The biggest myth about getting in shape is that it takes dozens of sets, endless reps, and months of patience to see results.
95% of people who regularly lift weights go through the same exact pattern:
→ They show up day after day for months
→ Train for 1-2+ hours until they're sluggish
→ Make hardly any progress after a while
→ Eventually give up in frustration or keep wasting endless time just to look the same.
The vast majority of people are simply turning the gym into a cardiovascular competition. They do marathon-style workouts which do very little for changing their body composition.
Training is completely useless without high levels of intensity, which can only be allowed for by keeping the volume of your training very low.
Unless you're a bodybuilder on large quantities of performance-enhancing drugs, your body will not be able to recover from high amounts of intense training (or even moderate amounts, depending on your genetics, age, and other factors).
The majority of people you see with above-average physiques are using a sub-optimal training method which would not work for the average person, however, their above-average genetics make almost any half-effective style of training work well.
Far too many people make the error of believing that if the majority of people who are in shape train one way, then that way of training must be the best.
This, however, is a huge mistake because for every 1 individual who may get results with a common training method, there are 20 individuals who try it and get no results at all.
If the common approach to fitness that most people engage in worked so well, then the majority of people who try it would nearly maximize their aesthetic potential, but in fact, it is exactly the opposite: the majority of people who regularly work out are far from being in shape.
Formulating a proper fitness protocol has nothing to do with looking at what the vast majority of people do (who aren't in shape) and copying it, or even worse, copying it and doing "a little bit more" in hopes that you'll get better results by doing a 6th set instead of 5.
It is about understanding what is required by nature to develop a well-rounded, healthy-looking physique. That is, adequate muscle mass for your frame and a low enough body fat percentage for it to show through.
In order to accomplish this as a busy entrepreneur, it is simply a matter of eating a balanced diet with the proper amount of total calories depending on your weight goals, and doing strength training with the correct intensity and volume to stimulate increases in muscle mass.
It's not a competition to see who can go into the gym and stay the longest, to see how much protein you can ingest in a sitting, or to see how few carbohydrates you can function on.