Doing a little more
Posted by paulway on December 19th, 2008
Getting a bit of physical activity is often hard for hackers. We don’t want to sit around sweating in gyms, we often work late and hack later, and we may even be afraid of that old Rugby Jock image that has tyrannised some of us. But as mentioned in the HowTo, doing some physical work often makes it much easier to sleep and run our bodies normally. Here are a bunch of ideas that you can use to get a bit more exercise without making it a chore.
- Climb the stairs to work. If you work up fairly high in a building, see if you can get the lift from the third floor or get off two levels before your own.
- Walk around the block or the building at lunchtime.
- If you catch the train or bus, try getting off one stop before your work or home and walking the rest of the way.
- If you have one, take your music player and listen to some good podcasts while walking to make good use of the time.
- Some of us live close enough to work to cycle in – try to make one day a week when you cycle in. That way you can plan ahead for it.
- If you live too far out to ride all the way, see if you can take your bike part of the way, in a car or on a train.
- I used to take my rollerblades in to work in my bag and then change and blade home. This way I didn’t have to shower and change at work and still got some good exercise.
- See if there’s anyone else that you work with that wants to go for walks; it also gives you a good chance to talk about hacking and other fun stuff.
- Try standing up in the bus or train to work rather than sitting all the way.
- Try geocaching – it’s a great way to explore your area and places you visit, it gets you out and walking around, you get to traded neat small stuff with other people, and there’s the thrill of discovery and secret knowledge.
- Offer to do some gardening for a friend – you don’t have to have a green thumb if they do.
- If you do some kind of regular exercise, start tracking it. Set yourself regular goals – something you can achieve every week or so – and reward yourself when you get there.
- Grab a Chore Wars account for you and anyone you share with and see how many levels you can achieve.
I’d be really interested to hear other ideas on how to get a bit more activity in your day. The key lessons I’ve found are that it doesn’t have to be a lot of work or something that looks like ‘regular exercise’ to still stay active, that making small increments and keeping to them is more fun than trying for big goals, and that fitting things into your existing routine almost always works and changing your routine is much harder.
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December 22nd, 2008 at 4:45 am
I would encourage people to not be scared off my gyms and the “Rugby Jock” thing – I am sure it may happen in some gyms, but in general people just go and do their thing (try a gym out, they all have trial memberships).
Its a great place to listen to podcasts and think about things – solve problems etc…
December 23rd, 2008 at 3:54 pm
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January 5th, 2009 at 8:45 am
My favourite ‘get away from the desk’ activity has been chopping firewood for some time. Of course, this implies you either have a fireplace (as I do) or know someone who would appreciate a nice stack of chopped firewood.
The activity itself serves a multitude of purposes, including a> angst relief (my favourite trick is picturing that annoying bug/client/whatever as I chop) b> using different wrist muscles in different ways (ie: RSI prevention) and c> it can be a reasonably good cardiac workout.
February 19th, 2009 at 7:53 pm
If I don’t get regular exercise (normally jogging, but more and more walking as I get older), things get very bad. Furthermore, I cannot count the number of really difficult problems I have solved while out on a walk or jog. What it comes down to is that I don’t have time to not exercise.
Of course, all of this stuff is quite personal. Different people will have different types of exercise that works best for them, and some people seem to be better served by other sorts of hobbies.