The term rubato in classical music means “robbed” in Italian. Rubato is the practice of stretching and condensing the tempo in a section of music to heighten its effect. The practice is largely absent from the metronome-dictated, beat-driven music that defines our age. It is strange, the same concept pervades the use of time in our day. This is something I often hear from busy professionals:

I don’t get time to work out like I used to.

It is verifiably correct. You are beholden to the pace of your day. You will never “get” the time to workout, you must, as the term rubato implies, steal it. Stealing is different than taking, it’s like weaponized taking in that you must take from someone or something that owns the item being stolen. This is true for your time. If all of your time is “spoken for” you must take it from something, unless you find a way to add time to the day.

Stealing is a serious offense! If you’re going to commit such a crime, the thing that you’re stealing must be worth stealing. Why would fitness be worth stealing? Well to start, obtaining fitness will:

• Make you more attractive (duh)
• Passively allow you to make better first impressions which influence hiring decisions (Hamermesh & Biddle, 1994)
• Improve your memory and problem solving skills (Smith et al., 2010)
• Enhance your mood (Basso & Suzuki, 2017)
• Literally earn you more money, 13.36% more! (Xiao, et al. 2022)

Most of these should be pretty obvious to anyone with a functioning brain but it’s good to remind yourself of the value of what you’re stealing. I enjoy videogames as much as the next person and I only get a bit of time to play them in the evenings, but would I steal that time to make more money and improve my thinking? Absolutely.

Routine

The routine is of secondary importance. Most blogs focus on the fitness routine, how many reps to do, etc. but that doesn’t solve your core issue. The root of your problem is that you are waiting to get time to workout. It’s great to refine the routine once you’re in the habit of working out but if people spent as much time working out as they did debating over the “perfect routine”, we’d all be super jacked.

Ultimately, most of us aren’t going to run marathons or compete for Mr. Olympia, especially if we want demanding, high-stakes careers. Instead, we must optimize for “good enough” which can look like incline walking on a treadmill or playing a vigorous game of tennis. Just these things alone, provided we are brave enough to steal the time for them, will improve our lives immeasurably.

If you really value your health, you’ll become a thief to obtain it.