Being an executive coach, I work with some incredible high-performers. The motivated, goal-oriented types who are always looking to improve. But a common cognitive distortion I see is “black-or-white” thinking or an “all-or-nothing” mentality. They’re either smashing it, or – from their perspective – they are failing. They’re either training for a marathon, or there’s no point in training at all.

Maybe I recognise it so easily because it’s something I also struggle with at times.

While I can’t say I have the “progress over perfection” mantra nailed in all areas of my life, one area where I’ve made a bit of headway is with exercise. Previously I’d go through periods of doing huge amounts of exercise, and then when that would become untenable due to work travel, I’d do pretty much nothing at all (and beat myself up for it). Nowadays, I’m all about “trying to move my body daily”, so all movement is progress and failure is impossible.

And for me, it works. Having no bottom limit means 5 mins of stretching counts. 10 mins of weights counts. A 20 min walk on the beach counts. An hour bike ride counts. And therefore, I’m more inclined to do it. Otherwise, if the goal is always an hour-and-a-half-workout, it’s easy to talk myself out of starting.

There is some science to back up this approach.

The first psych-trick I’m taking advantage of is the 5 min rule, commonly used to overcome procrastination. Essentially, you tell yourself that you only have to do the task for 5 mins, and if you don’t get into it after that time, you can stop. I use this to motivate me to start, especially when I only have a small window of time available.

The second psych-trick I’m using is open goals rather than SMART goals. So, “I want to see how high I can get my average daily step count by the end of the year” rather than “I must walk 10,000 steps every day”. Findings from a small exercise-related study suggest that if you’re currently “insufficiently active” and you set goals this way, you’re likely to both do more exercise and derive more pleasure and enjoyment from it than if you set SMART goals.

Where possible, I also use bundling (pairing something I don’t really want to do – like going to the gym early on a Saturday morning, with something I really want to do – like meeting up with my friend and going for coffee afterwards) and scheduling (diarising a commitment to myself and following through, rather than waiting for motivation to strike).

While my exercise habits aren’t perfect, that’s really not the point.