Hacker News Reader

Comment by Chris2048 | Hacker News Reader

Chris2048

What I'd like to know is how this boils down wrt work.

If an increase in mental ability represent a greater work-done-per hour; But the cost is time spent exercising -> less time working (maybe somewhat compensated for other positive non-work benefits), Then what would be the perfect amount of exercise to boost productivity?

i.e. would an hour spent exercising pay for itself in productivity boost?

View on HN

You can get in a decent intense squat session in only 15 minutes.

The really big time sinks associated with lifting include: - commute to/from gym - changing clothes - another shower

If you don't live in cramped quarters such as SF/NYC, I recommend a small home/garage gym to address these.

The Times produced a great little app for seven-minute workouts, which apparently provide many of the benefits of more intensive exercise regimes and can be done entirely at home. The app: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/projects/workouts/ The science: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/the-scientific-7-mi...

Also, finding new pants that fit. That's been a big time sink for me.

preach!

You run out of the ability to be able to do practical mental work long before you run out of the ability to do physical exercise, so I think you're making a false zero-sum comparison of the two.

True, but for me I have other constraints on free time, where I have choice between one or the other; so I am doing other, low-mentally-and-low-physically-taxing tasks in between free-time.

If you want my unsolicited advice I'd say that if you're truly so busy that you can't spare say 4 hours a week (3x a week in the gym) you have bigger things to worry about than how strong legs might impact the long-term health of your brain.

I have more things I could do, than time to do them; prioritising is the issue. There's no such thing as 'spare' time in that context, all free time has things-to-do competing for it.

Can I flip this question around? If your job is to solve problems and You take a long 2-hour walk through the park, Come back to the office with a really great solution to a big problem Would that not have been worth your company's time?

We still have the problem of proving that 2-hour walks are required to solve large problems...

This would only be a problem if you currently spend every waking hour working effectively. It is now 7:18am my time, and I already worked out for an hour, mostly lifting weights. I didn't cut into my work time at all and I'll be way more capable of working than if I just woke up and started work.

You Could of been working ;-)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com