Exercise can be as little as ten or fifteen or twenty minutes, and it can be done anywhere—even in your office.”
Author Christine Carter used try to run for 45 minutes to an hour several times a week. Now she just runs for nine minutes at a time and does one short strength building circuit three times a week:
“I’m now stronger than I have ever been in my life. I’m the same dress size I was before I had my kids and when I was running marathons – but I am also stronger because I have been doing one ridiculously unambitious strength training circuit three days a week.” (From Carter’s The Sweet Spot: How to find your groove at home and work.)
Plus that, Carter reports she more energy, and isn’t suffering from the knee and hip problems she used to have when she ran longer distances less frequently.
This week experiment with uncovering your fitness MED. Find a combination of short activities you can do for just ten minutes at a time, multiple times over the week, and watch the impact it has on your fitness and energy levels.
Organization:
You can also apply the MED concept to getting more organized. Instead of waiting for when you can set aside several hours for filing, or organzing your drawers or closer, allocate an MED of 5 to 10 minutes daily on the organization project and watch how this simple and small investment of time can add up to major progress.
This week try out an MED strategy on an area of disorder in your office or home and see what results.
