When my grandpa was dying in his mid-80s, it really hit home for me how scary it is. Even if you've had a fulfilling, long life, dying still sucks. For young people, another year of life for an 80 year old doesn't seem like much, but to an 80 year old it means the world.

When you are young those five years don't look that attractive: you are older, slower, half your friends and family are gone, you might not have any money to support the life you want depending how the economy goes, and so forth - so having a bit more fun now seems like a good compromise. Once you get older then you realise that any time is worth having as there are still more things you want to do and more time you want to spend with people than you might have time for left.

Of course having too much "fun" now means that your old decrepit years come sooner because your body will fall apart faster, so that really isn't the good compromise is might seem to some - you start paying in good years as well as the later ones you might be dreading at this point in your life.

To be far far more flippant about it, my reasoning up to a few years ago was:

"My main worry is being able to afford to live a content life beyond a certain point so my current pension plan is to not live long enough to need a good pension. Hence my drinking habit: I'm investing heavily in cirrhosis futures!"

Having started to see some of my older friends in bad conditions, various people in my life having less serious but still significant health scares, I changed my mind about that quite a bit. Had I not decided to shape up back then, an old friend my own age (mid 30s) shuffle off to the crematorium rather prematurely recently might have made me do it. I might not care about those last few years in my 80s now, but I certainly care about hanging around for a good few years yet. I've got places to see and people to do!

Beware selection effects in all things.

I ask because a naive reader might assume that you're just making a dismissive middlebrow comment. Which would fall into the category of gratuitous negatively, and I can't imagine you'd be doing that.

Whether running or weight training, high intensity exercise is much more fun that moderate intensity exercise. I started going to a personal trainer to build strength and pushing myself when running, and not only is it more effective, it's a lot more fun.

If you're walking 6 miles or biking 15 miles a day to commute, maybe that's not such a great idea. It isn't that much fun, isn't really much better for the environment, and it might actually shave a couple of years off your life. That sort of constant exercise isn't going to be very intense.

Of course, if you want to reduce probability of premature death or permanent disability by staying away from dangerous activities and places, then that's a different conversation.

Moderate exercise would seem to be helpful for both length and quality of life.

Have your cake and eat it too!