A long time ago my very athletic college girlfriend dumped me for a very athletic version of me. In the final weeks of that doomed relationship, I desperately hit the gym to try to stop the inevitable end of that first love. I failed.
But what I succeeded at was vowing to never again get dumped for someone that was pretty much me but in better shape. So the rest of the failed experiments on the way to meeting my wife found new and innovative ways to reject me.
These days, when I'm in a technical interview, and I get asked how I solve problems, I answer with something like "On a treadmill, running at 7-9 mph, until the answer becomes clear to me." About 2/3 of the time, the person asking the question is taken aback and I've just saved myself from working at a company full of couch potatoes half my age and heading twice as fast into effective old age. Really, we won't get along, let's just move along.
And about 1/3 of the time, the person seems to get that I'm using exercise to get away from the information deluge of the workplace to give my brain a chance to do its thing. These are the only jobs to which I give any consideration.
The day you stop moving is the day you start dying IMO.
I am not quite sure how that would work if you worked on a project alone and need to review a large stack of code or you work with somebody else, you can't exactly take 3 minutes on a threadmill.
If you work on a team, mark time on your calendar where you are busy and stick to it - there are very few emergencies that really are more important than maintaining your own personal productivity - in the rare event that you hit one, throw an exception.
And that may sound self-centered and harsh, but really, your most valuable time at work is your time in flow. If your employer doesn't value that, and feels free to interrupt you willy nilly as well as drop you into the middle of a 1960s boiler room of coders happily jabbering away instead of writing code, your project and likely your company is doomed.
If you're working alone and you're blocked, go exercise, it works like magic because it monkey wrenches your brain out of the infinite loop that's keeping you from seeing the solution. If you aren't blocked, go exercise anyway. Make it a regular habit.
Finally, review that stack of code after you come back from the gym. You'll be in a much more receptive state to do so.
But what I succeeded at was vowing to never again get dumped for someone that was pretty much me but in better shape. So the rest of the failed experiments on the way to meeting my wife found new and innovative ways to reject me.
These days, when I'm in a technical interview, and I get asked how I solve problems, I answer with something like "On a treadmill, running at 7-9 mph, until the answer becomes clear to me." About 2/3 of the time, the person asking the question is taken aback and I've just saved myself from working at a company full of couch potatoes half my age and heading twice as fast into effective old age. Really, we won't get along, let's just move along.
And about 1/3 of the time, the person seems to get that I'm using exercise to get away from the information deluge of the workplace to give my brain a chance to do its thing. These are the only jobs to which I give any consideration.
The day you stop moving is the day you start dying IMO.