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Comment by chasing | Hacker News Reader

Where's "Don't exercise?"

That'd be pretty close to the top of my list.

A quick 2-3 mile jog around the neighborhood can help get me out of work-related funks. (I work at a home office, though, so it's easier for me to say "fuck it" and go do something sweaty in the middle of the day...)

My theory is that, since the only real item on your jogging to-do list is to put one foot in front of the other, your brain is freed up a bit to wander. Which is helped by the light stimulus of the changing environment around you. And this brain wandering helps shake out cobwebs and generally make you feel like a free individual again.

And, of course, it gives you an energy boost, which helps with the simple exhaustion side of things.

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Exercise, I've found, is probably the single most important aspect of maintaining "happiness."

The problem is I can't consistently muster the willpower to block out an hour long chunk of time to go running or workout at gym. I found a lovely compromise, though:

### The Seven Minute Workout [1][2] ###

It removes literally every excuse my brain can come up with not to work out. Too cold outside? Doesn't matter, you're not going anywhere. Not enough time? The time you'll spend coming up with excuses is probably longer than 7 minutes. That's like two songs on the songza workout playlist. Don't feel like changing? Doesn't matter - you can do it in the clothes you're in. Can't find the equipment you need? All you need is a chair, a wall, and a 7x3 clear space of floor.

I figure it's much better to do this every day [3] than to go on a workout binge where I work out 2 hours at the gym on Monday, take Tuesday off, dread going there for 1.5 hours on Wednesday, take Thursday off, take Friday off because I'm still sore from Wednesday, take the weekend off because it's the weekend, and then forget about working out again.

1. http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/the-scientific-7-mi...

2. http://www.7-min.com/

3. http://dontbreakthechain.com/share/christiangenco/last-four/...

Going to the gym 3/4 times a week for an hour or two is a luxury I just don't have anymore.

For those that have the room, the best solution is a home gym setup. I wake-up at 5:30 AM and am doing my workout by 5:45 AM or 6:00 AM. I don't have anything fancy - just a set of weights with a couple of bars, a Nautilus dumbbell set (where you can change the weights on each dumbbell via a dial) and dinky bench. I will likely add a rowing machine to this for cardio.

It's still a challenge getting the habit in place but there is really no friction anymore. No time is wasted driving back and forth to a gym. No issues about finding the time. Doing 45 minutes, three times a week is great.

Being a night person, waking up at 5:30 AM is still a habit that I am solidifying but the main reason for doing it this way is that I can do this for the rest of my life. I am hoping within 6 months this routine becomes ingrained as brushing my teeth in the morning.

I wanted to add, in addition to your comment, that it takes surprisingly little exercise to make a dramatic change in your over-all health levels. Blood pressure, cholesterol, etc. can be significantly affected without becoming a gym rat. 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there makes a huge difference.

I was skeptical, but now I'm impressed. I just had a great 7-minute workout in my clothes without leaving my living room. This will definitely become my routine when I don't feel like going to the gym.

JOIN ME BROTHER! http://dontbreakthechain.com

Thanks a lot for this.

Moderate exercise not only treats, but prevents depression http://media.utoronto.ca/media-releases/moderate-exercise-no... I don't like jogging, so I go for a walk everyday, which includes a lot of hills and stairs. Not only do I meet my 10,000 steps on my step counter, but it's when I come up with my best ideas. Also being grossly overweight does no favors to keeping depression away.

For me, exercise (running, surfing, and lately doing weights -- I've never done the latter before by I'm enjoying it), coupled with my thinking therapy coping mechanisms (CBT works wonders for me) has completely placed my depression into remission for the past year and a half.

That's the longest time I've gone without an episode since I was 15, and I'm 23 now. I use antidepressants when I feel an episode starting -- but I only stay on them for a maximum of 3 months and come off them; I use them as a mental bandaid of sorts. I've not needed them since I started exercising (and working on my thought processes), and it's quite literally changed my life.

It also helps with motivation, thinking through hard problems (though I'm still yet to find a way to capture those thoughts while I'm riding a wave!). The girlfriend appreciates it too. I highly recommend doing some form of exercise for anyone who is struggling with their own head, it'll help, I promise.

The one thing I had to do to make the habit stick was doing multiple forms of exercise. Running is great, but just doing that alone was too much of a "To-do item" -- adding surfing and weight training to it made it stick finally.

I second the CBT aside—it's very effective at helping people work with their own thoughts & responses in a relentlessly directed manner.

> "The one thing I had to do to make the habit stick was doing multiple forms of exercise. Running is great, but just doing that alone was too much of a "To-do item" -- adding surfing and weight training to it made it stick finally."

This is a great point and something I just came to learn as well. If something at the gym is boring, do something else! I couldn't figure out how people loved the gym when I was going to run for an hour every time and was bored out of my mind. Switching to a weight routine instilled a sense of real progress (the weight on the bar, the # of reps) and left me in a state of satisfied exhaustion.

this^^

i spend all my time in front of my computer(including my train and bus rides), but i also do sports almost every day.

the problem a lot of us face is that they can't stop thinking about work related things. be it political, company hierarchy(or architecture), or a soft/hardware related problem, that you didn't manage to fix in time.

personally i find running or working to allow me too much time to think. i find my balance in sports, that require 100% attention. that is the only moment during the day where i don't think about solving some problem, but instead focus on something else.

i find my balance in sports, that require 100% attention

It's not a sport but I recommend cooking, doing Legos (have you tried EV3?), etc as a way to connect to physical things.

Old fashioned jigsaw puzzles are good for this too, though for problem-solving types perhaps a bit too hard to put down...

Yes, the idea is to have something that you can do with some low effort. We can call it aerobic brain activity.

haven't tried ev3, but i tend to get immersed in cooking when i do it too. believe it or not i actually had an ex gf that was worried about it.

On the bright side, being grossly overweight also makes the walk more of a workout!

Maybe he didn't list it because he was, in fact, exercising? It's possible to burn out and exercise, but for some reason every other comment on HN drudges up exercise with a routine to "help" everyone else.

This goes back to the post that said something about only giving advice when it's asked for.

I've burnt out before while exercising pretty heavily. The reasons he listed, after a while, can completely ruin anything your exercise does. Especially when you're "Free to wander" and just keep thinking about how bad the job sucks.

HN has terrible opinions and ideas about exercise. For a group that is generally pretty critical, they are surprisingly naive and uncritical when it comes to exercise. Go figure.

Also, you can't ignore your body. It wants to move.

I knew Pharell was on HN!

Hitting the gym for an hour lets me check something off in my mental To-Do list for the day. A happy little mark to show that I did something productive that day.

Work related items on my mental To-Do list sometimes take more than a day to do, and it can eat away at me if I don't cross things off that list. "Bah! Today was a total waste of time!"

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