Running
Went on a quick 17 minute run yesterday, for the first time in a while, and the improvements I felt today were pretty miraculous.
- Strongly improved mood, I think on the order of +3 or +4 on a 10 point scale.
- Much improved sleep quality, I think also a ~30% improvement.
- A lot of mental clarity upon waking, beating an old drum here, but maybe 30% as well?
- A strong motivation to do productive things. I've been struggling with mild burnout for the past few days, and it was pretty unthinkable to me how I woke up basically eager to tackle these things that I've been dreading to do the previous two days.
- No longer feel the desire to go back to sleep all the time.
Recently I went to a week-long festival and felt quite happy there even though I didn't get a lot of sleep. Thinking about it, a part of that might also have come from biking a lot during the day and getting my cardio in too.
Cardio is often one of the first things I let go of since the immediate impact is not that visible, and QoL decreases very slowly, but this experience is making me realize that running should probably be close to #1 priority to me, especially when I find burnout hindering my productivity (but ideally before this situation even comes to pass).
Small mental note: the run yesterday was also a lot more intense than my usual jog from last year. I feel like that might have contributed to the huge effect as well. To investigate.
— Categorized under: #productivity