The x-risk case for exercise: to have the most impact, the world needs you at your best
I often see people who stopped exercising because they felt like it didn’t matter compared to x-risks. Especially if they have short timelines.
This is like saying that the best way to drive from New York to San Francisco is speeding and ignoring all the flashing warning lights in your car. Your car is going to break down before you get there.
Exercise improves your:
Energy
Creativity
Focus
Cognitive functioning.
It decreases:
Burnout
Depression
Anxiety
It improves basically every good metric we’ve ever bothered to check. Humans were meant to move.
Also, if you really are a complete workaholic, you can double exercise with work.
Some ways to do that:
Take calls while you walk, outside or on a treadmill
Set up a walking-desk. Just get a second hand treadmill for ~$75 and strap a bookshelf onto it et voila! Walking-desk
Read work stuff on a stationary bike or convert it into audio with all the text-to-speech software out there (I recommend Speechify for articles and PDFs and Evie for Epub on Android)
Of course, I recommend against being a workaholic. But even if you are one, there is just no excuse to not exercise. You will help the world more if you do.
I read that 5 minutes of walking every half hour undoes most of the health problems from working a desk job. That felt like quite a lot of time, and so I developed a system where I do one minute of intense exercises every half an hour (e.g., jump squats, pushups, lunges). I even rotate the exercises by day, so on Mondays and Thursdays, I look forward to “Leg Day” and I get two arm days and core day. I keep a spreadsheet to track my progress throughout the year.
I’ve found I get a lot more than I give with this set up in terms of focus and overall happiness.