I found that setting a two minute timer and running up and down a stair case with high intensity once per day can resolve a whole host of seemingly unrelated issues.
Same. I found that picking up a 28-kg kettlebell and climbing up a 20-storey building within 6 mins (switching up hands every couple of floors) is an awesome "functional" exercise.
Hits cardio, grip strength and unilateral stability stuff.
Hard disagree. I am positive I could do this, but I do no cardio. The weightlifting I do has had little effect on my cardio fitness as it relates to doing things that would increase my VO2 max.
I was in this same boat.
I just walk about 25k steps a day and lift weights.
Didn't really have a form of cardio i liked. I could never be consistent with running. I settled on this combination with stairclimbing and farmers carries.
I always run stairs when given an opportunity (big proponent of "incidental exercise"), so when I used to live in apartments I would deliberately rent a room in the highest available floor. It's shocking how much HIIT you can get out of running 20+ flights.
I'm not OP, but when I started run-jog-walking one mile, three days a week (which is a bit more than two minute stairs every day, but still asking muscles, joints, and heart to wake up), that my back pain lessened, some niggling knee tightness stopped bothering me, and I noticed an increase in how long I could go doing something moderately strenuous before craving a rest (e.g. moving boxes, or walking with a heavy object, or running after something or someone). It doesn't have to be a massive lifestyle shift -- walking a couple times a week can give similar benefits. But the jump from "basically sedentary" to "loading muscles and joints and heart for ~20 minutes 2-3x a week" is truly ENORMOUS when it comes to our biological systems, and a lot of those systems start running a lot happier with that.
Exercise is not a panacea, and those who say it will fix everything and cure depression and make you perfect are quacks. But, it pains my contrarian ass to say, some light cardio every now and again is much closer to what our bodies are happy with than desk life, such has been my experience.
This right there. No, you're right, it's not a panacea. However, it absolutely fixed the period back problems I've dealt with most of my adult life. Now if I do something to tweak my lower back, I can't wait to get to a treadmill or out onto the sidewalk. It's the one thing I know will make it feel better.
Of course, that's going to be different for everyone. It'll make some people worse. For me, though (and apparently for you, too), it is the right way to treat those issues.
For those with knees not tolerant of running, I've taken to also rucking around with a heavy backpack. It's fantastic for building torso strength, and "your body weight plus 30 pounds" is still far less impact than "your body weight, but running". Walk up some hills steep enough to make you pant and wonder if you can make it to the top and your body may thank you for it, the way mine thanks me.
BTW, doctors have a saying: "motion is lotion". Also, "when you stop moving, you die". We are not evolved to take root on a sofa. Our bodies are meant to move and jostle and bounce and twist. Absent specific reasons not to, it can make a huge difference in physical comfort.
I have a late ADHD diagnosis. For years I tracked my habits. I read get shit done and many habit books in my 20s. I obsessed over my tracking, believing on some level it would elevate my life.
Around 5 years ago, during covid I stopped. Looking back I can comfortably say that habit tracking caused me considerable distress and the benefits are mostly not there.
I now use obsidian and a digital peice of paper style. I use lists that have no timing or deadlines of any kind. When I am able, I pickup the list and do something.
This still causes me distress but the low effort, low maintainability method I find is just as effective and considerably reduces self punishment.
I also apply the same low effort style to journalling (also in obsidian). Journal entries are 'if I am motivated'.
After 20 years I found the best journal entries have 3 questions:
I often speak to people online who look at society and want to tear it down and start again. I've never understood that attitude.
Growth out of decay takes work, but it takes considerably less work than accelerated decay and then trying to start again when there is nothing fertile left to build on.
I like this article because it demonstrates that there is always fertile land and opportunities where people are not looking.
> Growth out of decay takes work, but it takes considerably less work than accelerated decay and then trying to start again when there is nothing fertile left to build on.
Indeed. This is why conservation of habitats (however small, or degraded) makes more sense than trying to restore already-destroyed areas.
That said: if I could pick an area to work on for myself, I'd go for a stretch of wasteland. Why? Because the before-after difference would be more stark (read: more satisfying). And heavily degraded lands are in muuuch bigger supply than little-degraded areas.
More important would be a general willingness of the locals to not interfere with restauration efforts.
> I like this article because it demonstrates that there is always fertile land and opportunities where people are not looking.
Stronger: "fertile" isn't strictly needed. Fertile soil can be built - if necessary, starting from 'scratch' (yes it does take time). Basically: grow stuff (anything is better than nothing), mulch (bio-waste is free), keep doing so, and whatever soil you started with, will improve over time.
As the soil improves, plants grow better & other life returns.
The general direction of society is still immense destruction of the biosphere. That doesn't change because you can make conditions better locally and in the short term, especially when such actions don't go against the general momentum of society. The fact is, there's often conflation with improving individual lives and conditions (the warm fuzzy feeling) with actually doing real good when it comes to our impact on this planet. The former is not necessarily related to the latter, especially since the system has just the right amount of leeway to allow people to feel better and let off steam without really changing the ultimate long-term direction.
Even if there are many opportunities as you say, if the general momentum of society has three destructive acts for every one good one and that doesn't change, then society is still as destructive as ever.
For instance, for people who care deeply about nature and the non-human aspects of the planet, human society is incredibly destructive and hasn't done much to change that direction, regardless of how many feel-good projects have occurred.
Precivilisational lifestyles can only carry a small fraction of our current population. To a significant degree we're locked into this, and have been for thousands of years.
You'd still get regional overpopulation issues. E.g. the Justinian plague in 541 AD. That's still far away from mobile hunter gatherer tribes with densities of a few dozen people per 1-100 km^2.
Homo sapiens is 300,000 years old, Homo erectus 2 million years. Modern civilization might not last on the order of 10,000 years, industrial civilization maybe not even 500 - or perhaps "forever", if we make it to controllable runaway technological improvement?
The perception is that society itself is the roadblock to improving society. For example American "democracy". It's easy to imagine things could improve faster if Congress and the executive were simply deleted overnight.
News focuses on the negatives, but we're doing reasonably well in absolute terms. Big random changes are likely to cause regression to the international mean, which is generally below the US on most metrics.
It's because the powers that be do not want to make the society we want. They want to make the society they want, often at our expense. Therefore they must be torn down.
I didn’t quite understand. I use Tmux extensively and have tons of sessions running different panes etc. But how does Tmux solve the session search problem, maybe I’m not aware of some Tmux feature?
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