How I Stay in Shape With a Busy Life: My Via Negativa Approach to Fitness

Everyone talks about discipline like it has to look one specific way.

Wake up at 4 a.m.

Go to the gym before sunrise.

Eat six perfect meals.

Have a trainer.

Track everything.

Never miss a day.

That sounds nice on a podcast.

But in real life, especially if you are building businesses, trading markets, creating content, managing people, traveling, thinking, solving problems, and living across different time zones, that kind of rigid fitness routine can become another job.

And for me, that never worked.

I am not a 4 a.m. guy. I am naturally a night owl. Most nights, I sleep somewhere between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. I usually wake up around 9 or 10 a.m., sometimes later depending on how intense the previous day was.

So when I first got serious about training, I tried to force myself into the standard fitness advice.

Wake up early. Go to the gym. Be disciplined.

It sounded good.

But it did not fit my life.

Then I tried training in the evening. That made more sense because I was already awake and active. But it created a different problem. I would finally get into flow state, working on something important, then I would have to stop everything, change clothes, drive to the gym, train, shower, come back, and try to restart my brain.

That interruption cost me more than the workout gave me.

So naturally, my mind went to the next common solution: get a personal trainer.

A trainer would hold me accountable. A trainer would push me. A trainer would make the process easier.

I tried that for a while too.

But it added another layer of complexity to my life.

Now I had to coordinate with another person. Match schedules. Reply to messages. Adjust times. Be somewhere at a specific hour. Explain when I could not make it. Rebook sessions.

The thing that was supposed to simplify training became another operational burden.

Then something clicked.

The problem was not that I needed to add more things to my life.

The problem was that I needed to remove friction.

That is when I started thinking about fitness through a via negativa lens.

Via negativa means improvement by subtraction. Instead of asking, "What more should I add?" you ask, "What can I remove?"

Remove the dependency on perfect timing.

Remove the need for a gym every day.

Remove the need for a trainer.

Remove the need for machines.

Remove the need for motivation.

Remove the need for a perfect environment.

Make training so simple that it becomes almost impossible to avoid.

That became my approach.

I still keep a gym membership. I still go to the gym around three times per week when it suits my schedule. I like lifting weights and I think the gym has its place.

But I stopped making the gym the foundation of my fitness.

The foundation became bodyweight training and movement.

Pushups. Squats. Jump rope. Running. Walking. Planks.

No machines. No commute. No trainer. No excuses.

I started giving myself simple numbers to hit during the day.

200 pushups.

100 squats.

15 minutes of jump rope.

5 kilometers of running or walking.

5 minutes of planking.

The magic was not that the numbers were perfect.

The magic was that the system was simple.

I did not need to block out two hours. I did not need to wait for the perfect moment. I did not need to be in the gym. I just needed to keep attacking the numbers throughout the day.

That changed everything.

If I had a few minutes between meetings, I would do pushups.

If I was at home, I would do squats.

If I was at the office and my brain needed a reset, I would do planks.

Sometimes I would do pushups in random places. In a restaurant. On the side of the road. Wherever.

Most people overthink fitness because they think it needs to look elegant.

It does not.

The body does not care if you trained in an expensive gym or next to your car.

The body responds to work.

Once I stopped making fitness precious, I became more consistent.

And once I became consistent, my body changed.

I got stronger. Leaner. More athletic. More energetic. More confident.

Eventually, I got jacked not because I had the perfect gym routine, but because I removed the barriers that kept stopping me.

This is the biggest lesson I learned:

The best fitness routine is not the one that looks the most impressive on paper.

It is the one you can actually do consistently inside your real life.

For me, that meant building a system that travels with me.

If I am in Dubai, I can train.

If I am in Bali, I can train.

If I am in a hotel, I can train.

If I am at home, I can train.

If I am busy, I can still train.

If I miss the gym, I can still train.

That flexibility matters because life is not stable.

Business is not stable. Markets are not stable. Travel is not stable. Energy is not stable. Motivation is definitely not stable.

So if your fitness depends on perfect conditions, it will collapse.

You need a system that survives chaos.

That is also why I had to rethink cardio.

I hate boring cardio.

I know running is useful. I know walking is useful. I do both. But I do not enjoy sitting on a machine staring at a wall, pretending I am spiritually evolved while suffering for 40 minutes.

So again, I used the same question:

How do I remove friction?

The answer was to make cardio fun.

That is how I got into padel.

Padel does not feel like cardio to me. It feels like a game. It is competitive, social, fast, and addictive. I can play for two hours and have an absolute blast while burning serious calories.

That is the trick.

If you hate cardio, do not just force yourself to suffer. Find a form of movement you actually enjoy.

Padel. Tennis. Boxing. Football. Hiking. Running outside. Swimming. Cycling. Whatever works.

The goal is not to win an award for suffering.

The goal is to move.

Fitness became easier for me when I stopped treating it like a separate department of life.

It became part of life.

Pushups during the day.

Walking while thinking.

Padel instead of boring cardio.

Gym when it suits.

Bodyweight training when life gets busy.

Simple. Portable. Effective.

I think busy people fail at fitness because they try to copy routines built for people with completely different lives.

A student can train differently from a founder.

A professional athlete can train differently from a trader.

A fitness influencer can train differently from someone building three businesses.

You have to design for your actual life, not your fantasy life.

My fantasy version of myself wakes up at 4 a.m., meditates, drinks green juice, trains for two hours, reads a book, and starts work before sunrise.

My real self might be trading late, sleeping at 3 a.m., waking up at 10 a.m., drinking coffee, answering messages, solving problems, recording content, and trying to protect my best thinking hours.

So I stopped fighting reality.

I built around it.

That is the real productivity lesson inside fitness.

Do not design systems for who you wish you were.

Design systems for who you actually are, then let those systems slowly upgrade you.

If you are busy and you want to get in shape, my advice is simple.

Stop adding complexity.

You probably do not need a perfect gym plan.

You probably do not need a personal trainer immediately.

You probably do not need a 4 a.m. routine.

You probably do not need expensive machines.

You probably do not need another app.

You need fewer excuses.

Create a minimum system.

Pick a few basic movements.

Pushups. Squats. Planks. Walking. Running. Jump rope.

Give yourself daily numbers.

Then attack those numbers throughout the day.

Do not wait for perfect conditions.

Do not make it dramatic.

Do not turn fitness into another business operation.

Just move.

That is how I stay in shape while having a busy life.

Not by adding more.

By removing everything that gets in the way.