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.

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

168 hours in a week

Minus 56 for sleep is 112

Minus 40 hour work week is 72

Minus half hour commute 5 days a week is 67

67

Minus 65 hours doomscrolling in bed is 2

How tf am I supposed to have hobbies and health with only 2 hours of free time every week?

For most of the last 5 years I’ve been cycling 2 or 3 hours a day and spending about 45 minutes a day at the gym and I still have plenty of time for fun and socializing and whatnot while also getting 8 hours a day of sleep. This is possible for two reasons: 1) I semi-retired from my job as a programmer and I’m now a school bus driver, which takes about 4.5 hours a day (it helps that I live a half-mile from the bus lot, otherwise the job involves twice as much commuting as a normal job); and 2) I don’t watch movies or television. For my money, #2 is the biggie – spending hours a day watching movies and TV shows is such a massive time sink. I’m not judging people who do it since I just stopped enjoying it years ago, not because I’m consciously avoiding something I like in order to free up time.

Unfortunately, two months ago my parents’ health took a nosedive and my father died and now I’m a nearly full-time caregiver for my mother. I haven’t ridden my bike or been to the gym during this entire stretch. So if it makes anyone feel better, I’m no longer in the category of insanely fit older dude myself. But it is possible, at least.

If only there were more than one day a week…. Le sigh.

You’re not suppose to go to the gym every single day in most cases. The “average” resistance trainer might spend 3 hours total per week in the gym. (I.E. 3 days a week. 1 hour each session) Maybe more maybe less. Maybe a lot less. I only go once a week when I’m cutting. But that’s just me. Granted his isn’t including de-load weeks or full rest days. Which you absolutely need unless you’re Achilles himself, and look what that got him.

If you’re going to the gym “every day” for basic cardio. I would highly suggest investing in a home treadmill or similar instead. There are also a ton of stationary cardio exercises you can also look into or research online. Otherwise, most people can usually find some smaller, no bells and whistles, used treadmills/elipticals for fairly cheap if you look around and/or get lucky. Hell, I see people giving away cheap stationary bikes for free all the time. Depends on what you’re looking for and what your goals are.

Yes, but as you age you don’t need as much socializing and you have established good friendships so you can jump right in.

But I do track everything for fun (like a diary). Last Sunday to Saturday i reached:At 7hrs 4min of excercise last week, 45.3 hrs sleep, 1260 grams of protein, 7 pieces of nicotine gum, 28oz of whiskey (4oz/day), etc…

Highlights: Had a pr at the gym, squatted 410lbs. Baddthings: Had gym fail at ju jitsu, spit my mouth guard onto my bros face. Sorry C! Also argued w my sister over text

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.

People that do these things generally have a ton of energy, are incredibly disciplined, do things quickly, and to a pretty large amount, box-checkers and/or future-borrowers.

If you’re a 45-60 minute showerer, you’re going to have trade-offs

If you have threesomes during the week, you’re going to have trade-offs

If you are the type of person who needs to actually feel peaceful the majority of the time, trade-offs

The ADHD person needs more hours in the day. For everyone else, there’s half-assing it.

Priorities are everything. There isn’t enough time to get everything in life. A lot of us have fallen con to the box-checker’s quantity and compare ourselves to that. It may take some self work, but figuring out what actually makes you happy and what makes that sustainable is a pretty big, but worthwhile challenge. I’m in my 30s and still working on it, for what it’s worth. Different people figure this stuff out at different rates, and my hypothesis is that your availability of resources and birth privileges are big factors in the time it takes to figure that out.

In other words, stop worrying about what makes other people happy, and focus on what makes you happy. There may be overlap, but there also may not be. We’re all different and that’s okay.

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.

One thing that helps me is making sure the fun thing I’m doing 2/5 things at once. Fun and Excercise is skiing. (I’m having issues finding a off-season activity. I’m getting too old for my old standby Judo. It’s just not fun anymore, too much of me aches for days.)

My side project and life thing is spending time with my kid converting a Motorola Razr 40 Ultra into a slider physical keyboard phone. I have to buy a new cable for it, we broke it. But we learned things.

My job is a pretty sweet gig, and so I can spend down time reading and playing games. I beat Silksong at work. I read all of discworld and cosmere at work.

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?

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.

My wife, i don’t know where she gets the energy. Up by 6, does her work, hits the gym, goes out with her friends, i don’t get it

I’m pretty close to getting all these done most days but the only reason it’s possible for me is because I work from home and make enough money to be slowly getting ahead.