Does this take into account the time she could have spent learning new programming skills?

Serious question. With pre- and post phases (changing clothes, shower) and the post-sluggishness, the exercise that you are doing in your free time just to do exercise can be quite an extra time investment.

(no anti-exercise opinion here, but I find it better to combine exercise with commuting or real hobbies)

I think you are drawing a false dilemma here. Exercise is absolutely critical to mental and physical health, there are no substitutes. Studying and exercise should be balanced as time allows but exercise should never be eliminated.

Studying without exercise would be like studying by only skimming text. It's really not worth the time if you can't understand and retain what you are studying.

>Does this take into account the time she could have spent learning new programming skills?

Because she can't find 30 mins per day (or less) not devoted to programming skills or other stuff, to do exercise?

Does the question takes into account the less years of practicing those programming skills because of earlier demise due to bad shape?

Did you read and understand the second & third paragraph at all?

If yes, please name the type of effective exercise that you can complete in 30min, including preparations and clean-up afterwards. Really curious.

(Commuting and hobbies that are not for the sake of doing exercise don't count because they were already mentioned.)

>Did you read and understand the second & third paragraph at all?

Yes, and I find it wrong.

I'm not sure what "preparations" and "clean-up" afterwards you imagine, sounds like excuses not to do any or overthinking it.

It can be just doing some sets of repetitions of body only exercises, without any equipment to put out (a towel on the floor will do). Or a jogging run -- no preparations, just putting on your running shoes and a shower afterwards. Or dancing around in your room. And countless other ways (e.g. getting some gym equipment, a stationary bike, etc).

One showers at the end or start of the day (or should) anyway, and that doesn't have to take more than 5 minutes. And 30 minutes, or even 15-20 minutes, of exercise per day is more than enough to see health benefits.

In fact: "For most healthy adults, the Department of Health and Human Services recommends these exercise guidelines: Aerobic activity. Get at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity or 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity a week, or a combination of moderate and vigorous activity".

I think the problem with trying to mix exercise with hobbies or commuting is that they don't really satisfy the same physical goals.

Hobbies are for fun. Commuting is for travel. They may involve physical exertion, but they repeat the same movement patterns over and over. You don't exercise all your muscles.

E.g rock climbing is hard but doesn't exercise any pushing movements. Which can become a problem when only one set of muscles is trained.

Good exercise will not only make you fitter in a generally useful way, but help you fix problems like flexibility or posture. I.E we are trying to fix your weaknesses, not just cater to your strengths.

That's true. But primarily I'd like to lose weight. I once had a commute that included a couple miles of walking. I lost significant weight because I was forced to do this (well, too cheap to take a cab or a bus).

I've never been able to motivate myself to do that when I'm not forced to.

Do you take into account the time you could spend learning new programming skills when deciding to sleep more than 5-6 hours a day? Purposefully taking time out of the day to exercise is almost as vital for peak cognitive performance, not to mention the investment in your long-term health which appreciates in marginal value (compared to other things you could do with your time like programming) as you age. If you can work that into your existing daily routine, all the better, but that's getting more and more difficult as the modern day white collar worker has an extremely sedentary daily routine (bed -> car -> office chair -> car -> couch)

I don't know if there are studies that compare those opportunity costs directly, and to me that seems like a tough experiment to set up/run properly.

I seriously doubt, however, that that is an actual trade-off being made in real life. As in, no one I know or have ever met is _actually_ making that trade-off. I've known people that claimed similar reasons for not exercising regularly, but the reality is that they just don't want to -- not that they are making a conscious trade-off based on opportunity cost.

Reality: Most people are probably better off taking 1-1.5 hours of low quality work/fucking around on their computers and use it to exercise instead.

Making breaks actually helps learning. I may start to sound like a broken record, but take a look at this: https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn It's easy to follow, and helps to understand how learning works, what helps it and what hinders it.

right, he would like a pill which does this.

Exactly!

This really cannot be overstated. When I was in college I always made it a point to schedule a fitness class of some kind in my credit load, most of the time it was just a credit to show up at the gym regularly. It was a great way to overcome my laziness and get regular exercise.

It was one of the most important lessons I learned at the time because I had gone through a year or so of no real exercise and when I started again everything became so much easier.