One-Button Workout Shortcut

Any area of your life where there are regular patterns or discipline is ripe for automation... like exercise!

Alarming developments...

I’ve going to f3birmingham.com workouts, and I’ve got a shortcut to remind me to log the workout to Strava. I don’t go every time, so I just figured out a way to automate it: fire the automation only when the alarm I set to attend in the morning goes off.

The automation in the “Do” block looks like:

One button

On all the other days, I used to have a "choose one" shortcut that let me pick what workout I wanted to do from a list. I was using the iOS14 "choose from Shortcut folder" action, so I have separate Shortcuts for each type of workout I do.

Last night I realized that I could make life even easier on my sleepy self... I have a consistent schedule for my workouts, so if I know in advance what workout I'm going to do in the morning, I can program that in!

So I wrote a new workout shortcut:

I have a shortcut that builds that dictionary in Data Jar to “set my schedule”

That means if I want to tune a particular workout, I just change its shortcut in that Workouts folder… I’ll probably make one for stretching or yoga and just add it, and I can change my schedule!

This means that when I wake up, I hit workout and the app opens, playlist starts, all that jazz.

It's easy.

On mornings when I commit to F3, my phone will automatically remind me to log my workout.

On all other mornings, I hit one button and it does exactly what I want. I'm basically using iOS Shortcuts to do a User Experience style experiment on my morning routine. 💪