Monkey Brain, Meet Game Theory

Using coffee incentives to gamify my morning workouts

I’ve always been a morning workout person.

In fact, if I don’t work out in the morning, I go a little insane - like an Australian Shepherd kept indoors from dawn until dusk. I get antsy, anxious, and start sprinting between - and jumping on - various pieces of furniture. I typically work out every day; even on my “off” days, I do at least a walk or some yoga in the morning to get the blood flowing and the heart rate elevated.

As much as I try to avoid it, there are mornings when I don’t work out - usually due to a rare hangover or some ungodly early-morning travel. Regardless of the reason, I find myself completely unmotivated to rally for an evening gym or cardio session. I’m mentally checked out, and the act of putting on Dri-FIT clothing and running shoes feels like too much to physically handle - let alone repeatedly picking up something heavy until I sweat.

So, I work out in the mornings.

But sometimes not as early as I’d like.

I’m not trying to be one of those psychotic “fit-fluencers” with a watch my obsessive, neurotic morning routine where I wake up at 4:30 a.m., drink mud water, take an ice bath, and then barefoot-run 40 miles attitude.

However, I would like to get up a few hours before work starts, tackle an early workout, and then head into a productive remainder of the day.

The problem is that “a few hours before work” can mean a lot of different things when you work from home.

Last week, I wrote about the extreme flexibility that working from home gives the modern employed “nomad.” A problem I’ve been running into is the lack of an exact time to be anywhere. Because of that, my morning workouts have ranged from starting at 6:00 a.m. to as late as 8:50 a.m.

Mornings are a sacred time - a protected, quiet space for me to inject black coffee into my bloodstream and allow my body and mind to wake up. I like starting my mornings with a bit of writing or reading, which naturally transitions into planning for the day, which transitions into checking email… And before I know it, I’ve been completing work tasks in the early a.m. for over an hour or so. This is productive, but now it’s 8:15 a.m. and I still haven’t worked out.

Even though I’ve already worked for an hour, it doesn’t feel right to start a workout so late in the morning.

Disrupting this routine has been a challenge, which is why I turned early workouts into a simple game.

For the past month, I’ve been “gamifying” my approach to early-morning workouts in an attempt to build the habits and consistency I want.

I made up a super simple system that assigns point values to windows of time. If I start a workout in that window, I “score” that designated value for the day:

• Before 6 a.m. - [-1]

• 6–7 a.m. - [1]

• 7:01–7:30 a.m. - [2]

• 7:31–8 a.m. - [3]

• 8:01–8:30 a.m. - [4]

• 8:31–9 a.m. - [5]

• After 9:01 a.m. - [6]

Ultimately, my goal is to start a workout before 7 a.m. The score works like golf - meaning a lower score gets me closer to that goal. During March, I didn’t consciously change my morning routine, but I had this game running in the background.

Here are the results:

Goal (30 Days): 90 pts

Actual: 88 pts

Earliest Workout: 6:30 a.m.

Average: 2.9

So, on average, I worked out between 7:30 and 8 a.m. Not great - leaving me with plenty of room for improvement.

What’s the carrot hanging at the end of the stick for scoring a 30-day average under 2.0 points? Aka the “prize” for winning the game?

Allowing myself to splurge on a bulk order of premium Hawaiian coffee beans I’ve been craving.

I’m mildly disappointed in how easy it is to trick my monkey brain into performing better just by turning a chore into a game - but hey, whatever gets me on the mat and sweating before sunrise, right?

I will get that coffee.

The Bel