I like to be mentally engaged, but in something that is not the same sort of mental engagement as programming. Tennis is great. I don't do much ballroom danci

I like to be mentally engaged, but in something that is not the same sort of mental engagement as programming. Tennis is great. I don't do much ballroom dancing, but what I've done I really enjoy. I also play a lot of music. These have a physical component in addition to a mental one. Surfing, I also like, but it's more solitary, and coding tends to be a somewhat solitary activity (not nearly as solitary as people often think, though). But the cold ocean and the mental process of reading and catching waves is a kind of relief or therapy for a brain exhausted after a day of unweaving and re-knitting code. I have trouble understanding why people love playing go or chess or other highly analytical or memory based games. Casual card games, that are heavily random but involve just enough strategy to require a bit of mental engagement, those seem for some reason to ease social interaction, so those "strategy" games, I like. But hey, some people can't wait to get to chess or go club at the end of a day of coding, and that's pretty excellent, go for it of course.