To Stick With a Habit, Find Your ‘Minimum Effective Dose’

A strategy for keeping something in your life even when it isn’t your first priority

Bear with me: This isn’t a fitness story, even though it starts out like one.

About two years ago, for a wide variety of reasons — including time, mental energy, and a calf that becomes painful and explodes with repetitive motion — I decided to shift my armchair athleticism from running to strength training. Abruptly, I went from running 50 miles per week to running no miles at all, from trying to avoid gaining any unnecessary muscle mass to trying to gain as much as possible.

Amid all those changes, one quality I didn’t want to lose was my cardiovascular health. Sure, heart rate increases during strength training, but it only goes so high when you’re doing 5 to 10 repetitions of a movement. The question I asked myself: What is the least aerobic exercise I can do to maintain a strong heart?

After two years of experimentation, I landed at a routine that accomplishes exactly that: Once a week, I hike as fast as I can up a steep hill for five minutes (can’t run because of the exploding calf) and then walk back down a few times over. The whole workout takes 20 to 30 minutes. I know it’s effective because my resting heart rate hasn’t…