Ask HN: How do you maintain good habits with a disruptive career and life style?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20785337

by DollarGuru • 7 years ago

4 3 7 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

If you travel regularly or have work deadlines etc that disrupts any kind of healthy routine how do you maintain good habits like exercising, meditation, etcetera?

clintonb• 7 years ago

Planning. If you travel regularly you can make a regular plan to visit the hotel gym, run, etc. Meditation can be practiced almost anywhere.

I don’t know if many roles in which people are always under deadline pressure. If that’s you, either plan around the deadlines or stop committing to unsustainable deadlines (which, I know, is easier said than done).

rficcaglia• 7 years ago

For me, I had to turn this on its head. Define the habits and healthy routine you want and build the lifestyle around it.

I was on a crash course for 15 years as a tech exec. 90+ hours work per week, travel, etc. not by compulsion or financial necessity but by personal drive to be the best at what I was doing. Unfortunately I was literally killing myself.

In 2013 I stepped back, applied an engineering/tech startup process to researching and analyzing what I really wanted and needed in terms of health and family and built my career and lifestyle around those healthy choices.

The result: get more done in less time, focus on things that really move the needle in career and work, tolerate very little noise vs signal, and financially doing 2x better while working 1/2 the hours. I’m in better health now than when I was in college. By coincidence, I had a totally unrelated emergency surgical procedure not long after I got into a healthy state, and because I was fit, my body was able to recover very quickly, and my work processes were now so effective, I barely missed a beat in terms of productivity. An MD friend of mine assured me that had I been in my previous poor health state, if I had survived the surgery (his opinion unlikely) recovery would have taken months to years with likely long lasting debilitating effects. And I almost certainly would have lost my career.

It will be scary at first, like sweating all night awake with gut wrenching fear scary, but compared to the inevitable health crash that is likely, I expect you won’t regret it.

butteredpopcorn• 7 years ago

I know a couple high-powered executives who have to fly all over the world and meet tough deadlines. They love routine. They love staying at the exact same hotel every time they’re in town, meeting me at the same restaurant we always go to, etc. They love seeing me because I’m someone from their “real life” who just happens to be in the city they’re rushing through. They also know a lot of the waiters, security guards, building staff, etc they see each day by name. This constrained routine and rich social life seems key to their mental health and when mental health is good, physical health is easier to invest in. And vice-versa of course. But I think people forget that it’s hard to eat broccoli when you really just want to cry.

I wonder whether anyone could do it. I tried traveling all the time for work and I just kept getting sick. But, I also didn’t like that job and resented it taking me away from my home city.

Ask HN: How do you maintain good habits with a disruptive career and life style?

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