
Staying Healthy and Sane At a Startup - ssclafani
http://al3x.net/2010/09/07/startup-health.html
======
city41
I ride my bicycle just about everywhere: to the office, grocery store,
restaurants, everywhere. It's a great way to get exercise and doesn't cut into
your schedule all that much, because due to traffic lights you can often get
to where you are going on a bike only slightly slower than in a car.

Also starting the day after my 7 mile commute is fantastic, my brain is
rocking and ready.

~~~
ptn
My problem with riding my bike to the office is that I arrive all sweaty. I
can change my T-shirt (I don't have to wear a suit), but I'll still smell
afterwards.

~~~
grk
The more you use your bike, the less tired you will be after your commute. It
took me ~6 months to go from really sweaty after 7km to barely breaking a
sweat. Just keep in mind that you have to take off some of your clothes on the
way once you warm up.

~~~
csytan
Some more tips:

\- Proper clothing (e.g. dry fit) which helps sweat evaporate faster

\- Using a more efficient road bike if you're currently riding a
mountain/hybrid bike

\- Pedaling at a lower gear, and higher cadence

\- Properly inflated tires

\- A bag with mesh back support, so your back doesn't get all sweaty.

------
Mongoose
One tip I'd add to the diet section is to drink enough water. I find that
always having cold water at arm's reach helps keep my mind fresh and alert.

Also, making the switch from coffee to tea can have innumerable benefits to
one's energy level and overall health.

~~~
phjohnst
A thousand times yes. Having water at hand and always sipping is a really
great way to tame hunger and oral fixations, and is great for your body to be
flushing itself out.

I find that tea doesn't give me as much of a high as coffee, but it lasts
longer without any come-down. Awesome.

~~~
bentlegen
Tea puts me to sleep. I can drink the most caffeinated tea on the market, and
I'll be nodding off in an hour. It's a real pain because I have difficulty
digesting coffee, and I'm looking for alternatives. Appreciate any
suggestions.

~~~
jamesk2
Try some Yerba Mate. Tea is made from the roots of that plant and has enough
caffeine to give you a nice kick when you need it.

------
mrbird
One more I'd add: Pick a time after which you will not check your email.

For me it's 10pm. Too many times I'd be winding down the day, getting ready
for sleep, and decided (more like, was subconsciously compelled) to check my
email one last time. Every so often, some nagging issue would come up that, in
hindsight, definitely could have waited till the next morning, but once I
started thinking about it, there was no way I could rest until it was
resolved. This obviously cut into my sleep time (not good for the long term)
and also often left me in an agitated state that made it harder to get good
sleep.

Maybe it's 6pm, maybe it's 2am, but I recommend drawing the line somewhere, so
that you can preserve the quality of your downtime.

~~~
jmahoney
I'd go further than that. Leave work at work. Don't check work email out of
the office. Don't take work home: stay late if you must.

This is harder to manage if "the office" is actually your home but it's
important to make it work.

You can't really help where your brain wanders in your downtime, but there's
no need to encourage it by doing work in your downtime.

------
jlees
A lot of this applies to working for yourself, or for a big company. Startups
exaggerate the extremes of stress and crunch, but I pretty much do all these
things (and have done for the last 18 months or so, so ~8 months of BigCo and
~10 months of CEO) and they work equally well in both contexts. As long as
you're working somewhere that you can go and take a walk when your wheels are
spinning.

Things that I've found helpful: Vegetarian diet (currently trying vegan out to
break my fro-yo addiction), yoga, running with a goal in mind, running without
a goal in mind, massages, a long commute without a laptop. All except the
former help me let my thoughts just drift and it's surprising what pops out.

~~~
al3x
I probably should have put massage in there. I don't get massages regularly,
but man do I ever feel better when I do. Good suggestion.

~~~
jfb
When it all gets to be too much, I like to go the Imperial Day Spa (on Geary &
Fillmore) and just soak for a while. Then, the acupressure. Highly
recommended.

------
danilocampos
This could have easily been titled "Staying Healthy and Sane." Useful ideas
all around.

In particular, business on meditation is interesting to me. I do all my best
thinking in the shower. I suspect this is because without meaning to be, I'm
in a meditative state there. Every time I have a really hard problem to
ponder, I find a shower has the power to jolt me in the direction of the
solution.

I'd like to find a way to harness this in a more convenient way that doesn't
require soap, water or nudity, so I'm going to check out the NSR site Alex
recommends.

~~~
troyk
Try thinking about the issue before you go to sleep. This has worked great for
me, often I'll awake to a keen sense of understanding what I was thinking of,
although a few times it has resulted in keeping me up for hours frustrasted
with neither sleep or understanding!

~~~
danilocampos
Every time the challenge du jour pops into my head before sleep I just end up
thinking about it for hours. And not sleeping. It's tough.

~~~
jackowayed
Me too. For a little while it feels productive and nice because I often have
good ideas, but then after half an hour or so, I want my brain to shut up so I
can sleep.

A friend of mine told me she has a similar issue and has a special meditation
that she does in bed to wind her brain down. I should email her, but if anyone
has ways they deal with this issue, I'd love to hear them.

~~~
jlees
I absolutely do not think about stuff like that before I sleep - I try to
spend at least an hour winding down with a book and peppermint tea or
something similar.

I do however think about tough issues when I'm half asleep in the morning,
reaching for the snooze button. (Sometimes it's counterproductive, making me
want to snooze more to make the world go away, but I reach some surprising
insights here - and then crystallise them in the shower, of course!)

~~~
sirrocco
I too use the book trick :) so to speak . Just 30 minutes of reading some SF
before I go to sleep helps a lot. I then tend to think about the characters in
the book or I imagine being on another planet :) . It really helps when I do
that.

------
BrandonM
I'm having trouble putting this all together. Let's figure 9 hours at work, 1
hour of commute, 1.5 hours eating, 1.5 hours exercising, .75 hours meditating,
and 7.5 hours sleeping. That leaves less than three hours for showering,
changing clothes, and a little downtime. When do you do chores around the
house, run errands, visit family, and hang out with friends?

~~~
ckuehne
Crossfit never takes longer than 30 minutes. Some workouts can be as short as
3 minutes.

~~~
dschobel
^^ this. if you're pressed for time, crossfit is amazing (well it's amazing
anyway).

my cf gym is full of professional people-- doctors, lawyers, and engineers and
by looking at them you'd think they were gym rats.

------
mark_l_watson
The advantage of Hacker News exposure: I bought the meditation package that
Alex mentioned and the company that sells it just emailed me asking if I knew
why they had just received a large number of orders in a very short time
period. I let them know.

------
keyle
90 minutes gym sessions? That's ridiculous. 45 and you should be out of there!
You're on the way to over train which will lead to negative results on your
body. 45 max and you will feel so much more energized. Not to mention that
there is no way a geek can keep up with 90 minutes of gym 3 or 4 times a week
without loosing his mind and dropping the idea.

Also dropping carbs is a very bad idea, reducing it is good. But dropping them
in the long term is going to affect your bone structure, the muscles will eat
themselves for energy and you might land some heavy calcium supplementation in
20 years.

Also the fact that you're german/english does not explain a slow metabolism.
Com'on. Have you seen europeans? Do they look fat to you? Generations of cold
weather does not dictate your endomorphism. It's the food you eat, with bad
habits and a high sugar intake that results in turning into a fat slob. Sure
we all have genetic predispositions but it can be kept in the balance. Our
bodies were never designed to eat what the american market has to offer.

~~~
al3x
Here's where I get 90 minutes: stretches, about 30 minutes on an elliptical,
another 25 on an exercise bike, then weights, then crunches, then stretches. I
mean 90 minutes for the entire gym-going process, not like 90 minutes of flat-
out cardio or heavy-duty lifting. That would indeed be ridiculous for someone
who isn't a professional athlete. Like I said, that routine works for me; it's
what I need to feel like I got a good workout. But I also want to try other
techniques. Part of the appeal of CrossFit is that you get a "better" workout
in a shorter period of time.

You can find sources that say dropping carbs is bad idea, and you can find
sources that say dropping carbs is a great idea. Again: it's what works for
me. I'll still eat some whole grains and other "good" carbs.

If you noticed, the bit about the German/English heritage ended in a joke,
suggesting that I was exaggerating a bit there. But since you bring it up:
yes, I've seen plenty of portly English and German folks, and also some quite
fit ones. Like you say, it's all about diet, and that's why I'm being careful
about mine.

~~~
tjogin
First, numerous studies have shown that combining aerobic and anaerobic
exercise is less efficient than just doing anaerobic excercise. Combining the
two makes the exercise worse, not better.

Second, assuming you can do at least 20-30 crunches in one set, (normal)
crunches are basically a waste of time as the resistance is too small.

Third, that you feel you've had a good workout at the time you're doing it
doesn't mean it is. For instance, sweat, tiredness, or an elevated heart rate
isn't even an _indication_ that you've actually had a good workout.

Just lift heavy weights. That's the most efficient use of your time and
effort. Everything else you do in a gym can be good for the purpose of keeping
you motivated, or whatever, but it's all quite a bit less efficient than just
lifting weights. Keep it under 60 minutes, followed by intake of protein and
carbs. The science behind this is well established.

------
portman
For me, spending time with my kids (ages: 0, 2, 4) produces a similar results
as exercise and meditation do for Alex:

    
    
      - "combats stress"
      - "always feel calmer than when I started"
      - "feel like I’ve got my head screwed on straight"
      - "makes my work time more productive"
    

YMMV, but this is what works for me.

~~~
mkramlich
When they hit 2/4/6 or 4/6/8 I'll be curious if you'll say the same thing. :)
I know there are many parents who, after having to put up with kids and their
behavior/mindsets long enough, without break, feel like they are starting to
go crazy from the stress, headaches and heartaches they cause. Plus the guilt
from having those negative feelings and reactions from their own children, so
it snowballs and yo-yos even.

------
naner
Just a small tip: don't stretch before strength training. You want the blood
to remain in your muscles for the duration of your workout. Warm up by doing
some cardio instead.

~~~
forgot_password
whoa this seems a bit dangerous and flies in the face of what we get drilled
into us since children about weightlifting. Do you have any authoritative
source for this?

~~~
naner
Well, this is a bit of a fools' errand. I went ahead and searched google and
found support for any conceivable position on the whole stretching situation.
Anyways, this is what I was taught:

[http://www.bodybuildingforyou.com/articles-submit/tanja-
gard...](http://www.bodybuildingforyou.com/articles-submit/tanja-
gardner/stretching.htm)

 _For strength training, there’s evidence that stretching before a workout is
counter-productive. Strength training requires muscles to contract tightly
against a heavy weight, and loosening the muscle fibres by stretching them
first reduces their ability to do this. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t warm
your muscles up before strength training – just avoid stretching them first.
If you want to include stretching in the same workout as strength training,
it’s better to wait until after you’ve finished your weights work._

I typically warm up on the elliptical machine for 5 minutes and then for each
muscle group I'm doing that day I start with a set of low weight/high reps to
warm it up. After the workout I do stretch my hamstrings because I sit on my
ass all day.

------
dgallagher
Exercise is basic necessary maintenance required by the human body. You either
do it and have a happy/healthy body, or you don't. Eating healthy is just as
important, separated into two categories: overall caloric intake, and
nutritional content.

Car analogies are a dime a dozen in computing, but they apply here as well.
Not exercising is like changing the oil in your car every 10,000-15,000 miles,
instead of every 3,000 - 6,000. Your car is still going to last years, but its
lifespan will be shortened, and it's going to run poorly towards the end of
it. The nice thing about a car is you can repair it, or buy a new one.
Repairing a human is tricky, and you definitely can't buy a new one.

I'm absolutely baffled by those who put their careers or money at a higher
priority than their own physical health. You really want to be rich and famous
with a crappy body? Is type 2 diabetes, along with likely amputations,
blindness, and erectile dysfunction, your thing? Looking forward to clogged
arteries and heart disease? What about stroke, wiping away your ability to
control your own body, or even being able to think or speak? Etc, etc...

I don't intend to be mean, but many American's simply don't prioritize their
health high enough. People seem to have every excuse in the world not to do
it, except for a good one.

\--------------------

True story. My brother is enrolled for his doctoral in physical therapy. He
dissected cadavers (donated human corpses) during one of his classes. My
family and I went out to visit, and he was able to let us look at one.

My father, who is about 30 pounds overweight in his late-50's, hasn't really
cared about his health. He eats too much high-saturated-fat ice cream, puts
cream in his coffee, likes cookies with lots of butter in them, etc... I've
been trying to get him to eat healthier and exercise for years to no avail.

Well, my brother was having me hold/feel the heart from the cadaver (it was
already cut out of the dissected body). I was squishing some of the arteries
with gloves on, and my brother said "Try squishing this Coronary Artery.
Sometimes it might be crunchy from heart disease."

So I did, and WOW! It was ROCK SOLID! So much calcium and plaque had built up
inside this persons heart that it completely clogged the artery. It was as if
there was a pebble-sized rock inside of it.

Of course, I forced my father to put some gloves on and feel it for himself.
Well, that scared the SHIT out of him! These last few weeks since, he's made a
decision to stay away from high-fat foods (and has been doing so - non-fat ice
cream now, skim milk in coffee, etc...). He's also putting together an
exercise room.

It looks like he's in the right mindset now, which is a very good thing!
Sometimes the dagger of death hanging over your head is the best motivator. :)

~~~
tomjen3
I don't exercise for one simple reason - its a temporary solution to a
permanent problem and as a geek I hate, hate, hate those with a passion.

I don't mind things that are hard, or things that are difficult or things that
take a long time or even things that are all three; what I hate is things that
doesn't last - once you learned to drive, you can drive, etc.

Combine that with the fact that it sucks doing exercise and you have the
reason I don't do it.

~~~
dgallagher
Step back 50,000 years. Human civilization was extremely primitive and unlike
anything in our world today. What was your day like? What did you do? What did
you think about?

Most of your existance was dominated by finding food and eating it. Your job
was walk/run around all day long, trying to find as much to eat, expending as
little energy as possible. You might climb a tree to pick fruit, swim across a
river towards a good fishing spot, run after and try to spear an animal, fight
with other people and steal their food/have food stolen from you, etc...

Our bodies evolved for this type of work. Fast-forward 50,000 years to the
present day, and you'll find we don't do anything like that anymore. My
brother put it best:

"You wake up in the morning and get out of your bed couch, stumbling over to
your toilet couch. After you get into your car couch and drive to work. Then
you arrive at work and sit in your chair couch all day long. After work is
done it's back to your car couch. Once you're home, it's off to your couch
couch to watch some TV. When you're done with that, go to sleep in your bed
couch. The cycle repeats."

So the permanent solution for our bodies is, simply, to be more active! Our
advanced society has introduced the permanent problem, not our bodies. We're
genetically designed to be active.

\--------------------

When I started exercising about 10 years ago, I picked running specifically
because I hated it more than just about anything. In a few more months I
estimate that I would have run approximately 15,000 miles since starting,
which is about 3/5th's around the Earth.

How does one learn to enjoy something that one hates? You find the little
things that excite you and focus on that. Eventually that snowballs into
bigger and better things, and before you know it, you love something you use
to hate. :)

If you ever decide to try exercising, I'd recommend finding a personal trainer
to teach you the basics. There are TONS of different things to do. If you
don't like going to the gym, try rock climbing, or mountain biking, or
swimming, or anything that floats your boat! I "guarantee" that you'll find
something that you'll like. The best part of all is after you start, it
becomes addictive, and you'll wonder how you ever survived without it!

------
phjohnst
This is a great article, very useful ideas.

I think that the last point he makes is probably the most valuable and one
that I only just learned, that is to not worry if you miss a workout or two,
or if you have that cake on the weekend every once in a while. I always used
to set myself a very strict plan for whatever I was trying to do, and
inevitably whenever I fell off I would feel like I failed and wouldn't be able
to get back to it. I've recently started taking a more relaxed approach to my
'goals' and I feel like I've made much more progress, as long as the trend is
in the right direction you're good to go.

------
tlrobinson
It amazes me how stress can have physical, not just mental, effects. At the
peaks of the stressful times I would get these really weird vague aches and
pains. I saw my doctor (in the valley) and when I told her I was founding a
startup she told me these were very common symptoms among our kind...

(granted my company was probably nowhere near as stressful as Twitter circa
2008-2009)

------
gms
No mention of getting an adequate amount of sleep? Exercise makes me feel even
worse if I'm not getting enough sleep.

------
martingordon
I've spent the past two weeks working on-site at a client where I walk about a
half mile each way to/from the office and another half mile to/from dinner,
which is a stark change from my normal "get in the car and drive to work"
routine.

Even this small change (which is paired with eating out and having a few beers
each night) has allowed me to sleep less than I normally do, while staying
just as alert throughout the day and craving caffeine less than usual.

I'll be going back home this weekend and I need to figure out a way to push
myself to do some walking even though I'm not forced to. Hopefully my
experience these past two weeks will be enough.

------
sheena
Radiolab's "Stress" episode (<http://www.radiolab.org/2007/apr/09/>) mentions
rat studies in which experimenters made rats sick by subjecting them to
extreme physical stressors (cold, treadmills, forcing them to swim for hours
until exhaustion, etc.). Other rats merely had their food put out and taken
away at the last minute a couple of times. Amazingly, the researchers could
make the rats equally sick by simply _frustrating_ them. I thought that was a
powerful reminder of the real physical effects of stress.

------
mminolt
You are so right. I have been in the space for 15 years. Started my career at
Netscape and kept going to smaller and more edgy startups since. The most
stressful episodes happened at dead-in-the-water memories like RealNames and
OpenHarbor. Let's put it this way though, I have learned and I am proud to say
that I am now a sustainable contributor. I can keep going for a long time but
there will always be something crazy about working in any entrepreneurial
setting that is both my engine and a best that has to be tamed or else...

------
jkincaid
One other thing that has helped me keep my sanity: wash and fold laundry
service. You take your dirty laundry, put it in a bag, and they'll clean and
fold it for a modest fee (the place around the corner from me is around $1.10
a pound). In urban areas you can find services that will pickup and deliver.

It's a luxury, but it isn't _that_ expensive (especially if you typically rely
on coin-op laundromats anyway) and it's one less thing to worry about.

~~~
cperciva
_the place around the corner from me is around $1.10 a pound_

The pricing is based on weight? It seems to me that the time it takes to fold
a pound of clothing varies dramatically based on the type of clothing...

~~~
jlees
But is it quicker to charge every customer the same rate per lb of laundry
than to spend time analysing the laundry or ask your customers to pre-sort?
I'd say yes.

------
bufordtwain
Getting out for a 10-15 minute walk can work wonders for body and mind. I try
to do that in the mid-morning and mid-afternoon to break things up and re-
energize.

------
guyute
I go every day at lunch and workout for an hour. At first people viewed it as
wasted time. Now about half my team leaves for an hour at some point during
the day to workout. As soon as people feel low energy they leave. The change
in their output has been remarkable. What we found was that people have low
energy at some point and the change in energy level after causes them to be
more productive and clear headed.

------
ksmith
"I’ve found that time management has little to do with “lifehacks” and how you
manage your email inbox and more to do with prioritization, saying “no” to
people, and clearly communicating the expectations you have for yourself and
others."

Well said.

For those interested in similar ideas regarding diet and exercise, you might
enjoy <http://www.marksdailyapple.com>

------
gokhan
Since he mentioned Krav Maga:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1156838>

------
sreitshamer
I'd add that it's a good idea to take it easy because it's never going to be
less work, as DHH suggested at Startup School
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY>

------
dstnbrkr
Been shopping for a martial arts school for the exact same reason - seems like
a great way to add variety to what would otherwise become a dull workout
routine.

------
chaosmachine
_"Taking in a brainy podcast at the gym combats that feeling."_

Similarly, I find watching TED videos while lifting weights (at home) is a
nice combination.

------
sleight42
Great advice, although it could just as easily have been titled "Staying
Healthy and Sane Under Emotional Stress".

------
c00p3r
Exercise (physical work) + diet (same organic food each day) + meditation +
regime (the same routines each day) = monastery or village life in Asia. Why
174 up-votes for a turning back to the basics?

~~~
c00p3r
Stupid fucking down voters, you never have seen a Nepaly mountaineering guide,
who are going to claim an above six thousand meters peak twice a week just as
a routine, or Tibetan yakmen and horsemen, who just going several thousand
meters up and down with their caravan, but you're so fast in pushing a
buttons. _The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn from
the crow._ ^_^

------
DTrejo
And don't forget to use streak.ly for all those habits you want to do daily ;)

~~~
colonelxc
"Streak.ly is coming soon."

Maybe you should promote it after it launches.

~~~
DTrejo
Oh, it's not mine. But in any case, I think there's a special invite link:

<http://streak.ly/auth/twitter/start?secret=showhn>

------
araneae
Why is HN so obsessed with exercise?

I'm quite happy as a lazy slob. I ran track and x country in high school, but
I didn't like exercise then and I still don't.

I'm sure it would probably make me healthier, but it just isn't worth the
discomfort to me. Stop making me look bad, guys.

~~~
patio11
I have never liked exercise, and I have never liked dieting, but I had a rude
wakeup call about the wages of "curry and a fried porkchop" four days a week
plus a sedentary lifestyle a few years ago. My physician said that, at that
rate, I would be lucky to make it to 30, despite the fact that I was skinny
like a beanpole.

So I started going to the gym. I _despise_ actually being at the gym and
exercising. But it makes me feel _drastically_ better: I have more energy now,
I get sick less, and my general comportment no longer suggests illness to
friends and family. I even get more work done on days I go to the gym, since
it refreshes my mental batteries and contributes more than a minute of
marginal thinking time for every minute I spend there.

But even if the energy/health/acuity benefits don't do it for you, take a look
around you at the people who would miss you if you were gone, and go to the
gym for them. Aside from quitting smoking (don't smoke, but quit if you do!)
it is the cheapest way to buy extra time with your loved ones.

~~~
tomjen3
If you where thin, why would you die before you where 30? I mean, heart
attacks, etc are all correlated with fat.

~~~
scorpioxy
Not fat, clogged arteries. Skinny-looking people can have thinned arteries.
This is mostly attributed to fats in your diet but also to your genes.

