Life hack: 20 squats a day

How I managed to defy all expectation and succeed.

Dec 10, 2023

woman lifting barbel — This is not me, but wow, you go girl! Photo by Sven Mieke on Unsplash

Drum roll please

Ok, what I’m about to tell you, will probably blow your mind… this could be my greatest achievement, as well as the most unlikely. It is the one piece of information that when I tell people, there is a universal hat tip of admiration… unless they know me, in which case there is a wry smile of disbelief, followed by a look of WTF incredulity once they’ve become convinced.

A bit of background

As you get older, you acquire an ever-growing list of things you ‘really ought’ to be doing on a regular basis. Squats being the top thing you can do to prevent your back from ‘going’ (again), which if you’re anything like me, happens about every 3 years, and when it does, is BIG time debilitating and excruciating.

Closely followed on this list is push-ups, planking, lifting heavy weights, brushing your teeth while standing on one leg and the ability to not look ridiculous in yoga gear.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, so let’s start with the squats…

Just to put this into context for those who are only just getting to know me… over the years, I have actually spent more man-hours cancelling gym memberships than attending them. The only time in my entire life I have ever been ‘beach fit’ was on my honeymoon at 40, after a rather intensive 4 months with a Personal Trainer and a strong will to ‘get away with1’ the rather ambitious dress I’d just haemorrhaged a small fortune on.

The big announcement

So without further ado2… I can confirm that I have not only turned into someone who does 20 squats a day, which in itself seemed like an unbelievable thing to achieve, but the thing that makes it oh so much sweeter, is that it is now a full blown habit!

Blimey! I know! For realsies!

Now my definition of a habit, is not just something you do every day willingly or otherwise, but something that if you don’t do it feels wrong.

I don’t think this is a fad either, as it all started well over two years now, and so I’d be very happy to share the methodology with you…

The origin

It was August 2021, remember back then? We were just coming out of Covid, but everyone was still very much working from home, where possible.

I had become slightly obsessed with the fact that some people were managing to hold down two full-time jobs whilst wfh, not over-performing in either, just quietly quitting in both, but all importantly, receiving two full-blown pay cheques! Imagine!? Genius!

I must admit having been self-employed since my late 20’s I was rather envious of these over-achieving Tech Bro’s who could pull off this incredible feat, and so was hungrily devouring a ‘How To’ article to see how they did it.

This article said, point blank, DO NOT EVEN ATTEMPT IT if you haven’t read ‘this’ book… and of course ‘that’ book was James Clear’s Atomic Habits3.

Well this was a surprise, I would have thought two laptops, the ability to live on only four hours sleep and a world class collection of post-it notes would have been at the top of the list! But no, it was to read that book!

So obviously I immediately abandoned the article, downloaded the book, and then started rooting around in the back of my drawers for some paperclips.

The Methodology: Phase 1

Having absorbed the fundamentals from the book, I wrote on a piece of card ‘DO 1 SQUAT’ and propped it up on my bathroom shelf, alongside two little receptacles. The cuter the better for added encouragement, who could deny this cheerleader penguin.

At the start of the day, Lefty has all the paperclips and Righty is empty.

My rule was that each time I went into the bathroom I would do one squat, move one paperclip from the dish to the eggcup and that was it. Even a meerkat would agree on its simplicity.

That’s not such a big ask when you think about it, and the added bathroom clutter really helps you to remember to do it.

So on a normal work day when I was out for most of it, I might clock up maybe four or five, and on a working from home or weekend day it may reach a dizzying ten or so!

The exact number didn’t really matter. The thing that mattered was at the end of each and every day I was able to look at the pile of paperclips on the right and congratulate myself for doing 4, 5 or 10 squats!

Those of you who have been paying attention will know by now, that number is exactly 4, 5 or 10 more than I was doing beforehand! Result! In any language!

The odd time when I was being particularly forgetful and had to go upstairs to get something on multiple occasions, the End of Day number would reach an inconceivable 15 or so! Sign me up for a Triathlon right now!

All this for literally no perceived effort!

Go on, stand up and do a squat right now! Just one, no showing off. See? Doing one is literally a piece of cake!

Then I started to get Micro Ambitious…

Maybe instead of doing just one each time, I could do 2 or 3. Sure enough, lots of 2’s and 3’s add up, maybe I could make my daily target 20!?

Which proved very easy to achieve over the course of one day with the paperclip-bathroom-pop-in™ method.

The Methodology: Phase 2

I’ll level with you here, it was a bit of a faff, and having lost three paperclips down the drain, it needed to be streamlined.

By this time I had become pretty adept at doing a few in a row, so Phase 2, was to just have my ‘DO 1 SQUAT’ prompt to remind me each morning, do a few squats and then just stop when it felt slightly like too much effort.

So to start with that would have been about seven… but then I told myself if I wanted to increase it I could, or more often I would ‘accidentally’ do more when my mind drifted off whilst counting and forget to stop at the right number. Bollox!! I’ve accidentally done 9 now!

And if I accidentally over shot the target on any day, then by definition it must have been very easy physically, and so my rule was to do at least that number every day from that point onward.

The habit

It took me months to ‘accidentally’ build up to 20 in one go, every day, but here’s the thing, it felt really easy. Slow and steady. Whereas if you go in with a ‘must do 20 everyday’ attitude it feels like a huge imposition, and is doomed to fail, but this way it just sneaks in (wearing very soft-souled shoes) and gently becomes a habit. Genius!

And I am happy to report that my back hasn’t ‘gone’ ‘been’ or ‘went’ since I’ve been doing them on a regular basis!

I still have my rather ugly ‘DO 1 SQUAT’ prompt in my bathroom, as a security measure, despite the cleaner repeatedly tucking it into a corner for the first six months… even she has given up moving it now, she knows it’s a permanent fixture.

As are my 20 squats a day.

You’re welcome!

K8x

PS: What would you like to form into a habit? Let me know in the comments below.

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