I tried endlessly during my PhD to eat healthy, sleep well, and such but this only worked when I truly realized 'ok, my normal routine is killing me', like OP did.

It's scary because that's how you know yourself to be / work but once you have no alternatives it is easier to risk a productivity deficit (.:. it's also easier when you're more confident about your achievements so far and don't think you have to prove as much of yourself to others).

Luckily for me the marginal productivity deficit is totally compensated by living a burnout-free life. (I hope. Ask me again in 5-10 years)

I was a nice boost but now my baseline has shifted.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-n...

It would be crazy to think that that's strictly causal but I think it does show that people who care about their health can drink 3 cups a day happily.

But I'm not kidding myself, I'm an addict. Not drinking any in the weekend causes pretty bad headaches.

Coffee to me gives the perfect "drug ambience": definitely there but easy to ignore... Pretty complicated stuff.

Apparently, you're supposed to drink it in teensy cups.

Who knew.

The average here seems to be around 3 cups per day (or ~9 kg roasted coffee beans per person and year, haven't computed the cup size that renders).

TL;DR: Exercise.

It's important that people get exercise, and it might have protective preventative effects, but it's a bad thing that people keep pushing exercise as some kind of miracle cure for depression.

To put it better: Physical Activity.

Exercise is a subset of physical activity. You could be building something, say a fence, or working on a farm, without particularly exerting yourself, and I bet it would have the same anti-depressant and life-extension benefits as rigorous exercise.

In fact, I suspect that we might be able leave out "physical" — that even sufficient mental stimulation without physical exertion, say working on a computer program, or a close match of Chess or Go with a good friend, may have the same benefits, as long as you don't let your physical aspects suffer; maintain good posture, keep a healthy diet, and take regular breaks.

So I think the best anti-depressant is basically to be involved in something that you believe is improving your self, in something you see as progress, without neglecting your physical health.

Exercise just happens to check off most of those boxes.

oh and, don't work too hard young people. Burn out is the worst.

Hypothesis, skeptical argument etc in detail: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism-content-extern...

Problem is, things are made up of a bunch of components. And operate due to internal and external mechanisms.

Objects exist as causal sets.

We all might be one, when it comes to that we are manifestations of electromagnetic energy. But that's a superset of the here and now.

We're physical beings at the bottom rung, and maybe more when you take the russian doll nested sets apart. But that doesn't change the fact that each part is just as integral to identity in the here and now, or well, the physical human part might be even more important in the here and now.

So yeah, we're all "one" as members of the universe. But don't let that fool you into thinking you're transcending right here and now. Everythings made from components. Everything has supersets and subsets that keep it going. You are not a brain in a jar here and now. But you may be a brain in a jar there and far. So keep a level head. And don't dismiss the philosophy that grounds you.

My God. You monster.

Seems like a small sample size. Luck helps some along more than others and it's spotty in its distribution.

She doesn't say if her friend is a business owner. She mentioned she wanted to start a business but she doesn't say if that was part of what she was working on.

Her friend doing 5 hours of coding in one day is a lot. It's probably more than a typical 9-5 office coder puts in. Especially working from home with relatively few distractions.

But when you own a business, once you have finished putting in your 5 hours of coding, you still have the rest of the business to take care of. One full time job is done, then you start the next one.

I get a bit tired of the generalisations in OA. Sometimes there is far more wrong with life than just not taking good enough care of yourself in terms of sleep, diet and exercise. Sometimes you need professional help and (even if not) what is good for one person might not help you one bit.

My personal bugbear is mindfulness: tried it, didn't get on with it, do not see it as the holy grail of wellbeing -- as some people seem to claim it is. It works for them, that's fine. Doesn't mean it works for everyone.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jan/23/is-mind...

> Claire, a 37-year-old in a highly competitive industry, was sent on a three-day mindfulness course with colleagues as part of a training programme. "Initially, I found it relaxing," she says, "but then I found I felt completely zoned out while doing it. Within two or three hours of later sessions, I was starting to really, really panic." The sessions resurfaced memories of her traumatic childhood, and she experienced a series of panic attacks. "Somehow, the course triggered things I had previously got over," Claire says. "I had a breakdown and spent three months in a psychiatric unit. It was a depressive breakdown with psychotic elements related to the trauma, and several dissociative episodes."

Of course, people will say she clearly had deeper issues but that's my point.