Week 5-5 Week Assignment

The long-term behavioral goal that I wish to focus on for this assignment is to do physical exercise five-days a week. Regular physical exercise would help me maintain a healthy weight, reduce my risk of heart attack and stroke, improve my mood and well-being, and is an important factor for a long and healthy life. The first technique that I practiced was time management. I have a busy schedule which involves a constant balance of attending classes, doing homework, going to work, doing church callings, and participating in extracurricular activities. Sometimes at the end of the day I am so tired or behind that I am not motivated to do physical exercise. However, I am also bad at planning my day, which means that I could get more out of my day if I devoted a few minutes at the beginning of the week to making a schedule. I applied the time management technique by making a weekly schedule and devoting specific

I often was not motivated to do physical activity. If I had a choice to watch Netflix or to exercise I would probably pick Netflix every time. Therefore, I used my Netflix watching passion as an internal bargaining tool to get myself to exercise. For example, instead of not exercising and just watching Netflix, I would exercise for an hour and then reward myself by watching thirty-minutes of Netflix. This motivated me to exercise because I knew that I would be able to do something I enjoyed after I was done. I learned that I could apply this technique to other situations in my life. For example, I use a self-reward system when I am not motivated to study, by studying for 30 thirty-minutes and then taking a five-minute YouTube break. I also learned that self-reward and time management are connected. For instance, I would designate specific study breaks throughout the day as little incentives to get work done. The schedule, however, helped my five-minute study break not to turn into a three-hour Netflix