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Comment by randomsearch | Hacker News Reader

By far the most important advice here is exercise.

Years ago I had a friend who suffered from severe anxiety, to the point where she later took a job working for an anxiety charity to help others.

I had some anxiety and followed all her advice for coping with it, got some counselling (really helped), read all the leaflets. Took up swimming. Meditated every day.

Recently, after some reading, I tried a different exercise routine for a few weeks, where I worked out every day before work.

Compared to all the other stuff I’d done, hitting the gym every day was _dramatically_ more effective for coping with stress and anxiety. I can’t really emphasise this enough. Like, not 2x or 3x as effective, but just off the charts. It felt physically impossible to get severely stressed if I hit the gym every morning.

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Another great thing about exercise is it tends to improve sleep a lot, which also has a major effect on stress levels and happiness.

I started realizing that when I feel down and discouraged, often the cause is simply being tired and not sleeping enough. I’d drink more coffee/caffeine to compensate, making me sleep even worse. It’s a bad cycle. But a sufficiently tough workout cancels out the over-caffeination and makes it easy to fall asleep at night.

> Another great thing about exercise is it tends to improve sleep a lot

Depends. For example, picking up a new sport (new type of movement/activity) can disrupt your sleep for weeks or months and it represents lots of extra stress. I've been doing quite lot of running for around two years (never had more than two days rest between runs), and then picked up BJJ. Then I got injured and had to stop exercising for a few weeks. I have not slept that well for years -- finally I had nights without muscle pain and tiredness :)

So be careful with _too hard_ exercise if you're stressed out; it raises dopamine levels but doesn't negate stress.

It sounds like it wasn't the exercise itself that was sabotaging you, your comment about muscle pain makes it sound like you weren't allowing for proper recovery time between workouts. That's just as important as the actual workout.

>finally I had nights without muscle pain and tiredness

This is well-researched problem. All it means you don't have diet balanced enough to provide everything necessary for proper recovery. For me it was magnesium deficiency, now I take magnesium every night and sleep just fine even after muscle-intense exercise. Before this "miracle" (<= joke) OTC supplement I had tense muscles and crumps and wasn't getting good sleep.

(Magnesium comes in many forms, it takes time to find one which is not disturbing for the stomach, I use magnesium glycenate in capsules).

> By far the most important advice here is exercise.

It's definitely a major part, I always paid for my 24 hour fitness membership during my days as a founder for this reason, I suffered immensely when things shutdown during COVID--even as a non-founder by that point because most of my coping mechanisms required a massive workout when I'm stressed out. I started to grind my teeth badly and had constant headaches, and was always irritable during this time.

Nothing really beats a hard work out and a long sauna and steam with occasional exposure to the snow outside and some CBD and a massage (even with just a gun) for your body into resetting itself for the next day. Especially if you were all alone at the gym like I was at 2am and had the place to yourself and the 1 guy on staff.

The only problem was I hardly slept back then and only power napped, which resulted in occasionally falling asleep in the spa area embarrassingly, which I'm now finding impossible to do without massive set backs.

I'd argue diet is perhaps just as, if nor moreso, important, though. And sleep rounding the last of the top 3.

On the other hand, my gym habit is so regular that going in the morning for an hour is ingrained into my day. I am still very stressed, sometimes even at the gym while working out, thinking about all the things i have to do later

This is precisely the reason I cycle 1000KMs each year - a combination of time alone, fresh air and exercise (either high or low impact) really helps offset life's worries.

The single best productivity tool I’ve bought in years was an old Fuji road bike last summer. I’ve been a runner for many years but something about the bike makes it easier to get into a meditative, creative space that’s less available to me when jogging.

I bought a hybrid bike last year and became a weekend warrior. I do around 50-100k every Saturday. I am thinking of buying a carbon road bike, but they can get quite expensive.

Like any hobby it can be as expensive or cheap as you like. My road bike (Cannondale CAAD8 from 2010) is probably worth €200-250, yet gets ridden 10x more than other bikes in the house costing upwards of €7k.

not sure exactly which "hybrid", but my personal recommendation would be to look for gravel bikes.

These days there's quite a choice of frames / materials / groupset options and they're as close to a jack-of-all-trades as it gets.

Depending on some basic components / extras (tyres, racks, aerobars, bags) they can do almost any reasonable terrain. They're always "slightly worse" than the dedicated road/MTBs, but excel when You'd like to mix things up (e.g. your hilly tracks need some 20km of road to get to from where you live and putting a bike in a car simply feels silly).

my experience is very similar - regular exercise made a world of difference for me (I do yoga)

I've started doing Yoga ~ 3 years ago, and along with switching to a plant-based diet, it's one of the best habits I picked up. I've tried all kinds of sports before, but could never make it stick because I didn't enjoy doing it (e.g., for me running, going to the gym or doing weight lifting at home is extremely boring).

I have fatigue so cant do much but a short walk or some squats or similar is a boost!

I keep on being seriously relieved that I've not developed fatigue. I have MS, and fatigue is a really common symptom. People don't get how much it can upset life, nor how little sleep helps with it. Heck, I don't really understand, but nevertheless, I tried to come up with a plan to deal with it. Realistically, that means being happy I don't deal with it right now and deciding there wasn't much I could do now to make it easier later.

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