[krumpet]

I've always wondered what the health trade-off is for a less mentally stimulating role if it dramatically reduces your stress levels and offers better work/life balance.

[JR1427]

On a similar note, I've often wondered what the optimum amount of exercise is if you don't like exercise, but want to maximise your time not exercising.

[mikrl]

Don’t the government of various countries recommend 90 mins of cardio per week and 2-3 strength training sessions on top of 30-60 minutes of daily light activity?

I feel like they would be the ones to answer the optimal exercise question over a huge number of people.

[gwd]

If you want to do weight training but don't want to spend a lot of time in the gym, look into "myo-reps". Rather than doing a traditional "Do 3 sets of 12 reps separated by 90-120s", you do a set of 12, then do several sets of 5 after waiting only 15 seconds. It's more intense but just as effective, and a lot faster.

Doesn't really work on leg day if you're lifting heavy, because 15 seconds isn't enough to catch your breath; but has worked pretty well for me for push and pull days, where my whole workout is usually less than half an hour.

[krumpet]

Great question. The approach I've always taken (now that I'm past my prime) is to just show up. If I train 15 minutes and call it a day, at least I was active and sustained the habit of being active. If I train for a couple hours, that's great too. What I try very, very hard to avoid is doing nothing.

I suspect I get the majority of the gains from the first 20 minutes or so. And since I'm no longer training to compete at a high level, I don't need to eek out as much from my training as possible...but I have no data to back that up.

[mecsred]

Luckily this is a very common situation for people, so there is a good body of research to answer your question! A good answer is about 30 mins of moderate cardio activity a day: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/physical-ac....

[CuriouslyC]

If it's just a matter of time vs results, HIIT and overhead press/deadlift for 3 sets each of 5-10 reps, with ~2-3 minutes between sets (you can do stuff like bicep curls and chest flyes in between big exercise sets). Unpleasant but high reward/time.

If you want to optimize for exercise pleasantness, start consuming all your tv on a treadmill or elliptical at a slow-moderate (2.5-3m/h) pace.

[saulpw]

For me it seems to be a ~30 minute speedwalk almost every day. My bodymind notices when I miss it, especially 3 days in a row.

[bongodongobob]

Same here. I worked repetitive manual labor jobs for a long time before I switched to tech. I was bored out of my mind at work, but after work loved playing games and working on programming/tech/electronics projects.

Now that I'm in tech I have 0 desire to do anything screen based or deep thinking/problem solving after work. There are days I look out the office window and kind of wish I was the guy mowing the lawn and trimming trees. But I know I'd be bored.

The grass is always greener I guess.

[westurner]

Occupational burnout > Treatment and prevention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_burnout

Work-life balance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work%E2%80%93life_balance

Maybe you could start a 20% hobby project at work on their tab. "Why companies lose their best innovators (2019)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23887903

Hypothesis; it's probably normal and healthy to pursue different biomechanical activities when not working (possibly regardless of tech career or not)

[sandspar]

We have two batteries: physical and mental. It's only when both batteries are fully drained that we feel happily tired.

[CuriouslyC]

I think the sweet spot is lots of mental stimulation and no stress. This is probably why university positions were so coveted in the past, before academia became completely dysfunctional.