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Comment by bialecki | Hacker News Reader

It's been said many times before, but getting exercise while doing a startup is a must. It's like saying you should use LESS/SASS instead of coding CSS. You just won't believe how much better it is until you actually try it for a while.

For the last three months I've forced myself to go for a jog every morning, no excuses, even if it means I'll get started on stuff a little later, so be it. It's an amazing complement to the uncertainty and mental challenges of a startup.

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I completely agree. Exercising every day has made such a difference to me that I even made an app[1] to help me maintain the habit.

Daily exercise makes me feel less tired and helps me think more clearly. For me changing my diet has been more difficult. I am going to start by changing breakfast (the meal I always eat alone), and then working from there.

[1] Commit for iPhone: http://thinklegend.com/commit

Cool idea!

Just as an FYI: I went to check out your app and your website says it's a buck but it's listed for $2.99.

May want to update that :)

Thanks for pointing that out! I was experimenting with prices on the app store, but forgot to update the website.

I was going to buy it if it was 1$ btw ;)

Thanks, I'll add that to my list of data points. :)

I'd buy it if it were a dollar too /datapoint

Getting exercise is a must, for anyone. It has nothing to do with whether you have a start-up or not.

Forcing myself to use LESS is actually harder than exercise for me. Any tips?

Just setup LESS when you start the project. Though if you are having a hard time using it that means you aren't getting much value from it. Using more, better mixins will make a huge difference. Checkout Bootstrap's mixins.less file for a starting point.

Do yourself an additional favor and don't use less - it nowhere near as powerful as alternatives. go with sass or stylus and I absolutely promise you it will pay off. gem install sass then run sass --watch /path/to/sass_file.sass and you're good to go.

SCSS, being a superset of CSS, is an easier transition. If its valid CSS, it's valid SCSS, so you can upgrade incrementally. LESS is totally out for me, since it sometimes chokes on obscure, but valid CSS declarations (e.g. some browser prefixes and hacks).

Which would you rather do? Get 8 hours of sleep everyday, or exercise 5 hours a week?

I'd say 7 hours of sleep per night and 3 hours of exercise

thats what I do. Wake up 7, gym till 8:30, then work with break for food once every 2 hours for 5 minutes (plus bigger dish at evening) then from 10 to 11 cardio, sleep before 12. I do not exercise over the weekends, let body sleep longer, rest, be lazy. If I manage my time properly, I still easily get 10 hours of work a day! I just noticed how much detracting certain things are: talking 5 times about the same thing over the phone with friend, watching TV "only" for couple minutes, browsing web, reading emails that I know I will come back to again later on, etc. It all adds up substantially. The only spoil other than energy drink with 30g of sugar (my daily rate) I let myself to do is to "waste" time here and there on reading HN :)

1 hour of intense exercise (minimal breaks) >>> 3 hours of exercise with a ton of breaks and loitering around.

There's a lot of literature that workouts beyond an hour-hour and a half don't add much benefits and the shorter and more intense they are, the better. (of course this does not apply to athletes)

You can even cut that hour down to 30 minutes of high intensity, 'bursty' exercise with no breaks. Art de Vany talks about this in Evolutionary Fitness.

Exercise definitely. I've found that many of my best ideas come to me while exercising. I don't listen to music or anything so it is the most (sometimes only) distraction free time of my day.

I've also found that, by bike commuting, I can integrate exercise into my day in a way that doesn't really take much additional time.

Amen :)

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