The exercise habit

Perhaps the only thing I really gleaned from this article is how brands apparently play such a key role in this man's habits.<p><i>Macbook air</i>, <i>textmate</i>, <i>Octopus card</i>, <i>Fitness First</i>, <i>Red Bull</i>, <i>Volvic</i>, <i>iPhone</i>, <i>Gmail</i>, <i>Caffe Habitu</i>. 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.<p>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 <i>gmail</i>.<p>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 <i>5.50am people</i>. Now that's early! Now it's time for <i>12 reps at 30kg</i> 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.<p>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.

&#62; 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.

Great post on the benefits of habit-forming. I've certainly found something similar in my own exercise experiences.<p>On a more humorous note, the first portion of the piece reminded me of this gem:<p>"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. "

The one piece of advice I curated from the many articles I read and have put into practice is: "Make it easy".<p>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.<p>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.

While 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.<p>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.<p>Walking desks are a similar kind of hack, even if I find them a somewhat perverse use of electricity.<p>For muscular workouts I haven't yet found anything that would function as well as the gym, but with less life-overhead.

Are there any scientific studies to back the common meme of "Fitness is a cornerstone of success"<p>Does Mark Zuckerberg work out? How about John Lasseter?<p>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.

For anyone else who was wondering:<p>Octopus card: <i>The Octopus card is a rechargeable contactless stored value smart card used to transfer electronic payments in online or offline systems in Hong Kong.</i><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus_card" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus_card</a>

I'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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.

two 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.

As 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.

"All it takes is putting your running shoes on, and getting out the door." -my cousin

I agree that exercise is important, but this guy's life seems so planned out in advance it's almost creepy.

In case you missed it, download the recent Mixergy interview with Charles Duhigg on this topic:<p><a href="http://mixergy.com/cheat-sheet-how-to-use-the-power-of-habit/" rel="nofollow">http://mixergy.com/cheat-sheet-how-to-use-the-power-of-habit...</a><p>Its true, this habit stuff is powerful.

I 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.<p>(Disclaimer: I have 2 kids, I manage to exercise each day, but it definitely comes at the expense of other things).

For those looking for an easy way to begin forming new habits, I'd definitely recommend professor Fogg's "3 Tiny Habits" guide. link - <a href="http://tinyhabits.com/" rel="nofollow">http://tinyhabits.com/</a>.

He should have recycled the Red Bull can and just filled up a bottle of water from the tap in his apartment.

Fitness is a cornerstone of success. I wish more people took it seriously.

So what's your evening routine, and what evening habits do you find most helpful?<p>I feel like there was a tiny bit of prep work before you could just wake up and run in a circle :D

Instead 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

This doesn't seem like a habit. It sounds more like an addiction.

The power of habit:<p>1) Notice how patio11 isn't commenting here.<p>2) Closes tab.

Working 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.<p>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.

Man, 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.<p>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.)<p>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.<p>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.

Unsure 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?<p>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.