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Comment by kevinherron | Hacker News Reader

It's even worse than lowered productivity for me. I just start getting straight-up depressed; just absolutely terrible feeling. No energy, no drive, no light. And then I realize that somewhere in the last two weeks I stopped my regular exercise regiment for some reason or another and pick it back up - cured instantly.

It's easy to fool yourself into thinking that the funk caused the stop in exercise but that's nearly never the case.

EVERYBODY, hacker or not, should be getting regular exercise. Please. You won't regret it.

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Same thing here. Stopped running, restarted 3 days ago, feeling better already.

Although I do think that doing something like painting a house or doing gardening for a couple hours would also do the trick.

From experience, I would say activities like painting a house, or gardening aren't a substitute to running in every aspect; sure, they can clear up your mind, but you won't experience an improved cardiovascular and respiratory health, or even a "high".

I like to "garden" using a chainsaw. That's a pretty good workout.

This reminds me of the ex Google programmer who switched to a job in the lumbering industry: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/c1rcu/iama_person_with...

When I lived in areas that had a lot of snow, I enjoyed the workout of shoveling snow. Always felt fantastic doing it and afterward, so much so that I'd often fantasize about shoveling the entire neighborhood if I had enough time.

Seen this? http://www.shovelglove.com/

Problem is with that type of regime, you'd end up with no garden left and some really annoyed neighbours.

the closest neighbours are several hundred metres away, and the garden is large and located in a very fertile area. It only gets attacked like that a couple of times a year. It's not something you'd do every night after work.

Oh to be able to run around a garden with a chainsaw. Sadly I like in a block of flats, and you'd be glared at for smoking outside. Lucky you.

As a rule of thumb, the best predictor of your mental health is what you do physically, and the best predictor of your physical health is what you spend all day thinking about.[1] Kind of funny how that works.

[1] Assuming you're not outright poisoning yourself or something.

You are so right of course. Even a few breaks throughout the day - increases my coding. If I forgo any kind of exercise - it's a fast downward cycle.

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