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

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.

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.

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?

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.

If you bike to work, you feed two birds with one scone.

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

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?

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.

Not while also being a parent. Most of my hobbies and leisure / friend time has taken a giant shit since I became a dad.

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

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.

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

Not with two kids I ain't doing all those, no.

the trick, i'd imagine, is to be rich enough that you don't have to deal with doing your own chores or errands (let the servants get groceries and cook and clean and drive you places).

I think it's all about priorities and as another guy said here at least a rough schedule/routine.

My hobby is being active (drumming multiple hours per day), then you can save the gym (I do some climbing now and then though). Commuting with bicycle to work also helps, work less (I do 25h/week which is max for me, I rather spend less money and live in a community than having to work more to finance myself, life does have too much interesting to offer than to spend all your time with working).

I also like to eat stuff like Huel (the savory stuff) which saves me time of cooking/buying groceries (and I have a rather high protein intake which is good for drumming, as fast/strong muscles/tendons are quite important (and it noticebly helps with growing muscles, I didn't want to believe until then how important high-protein intake is when being active)).

I basically don't play any video games (ironically I'm quickly bored), do some open source programming instead (so side-projects?), try to avoid "wasting" time on e.g. social media.

You don’t have kids obviously.

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.

You don't have to do everything every day

15 minute a day fitness program. Designed to be done with no equipment except a stopwatch.

https://leisureguy.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/rcaf_xbx_5bx_exercise_plans_text.pdf

Actual exercises are in the back of the book.

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.

Yes. But no kids and the gym is next to the office.

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.

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.

The closest I came to cracking this was buying a used treadmill, a steam deck, and some third party joycons that were a little more ergonomic. Play games while walking. Lost 20lbs playing BG3 and another 10 beating Hades. Then life happened and that routine fell apart. But it worked pretty well. Just need to get back into it. Obviously not feasible for many due to the initial expensive or space requirements.

No, all this at once is not possible with any worthwhile kind of focus

Personally, I manage to do so only because I genuinely can't afford the life and fun.

I do seasonal jobs when I'm not working on my artwork, but yes.

The trick to it is to make everything you do a routine. Get up at the same time, eat a fatty/oily breakfast, shower, work, eat, work out, shower, make your personal time count, go to sleep at the same time every single day. You should plan an hour to get up and ready for work, you should plan an hour to get home and an hour to get to sleep, so assuming 8 hours work and sleep that leaves 5 hours for workout, dinner, and hobbies.

Only downside is that external forces' disruption of the schedule can cause feelings of rage.

I'm not big on side projects, but I've made fitness into my fun, so those blocks get partially combined.

I actually think that's kind of key when it comes to fitness - you need to find an activity you actually find enjoyable, otherwise you're always going to be struggling to keep it up. I used to force myself to go running many years ago even though I hated it, and that predictably didn't go very well. Then I re-discovered biking, which takes very little mental effort for me to want to actively go out and do, since I like doing it so much. I've since started to find running actually fun, but it was a bit pointless there for a while

With a kid and full time job (home office though), I would need to reduce sleep to get any time for side projects, gym or hobbies. I am not sure it would be wise.

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