Also, as a society, we spend far too much time working to live and it’s bullshit.

Before children and during the pandemic I did, but with one simple change, home office instead of 3 hours commuting in heavy traffic.

Yes but my commute is 10-15 minutes by bicycle, and my kids are all adults now.

I prioritize making time for sleep, exercise and sex in my day, and let everything else work around those. So some of my exercise comes from commuting but I do also do yoga about 4 hours a week and try to lift weights at least once.

When my kids were young, NO it is impossible to do alone. Even if you do have carpool help and aftercare and all, it’s hard. There were years I had to get up at 5 and run to get exercise and other years it was the gym at 22:00 after a night class. But I have always found that it works better if you make your priorities (exercise needs to be one of those) and make a commitment to do those.

I usually have had jobs that were more than the 40 hours, and am NOT a work hard play hard person at all. But if you have one of those 8 hour a day jobs and sleep for 7.5 hours and take half an hour on each end of that to get ready and (critically important) don’t have some hours long commute, there’s plenty of time in the day. I remember when I first got a job that ended at 1700 and having time to cook, feed everyone and go to yoga, or hustle to the 1730 Jazzercise class after work and then still have time to make supper after, instead of feeling so terribly rushed all the time.

Now my day is: wake up around 7, leave for work around 9 after a nice leisurely morning. Work 9:30 to 6:30 (18:30) ride home and get ready for yoga, go exercise and come home and make supper by 9 (21:00), eat and have a Pokemon go walk or read or listen to music, (I cook, my husband takes care of the dishes after) then get ready for bed and try to sleep 23-7, sometimes this is midnight to 7 but I do need a solid 7 hours, too much sleep is migraine trigger unfortunately but I sleep well and soundly for that 7 and wake up pretty naturally. It feels like a balanced life.

ETA: I forgot to add, we do the grocery shopping Friday evenings, at a complex that has restaurants and bars and a Ben & Jerry’s, go out for one drink or a restaurant meal then get groceries then go home, so we can treat it like a night out not just an errand. And most weekends are free of work, though we do each have busy seasons with 7 day weeks for a few weeks - during his busy season I do more of the cleaning and we get more takeout meals, during mine we get more takeout or he or the kids will cook. And we outsource the cleaning and have some essentials on auto-ship. I know that work and exercise aren’t the only things you have to do in a week! But we don’t do them on weekdays usually.

Simple solution.

You have to make work side project too and gym what you for for fun / hobby.

Too bad if the only thing you hate more than exercise is the job.

For a serious answer, it requires a level of strict discipline and adherence to schedule that makes any reward you get from it feel hollow

I still think the 40-hour work week is inherently tied to the idea of the american nuclear family. The answer is that there simply isn’t the time to do any of these things unless one person is doing the 40-hours a week office job and the other is doing the 40-hours a week “taking care of shit with the house/kids” job.

Working double shifts for that sweet sweet high deductible health plan or an hour per day at planet fitness, so hard to decide

I feel like this is pretty normal no? Gym in the morning go to work, come home potter round with projects, cook dinner socialise and lazy out for the rest of the night. On weekends you can spend all day on hobbies then go out at night.

5:30 - get up, get dressed, make the bed
5:45 - go for a walk with my wife and our cat
6:15 - shower, coffee, lemmy, household chores
7:30 - ride bicycle to work
8:30 - work starts
5pm - ride back home
6pm - cook and eat dinner
7pm - household chores
8pm - 1h free time
9pm - go to bed
So I manage to not fall behind on the household, shopping, sleep, me-time or exercise during the week.
I can carve out up to 4 hours for some special evening event once in a while.
Weekends are filled with side projects, visiting family and activities with friends.
Riding a bicycle to work was the game changer for me. It adds 2h of daily exercise and time to reflect during my commute.

You don’t have to do everything every day

Yes, if part of your job involves physical activity and there’s never overtime and it’s not high stress and you have a short commute.

So, not my life right now, but that has been the case in the past.

So, I knew people who do all those things. Work long days, go to the gym, have their hobbies… What they also did is:

• have aspouse who does all their chores
• Never do anything with said spouse
• Wonder why their second marriage is failing

Although a lot of them also claimed to only need 5 hours of sleep.

It’s only really feasible if your fitness activities are also your hobbies and you have friends who share said hobbies. For example, rock climbing, running.

Kinda, but only because I have 0 commute (job that allows to wfh as much as I want), I don’t care about fitness all that much at the moment (I go to the gym maybe twice a week for 1.5h each, followed by like an hour in the sauna every time) and because my side project is also my hobby. I also don’t like socializing with anyone but my partner, so it’s all quite efficient.

Most of the people I know who do this consistently / longer-term are young adults and/or on drugs. Not like street drugs, but some combo of legally prescribed stimulant/anti-depressant/performance enhancing/hormone/weight-loss stuff. Modern medicine has the answers (for some).

A common scenario I’m seeing is that folks in their 30s, 40s, and 50s are being diagnosed with things like ADHD for the first time, and suddenly once they’re on the proper stimulants, they can full throttle, always be doing something. I’m also seeing this a lot with folks who go on GLP-1 drugs. They lose a bunch of weight in a short amount of time and suddenly feel a lot better, mentally and physically. The other thing I see going on is people getting on hormone replacement or starting performance enhancing drugs a bit later in life, seems to be a real motivating factor for them since they’re suddenly feeling 20 years younger.

So, maybe the answer is be young and if you can’t be young, do drugs?