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The exercise habit
- rfugger 14y agoI agree that exercise is important, but this guy's life seems so planned out in advance it's almost creepy.
- dmor 14y agoThe thing about rituals like this one is that they don't even feel planned anymore after awhile, they just happen. Once their somewhat automatic it frees you up to think about other stuff while you're performing them.
- joelg87 14y agoThis is exactly the case. I didn't sit down and decide that I would do the routine exactly as I have it in place right now, that developed over time. I started simply with an exercise habit. Over time, I've been able to build on it as each component has become so habitual that I don't think about it.
- rfugger 14y agoFor me, ritual is great, but too much ritual can turn me into a robot. If I choose the right rituals for my autopilot program, I may be a fitter, happier, more productive robot, but I'm still a robot. The appeal seems to be, to paraphrase Simon & Garfunkel, that a robot feels no pain. Constant ritual keeps the demons at bay -- ask any autistic person. I've learned, though, that to feel truly alive I need to turn off the autopilot, feel the emotions that come up, both painful and joyful, and accept the way that they demand to inform my direction on a moment-to-moment basis, often in ways contrary to what I had planned. That's life.
- fabricode 14y agoA great article, and you must be commended on your dedication. That said, it reads almost exactly like the opening to "American Psycho". Sure, Bateman's routine is slightly different than yours, but both narratives have the same affect. Best of luck, and I can't wait for your article on business cards!
- joelg87 14y agoHaha! Totally understand it can come across that way. The point I was trying to make, which I've clearly not succeeded with, is that I don't actually plan it as it happens, and I don't think individually of all these details as I do them. I'm not a robot with an algorithm of each step, going through them one by one with perfect precision. Rather, if I sit down and think hard about literally every step that I go through, this is what the routine is. In my mind, I think of none of it - it is completely habitual and I'm on autopilot. I can do the whole routine without expending much energy, so I have all the energy for other things - the more unexpected things that come up and we need to deal with (happens plenty in a growing startup).
- goblin89 14y agoOne can think of rituals vs. “thinking through each step” in life as using high-level vs. low-level programming languages, or abstractions. Abstracting out doing things that are good for you into a “habit layer” seems unlikely to turn you into a robot or inhibit emotions (as rfugger suggests). Instead, it may allow to focus on higher-level activities and decisions. You can still switch abstractions and go low-level anytime if you have to, if benefit-cost ratio is high enough. Also, there's probably a lot of unexpected and interesting things happening around that you can notice even as you do your ritual thing. (Important though is not to contemplate on them, at least for me it can destroy the ritual very quickly.) PS. Thank you for your posts!
- rfugger 14y agoWell put. My focus on the robotic aspect probably only reflects my personal struggles, not the poster's reality :)
- goblin89 14y agoYeah, you've explicitly mentioned it was your experience, so I shouldn't have said that you “suggest” it. I should also admit that, although grandparent expresses the idea I had after reading Joel's comment, myself I don't have that orderly life and many good habits. More of the opposite, actually, and I also often enjoy making decisions on-the-fly. I find the abstraction analogy appealing and inspiring, though. It probably could help people like me, whose stumbling point in forming and following habits and rituals is the lack of motivation.
- bemmu 14y agoEven though he has some routines, there are still challenges and creative parts inside of these routines and the routines just make it easier to get into these tasks.
- Tsagadai 14y agoI was going to post something similar. I cannot stand letting my life fall into any sort of repetitive routine. I exercise, but I vary type, locations, duration, time, and everything else. When I find myself doing the exact same thing every day I think of it as grinding towards the grave without ever doing anything original. Life is full of new experiences, unless you are just placing one foot in front of another for 2 hours a day on a treadmill while watching a screen. It's a pretty dim view of a lifestyle others love but I don't care of it at all. I guess I guess love chaos too much.
- joelg87 14y agoI totally understand :-) I actually agree with you. The cool part is, I can keep building on top of the repetitive routine, and these additions are the variation for me. The hour of coding before the gym (and getting up an hour earlier in order to do it) was a recent addition, and took some time to achieve as a habitual thing. That's what keeps it interesting and exciting. I don't succeed right away with these additions, they take time. However, the power of habits is when they are actually habitual (and are good habits) and you don't use energy and willpower to accomplish them - that's what I tried to focus on here.
- greggman 14y agoAre there any scientific studies to back the common meme of "Fitness is a cornerstone of success" Does Mark Zuckerberg work out? How about John Lasseter? It honestly doesn't seem fitness has any relation what-so-ever to success but I'd be happy to be proven wrong with actual data rather than anecdotes.
- kijin 14y agoI don't think working out is a necessary condition for success, unless you're so unhealthy as to be physically incapable of doing the things that you need to do in order to be successful. But the kind self-control you need for fitness could also help you become successful. If so, there might indeed be some correlation between fitness and success.
- biggfoot 14y agoFrom personal experience strictly: First and foremost the exercise is something we can all use, successful or not. What working out did help me do is get into a sort of a discipline and made me eat and drink proper healthy food. A side effect of workout, indeed a good one for all us chair-dwellers, is that it fixed my posture as well - no wrist pain, no back pain, no neck pain ...
- greggman 14y agoOne of the fittest guys I know, works out and runs several miles every morning, has terrible wrist pain. I know 3 other similar people at my current job. I don't think your lack of pain has anything to do with your working out. More likely luck, genetics, or lack of other activities that would lead to pain.
- keiferski 14y agoRichard Branson is known for being fit. http://www.quora.com/Richard-Branson/How-does-Richard-Branson-arrive-at-the-calculation-that-working-out-adds-four-hours-of-productivity-a-day http://www.quora.com/Richard-Branson/How-does-Richard-Branso... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2003255/Sir-Richard-Branson-reveals-secrets-good-health.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2003255/Sir-Richar... http://www.mensfitness.com/leisure/sports/fit-to-fly http://www.mensfitness.com/leisure/sports/fit-to-fly
- candre717 14y agoFitness is a cornerstone of success. I wish more people took it seriously.
- esrauch 14y agoPlenty of people take it too seriously. Everything in moderation.
- mrschwabe 14y agoIn case you missed it, download the recent Mixergy interview with Charles Duhigg on this topic: http://mixergy.com/cheat-sheet-how-to-use-the-power-of-habit/ http://mixergy.com/cheat-sheet-how-to-use-the-power-of-habit... Its true, this habit stuff is powerful.
- Cieplak 14y ago"All it takes is putting your running shoes on, and getting out the door." -my cousin
- mhb 14y agoFor anyone else who was wondering: Octopus card: The Octopus card is a rechargeable contactless stored value smart card used to transfer electronic payments in online or offline systems in Hong Kong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus_card http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus_card
- joelg87 14y agoGood idea. Linked it in the post. Thanks.
- ballstothewalls 14y agotwo small things bug me about this. 1. Why is he buying a single can of red bull and a single bottle of water from 7-11 every day? Why not buy in bulk and keep at your house? 2. Is there really much advantages to drinking red bull before a workout? I know there are advantages to caffeine, but I am not convinced red bull is the healthiest way to deliver that caffeine.
- biggfoot 14y agoA regular tea/coffee does just as well. I never had either before doing weights in the morning and frankly never felt the need either. Takes 10 mins more to snap out of drowsiness but isn't an impediment.
- benatkin 14y agoMaybe he doesn't want to be tempted with the Red Bull in his fridge.
- scottm01 14y agoAgreed, I am all for making exercise a habit (and get grumpy when something makes me miss a workout, so I need to be better at simply making it a near top priority). That said, please don't buy bottled water every day. Get a reusable bottle, it's cheaper and much better for our oceans.
- mahyarm 14y agoIf you look at what a can of redbull contains, it's not unhealthy if you buy the 10 cal/sugar free version. It contains B vitamins, taurine (an amino acid) and about 70mg of caffeine for the under 10oz can. They also use citric acid instead of the cost cutting phosphoric acid which causes calcium leeching. The aspartame and sucralose may or may not be a problem for you.
- Im_Mr_Manager 14y agoI take those 5-hr energy drinks before going for a run and they seem to help. Same type of thing.
- marme 14y ago
- trout 14y agoThe one piece of advice I curated from the many articles I read and have put into practice is: "Make it easy". I moved all the things I need to exercise into one place, streamlined the entire process, and reduced the mental inertia it takes to do things that are good for me. Part of it is simplifying the process, the other half is making it a habit. I'm also a fan of picking some rationalizations. For stopping caffeine - every time I drink Coke I'm just thirsty for water, and should just drink water. For the gym - every time I've ever gone to the gym I feel good when I get home and don't regret going. For food - I'll enjoy this for 5 seconds and won't even remember it by tomorrow, but it's got the caloric value of 30 minutes of exercise.
- bialecki 14y agoThe other way to look at it is "resign yourself to doing it." It's amazing how easy thing become when you just decide they must happen. I made the decision that I don't go to work until I've gone for a jog in the morning and it's amazing how much easier/enjoyable it becomes. The disclaimer is I work where I can be into the office a little later in case I have a late night. But the main point is once you convince yourself you're going no matter what, suddenly your lizard brain has a hard time saying no.
- baddox 14y agoAs someone with perpetual difficulty maintaining a 24 hour-based sleep schedule, when I see these "my routine" posts I'm always most curious about their sleeping habits.
- psykotic 14y agoCurious about what exactly? Like the author, I also have a very rigid early morning schedule centered around exercise. I get up at exactly 5.45, go to the gym at 6.00, etc. It definitely helps me maintain a more regular sleep and work schedule, which used to be a problem for me.
- joelg87 14y agoI wrote a post last year on my sleep ritual, this is actually a key part of me being able to do the morning routine. I'm still following it almost identically to how I describe in the article: http://joel.is/post/5303723252/creating-a-sleep-ritual http://joel.is/post/5303723252/creating-a-sleep-ritual
- eru 14y agoExercise even helps some people maintain a proper cycle.
- mahyarm 14y agoThese people don't go out and enjoy nightlife, staying up until 3am since that would put you off kilter for a few days in a row with this kind of schedule.
- ylem 14y agoSometimes it's not the nightlife, but just work...I have a punctuated schedule and this is my second night on an experiment where I'm here past 2am (getting in around 9am the previous day). I hope to wake up early for a jog tomorrow, but it may not happen...
- baddox 14y agoI rarely "enjoy nightlife." I just sit at home not tired for several hours, then lay in bed not tired for a couple of hours. If I get "enough" sleep to not be tired in the morning (7-8 hours), then I won't be tired the same time that night. If I get "too little" sleep (<7 hours) I will be tired all day.
- xkcdfanboy 14y agoWorking out on stimulants is one of the easiest ways to overstress your heart and can cause permanent cardiovascular damage. Happened to a friend of mine, his CK levels were through the roof, he ripped his heart muscle because he used adderall before workouts. For a hacker news post, I'm sorely disappointed. The body will secret epinephrine once you start working up a sweat, there's no need to add caffeine and shitty simple sugars to your body before a workout. Eat a brown rice granola bar or bring some Gatorade with you if you really need the sugar boost to get going. Usually, glycogen stored in the liver from previous days will suffice to rocket the body's bloodstream with sugar.
- swordswinger12 14y agoI thought the same thing. Some of the worst workouts of my life have been after a cup of coffee.
- danneu 14y agoCan amphetamine be compared to a downregulated daily pre-workout 80mg caffeine habit?
- WarDekar 14y agoErrr, you condemn the use of simple sugars before a workout, but then advocate using Gatorade during a workout? IANAD but I'm pretty sure drinking protein during a workout will be far more beneficial to your overall health (unless you are doing something like a marathon, in which case you will need carbs at some point, but marathons in general are terrible for your body).
- neckbeard 14y agoCome on now - while caffeine hasn't yet shown to be an ergogenic aid to anerobic activity (unlike endurance efforts, where it is very beneficial), a single tin of Red Bull isn't going to make your heart go boom, especially if you are habituated to that amount of caffeine.
- gonzo 14y agohttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1443950608002436 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1443950608...
- FelixP 14y agoGreat post on the benefits of habit-forming. I've certainly found something similar in my own exercise experiences. On a more humorous note, the first portion of the piece reminded me of this gem: "I live in the American Gardens Building on W. 81st Street on the 11th floor. My name is Patrick Bateman. I'm 27 years old. I believe in taking care of myself and a balanced diet and rigorous exercise routine. In the morning if my face is a little puffy I'll put on an ice pack while doing stomach crunches. I can do 1000 now. After I remove the ice pack I use a deep pore cleanser lotion. In the shower I use a water activated gel cleanser, then a honey almond body scrub, and on the face an exfoliating gel scrub. Then I apply an herb-mint facial mask which I leave on for 10 minutes while I prepare the rest of my routine. I always use an after shave lotion with little or no alcohol, because alcohol dries your face out and makes you look older. Then moisturizer, then an anti-aging eye balm followed by a final moisturizing protective lotion. "
- rhizome 14y ago1000x better than the movie, which in itself is not terrible. One of the few novels I've taken the time to read since leaving school.
- codemac 14y agoSo what's your evening routine, and what evening habits do you find most helpful? I feel like there was a tiny bit of prep work before you could just wake up and run in a circle :D
- joelg87 14y agoAbsolutely! I have an evening routine, and it's key to achieving the morning routine. I need 7-8 hours of sleep or I'll burn out within a few days and fail with the routine one morning. I'm still following it pretty much how I describe in this article from last year: http://joel.is/post/5303723252/creating-a-sleep-ritual http://joel.is/post/5303723252/creating-a-sleep-ritual
- mbenjaminsmith 14y agoI've heard countless times that if you're going to start exercising and stay with it you should compete -- for most people that means running and running races on the weekends once in a while or even training for a marathon. I've done this in the past and I always overtrain and race too early. I have a bad race and stop training shortly after that. I've found a much more effective way: Between my wife and I whoever is in the gym less in any given week has to pay the other person on Friday -- around $50. There is still competition (neither of us want to admit to losing) but there is also a very tangible penalty. The combination is an excellent motivator and neither of us have missed a single day since we started it. It's similar to having a partner (a partner got me through 3 years of weight training in college) except that you don't have to work out at the same time, which is much better for busy people.
- eru 14y agoI mostly compete with myself. I am trying to do better now than I did earlier. It helps that progress in my main forms of exercise (indoor climbing, weight lifting) is easy to measure, and relatively straight forward to drive at my level. I also dable in dancing, where I am still so awful, that progress is easy to gauge. And mixed martial arts, where the whole point of the sport is some form of competition, even though sparring doesn't see you go all out.
- mahyarm 14y agoWhy do people choose running over biking, with the damage that running can cause?
- jsankey 14y ago1) Running has an appealing simplicity: very little equipment is required (just a decent pair of shoes), you can do it anywhere (city/country, on/off road), etc. 2) Biking is not some magical risk-free activity, you have to take care whichever you choose.
- WarDekar 14y agoI'm pretty sure his point was that running in and of itself (outside of external factors such as other people on the road, etc.) is very detrimental to your health- specifically your knees. Obviously doing any physical exercise you should be safe about it (wear a helmet while biking, have a light and reflectors if you ride at night, etc., and of course be conscious of your surroundings), but running solely by itself can be detrimental to your health because of the force you put on your knees on impact running on paved surfaces.
- jorleif 14y agoWhile I recommend exercise, and know that the kind of routine described here can be a very useful tool, doing this all the time seems absurd to me. Humans have managed to remove almost all natural physical stressors from their lives, but then we figure out we need "exercise", and set about to find a half hour activity that optimally affects some fitness parameter. This local optimization can easily become a stressing madness with constant driving here and there to move your muscles in extremely boring ways. I think, for cardiovascular workouts, it's a much better solution to try to hack your commute into a run / bike ride, if that's possible. You get to use that time twice, since it is both commute and exercise, and this kind of multitasking actually works well. Sure, the workout may not be as "efficient" (locally) as doing everything under perfectly controlled conditions, but this is really not the main concern unless you are inte competing. Walking desks are a similar kind of hack, even if I find them a somewhat perverse use of electricity. For muscular workouts I haven't yet found anything that would function as well as the gym, but with less life-overhead.
- nodata 14y ago> Walking desks are a similar kind of hack, even if I find them a somewhat perverse use of electricity. You can get non-electric treadmills.
- aw3c2 14y agoAnd I am fairly sure the daily Volvic has a bigger negative environmental impact.
- wpietri 14y ago> doing this all the time seems absurd to me. Then maybe you shouldn't do it? I don't mean to pick on you too much, but one of the things that makes me crazy about Hacker News on topics like this is the amount of "you're doing it wrong" that people produce. The guy has a routine that he likes and meets his needs. He was smart enough to put together a routine that works for him; presumably he's smart enough to change it when he notices something negative about it.
- sparknlaunch 14y agoUnsure if Red Bull is the best pre gym workout drink. What about eating something? What about buying the drinks in bulk and keeping them in the apartment instead of going to 7/11 everyday? Nevertheless humans loves routine and working effectively for two hours (coding, then gym) is a productive use of those early hours of the day. Many waste it in bed.
- karolist 14y agoI'm no doctor, but Red Bull on an empty stomach before the gym in the morning sounds like the worst drink possible. I knew a guy who drank Red Bull before and after the gym, immediately after he ate 2 snickers to "restore his energy tank", I think he lasted 2 months before he stopped his exercise efforts. Where do people get the idea that Red Bull and exercise is related? Have they started to market it that way perhaps?
- its_so_on 14y agoMan, I feel like I did a week's worth of exercise just reading that. If you want to sell the exercise habit, this blog post isn't the way to do it. To be honest, I only even read half of it. (All of the above says nothing about the exercise habit, nor the point of the post. Just the actual effect of reading the post.) I feel like: if I had the actual habits described in the post, few things in life would feel as good or as rewarding as immediately breaking them, forever. This isn't to say this is true: just that this is the impression the blog post leaves me with, due to the style, writing, format, etc.
- ari_ 14y agoI love all of these posts that discuss exercising and coding at x time. Wake up, code, exercise, rest of day. But I would LOVE to see a post where the person involved has at least one child under the age of 5. It changes everything. You can't just be out of the house at X time, ready to do your exercise - because Junior has to be fed, changed and taken to school. (Disclaimer: I have 2 kids, I manage to exercise each day, but it definitely comes at the expense of other things).
- jdbernard 14y agoI am in the same situation. Two kids, 3 and 1, one more on the way. I had to start taking a long lunch to go to the gym. Thankfully I have the flexibility to work a little extra in the evening after the kids are asleep. I find it a lot harder to tear myself away from the desk in the middle of the day and go work out.
- georgieporgie 14y agoThe number of people obsessed with the Red Bull is ridiculous. It's 110 calories and 80mg caffeine. A cup of coffees (clasically) is around 150mg caffeine, and a Starbucks Tall Drip is around 240mg. Cycling hard will burn around 600 calories per hour. Lifting hard will burn around the same. Caffeine is the most effective performance enhancing drug that's legal in all senses (i.e. not even banned by any sanctioning body). I've personally performed all sorts of intense exercise on it. It both increases energy levels and ability to recruit muscles. The only thing I'd be cautious about is mixing caffeine with other stimulants, such as DMAA (as found in Jack3d), ephedra/ephedrine, or ma huang. I would not do intense cardio on caffeine + stimulants, and I would wear a heartrate monitor for other exercise until you're familiar with their effects.
- heyitsnick 14y agoPerhaps the only thing I really gleaned from this article is how brands apparently play such a key role in this man's habits. Macbook air, textmate, Octopus card, Fitness First, Red Bull, Volvic, iPhone, Gmail, Caffe Habitu. All of these were jarring to me as a reader, as the article would read more naturally with generics--laptop, text editor, charge card, gym, energy drink, water, phone, email, coffee shop--with no loss of meaning. Many of these brands are mentioned 4 times or more during half a dozen paragraphs. Whether intentional, it demonstrated the power of good branding; get inside someone's head, make them associate good habits with your brand, and you will become part of their daily ritual. They no longer 'go to coffee shop', they go to Caffe Habitu. It's not buying a bottle of water and hitting the gym, its "purchasing a Volvic in the 7/11 then doing the 3 minute walk to Fitness First". They don't check email, they check gmail. A related takeaway from this blog post is the inherent "bragging rights" people feel when they stick to a habit. This guy doesn't just get up in the morning, it gets up at 5.50am people. Now that's early! Now it's time for 12 reps at 30kg at Fitness First as I knock down my redbull after crushing some sick bugs on my macbook air at the crack of dawn working in the cloud at my webapp startup. Premium brands do the same, and it's part of the reason for the consistent brand-dropping here. People don't have phones they have iPhones, not because they are ubiquitous (like hoover became the vacuum) but because people must differentiate normal phones from their phones, due to the premium pricing they paid. And by using the new product as part of a habit (like your iphone is an integral part of a morning workout), it becomes more justification for the purchase.
- wlesieutre 14y agoThe Red Bull and Volvic seemed particularly out of place to me, especially in that he made buying them one at a time a part of his daily ritual. Maybe he wakes up in the morning with a compulsion to throw his money away at a 7/11 instead of getting a 12-pack from the grocery store? Instead of filling his own bottle from the tap and drinking coffee for his caffeine like normal people who don't attach brands to all of their routines? I don't know the exact price of Red Bull or Volvic, but at $5 a day and 260 weekdays in a year he'd be spending $1,300/year.
- gonzo 14y ago
- milliams 14y agoHe should have recycled the Red Bull can and just filled up a bottle of water from the tap in his apartment.
- njx 14y agoInstead of all the Red bull crap, just start doing some Pranayam and Meditation for 5 to 10 minutes. All your other dependencies will drop off, I promise
- cruise02 14y ago> I live in the American Gardens Building on W. 81st Street on the 11th floor. My name is Patrick Bateman. I'm 27 years old. I believe in taking care of myself and a balanced diet and rigorous exercise routine. In the morning if my face is a little puffy I'll put on an ice pack while doing stomach crunches. I can do 1000 now. After I remove the ice pack I use a deep pore cleanser lotion. In the shower I use a water activated gel cleanser, then a honey almond body scrub, and on the face an exfoliating gel scrub. Then I apply an herb-mint facial mask which I leave on for 10 minutes while I prepare the rest of my routine. I always use an after shave lotion with little or no alcohol, because alcohol dries your face out and makes you look older. Then moisturizer, then an anti-aging eye balm followed by a final moisturizing protective lotion.
- peterwwillis 14y agoDo you like Huey Lewis and the News?
- swah 14y agoThe power of habit: 1) Notice how patio11 isn't commenting here. 2) Closes tab.
- ahmadss 14y agoFor those looking for an easy way to begin forming new habits, I'd definitely recommend professor Fogg's "3 Tiny Habits" guide. link - http://tinyhabits.com/ http://tinyhabits.com/.
- wcchandler 14y agoThis doesn't seem like a habit. It sounds more like an addiction.