Daily exercise
As programmers we often neglect our health. We typically consume a lot of caffeine, we don’t exercise much and like most professions we don’t sleep enough. You need to change, not just for yourself but for your partner, for your kids, for anyone in your life. You can’t continue to live a life where you don’t put your health as a priority. Since becoming a full-time programmer I knew that I would be sitting for a long time each day, typically 6-8 hours a day. This meant that I needed to either stand more, or go for regular walks, unfortunately I don’t have access to a standing desk, but I do have access to a long corridor to the toilet. If you know me personally you know that I pee a lot, and I mean a lot, you would think there's something wrong with me how often I go (I checked there's not). This gives me a great reason to get up and walk, it typically takes me 50-100 steps each time I go to the toilet, which is great because my 10,000 step goal each day starts racking up. Furthermore, I go for a big walk at lunch with other coworkers, I might not actually buy anything and I typically won’t, but atleast I get out for some social interaction and a walk. Combine all this with a walk to the station to and from work and I easily hit 10,000 steps a day, this isn’t really enough though, sure I can get some exercise, burn a few calories but if you really want to do yourself some good you need to spend a bit more directed time towards exercise. I typically exercise each morning before work, this being a great time, completely alone, no distractions, just some basic dumbbells, performing a couple of sets each body part, nothing complicated. I do this each morning other than Monday and Wednesday because I have a basketball in the night. Not only is weight bearing exercise great to maintain/build muscle mass, it also raises your heart rate, gets the blood pumping early in the morning and gets a rush of endorphins moving around. This morning routine is extremely important to me, it really wakes me up, makes me feel incredible so I can tackle the rest of the day. If you do more exercise each day, you will find that you need a lot less caffeine, in fact I’ve given up caffeine all together, which I really didn’t think would be possible, I was typically a two to three cups a day man. Yet it's not the healthy benefits you get from exercise as to why i do it each morning, it's the positive mental effect it has. My personal belief is that the mental side of life is vastly more important than the physical, you can have the healthiest, fittest body around, yet if your brain is a mess you won't achieve anything, nor will your body be of any use as no one will want to be around you. Take for example the typical “gym bro” we’ve all seen them at the gym, mid to late teens possibly early 20s, lifted weights for years, probably take steroids. They have an incredible body, but their complete assholes, would you trade your life for theirs? No, living longer, being healthier isn’t important if no one can stand being around you. What kind of life is it, where no one can stand to be around you? A very lonely and meaningless one. Sure daily weight training has improved how I look, has made me stronger, given me more energy but its the mental positivity that it gives me each day that is most important and I’m sure everyone around me is grateful for it. Each day I can come to work with a smile on my face, full of energy, ready to tackle work.
Most people don’t have a home gym, neither do I, yet I got some dumbbells from Kmart, a barbell from somewhere else, I use an old incline bench owned by my partners parents. It’s not high tech, it’s not going to win me the Mr. Olympia, but it will allow me to do at least something for every muscle group. It really doesn’t have to be complicated either, you just find a list of exercises you can do with a dumbbell and a barbell and you get going. You only need to perform around 3 sets per exercise, I will typically only do one exercise per body part. Then rinse and repeat everyday, I’ll do a full body workout each day, which sounds kind of mental, doing a full body workout every single day, but it’s really not that bad. Performing one exercise per body part at a reasonable pace, you can be done within 45 minutes and if your fast it can be 30 minutes. You can buy some very basic gym equipment for extremely cheap, my Kmart dumbbells have last over 10 years now, which is pretty insane since they cost me about 30 bucks at the time. If your creative you can really do a lot with just the dumbbells alone, in fact I haven’t been to a real gym in 6 months, which would never have been the case years ago, when I was a “gym bro”. Start slow, buy some dumbbells, whatever is cheap, just something that has interchangeable plates, this allows you to get the most use out of them. Then start with one exercise each day, building up to two the next week, then keep adding one more each week, till you get to a full body workout. Don’t try and do to much as it will be impossible to maintain, start slow, build slowly, maintain, do it consistently and you will feel like a new person. You might even give up coffee, but let's not get carried away.