How to plan and track effectively

12 Nov How to plan and track effectively

It’s dark when you leave the house in the morning and it’s dark when you get home. 90% of your time at the yard is in the dark- yes, we’ve all been there, and it can be so easy over winter to lose fitness both yourself and your horse (I do, however, salute the person that invented the horse walker). Over the coming month we will be running a blog series on how to get the most out of you and your horse this winter.

My names Carmen Cummiskey and I founded TEQNOX back in 2016. Running a business, keeping fit and finding time to go riding is difficult but, in this blog, I’m going to share some of the helpful resources, tips and tricks that I’ve found help keep me on track.

The Alarm

It’s dark, the horses need mucked out, or if you’re lucky enough to have winter grazing fed and turned out for a few hours. I’ve found alarms such as https://www.sleepcycle.com/ help you to get you up when your body’s ready. It monitors your sleep patterns and assesses whether you are in a deep or light sleep.

It’s also a great way of checking your quality of sleep and lets me know when I need to cut down on the coffee.

Plan Your Day

Whether you work on a yard or at an office desk planning is essential to make sure you get everything done. I’ve found planners such as ‘The Productivity Planner’ to be useful.

It’s suggested that you put your most difficult tasks first so that you make sure you get them done. In general, as we can all procrastinate and do the fun or easy stuff first. I’ve also included some links below to some helpful free planner sites:

https://asana.com/

https://resources.collab.net/agile-101/what-is-kanban

You also can’t beat a good old whiteboard- it’s my best friend when trying to think things through and a must when you’ve got multiple horses to feed.

Track

Everyone is on some type of fitness journey. Whether you are looking to maintain your current fitness levels, get fitter, or get stronger it is important to keep track of your activity. Many smart phones now automatically track your steps. You can use apps such as My Fitness Pal to track nutrition and exercise or revolutionary equestrian applications such as https://huufe.com/ to track your riding.

Implement

So all that’s finally left to do is implement planning and tracking into your routine. They say it can take weeks to form a habit so why not start now?