The Healthy Programmer

I recently had the opportunity to give a talk at a Developer User Group on the topic of becoming a healthy programmer. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of preparing for the talk, giving the talk and interacting with the audience. More importantly I am enjoying the journey of prioritising my health. Read on to learn the main points that I shared in my talk.

Credit needs to be given where it’s due, as I used countless source material from YouTube videos, online articles, and a brilliant book that I highly recommend, by Joe Kutner called “The Healthy Programmer: Get Fit, Feel Better, and Keep Coding”. My own experience on the adverse effects of working long hours on the computer helped structure the talk.

A question I asked early in my presentation was, “why don’t people stop bad habits despite knowing the consequences?” I then proceeded by asking, “why don’t people do the right thing despite knowing the resulting benefits?” Some of the answers from the audience included, “it’s hard”, “too busy”, and “tomorrow’s problem”. My contribution to the question was to explain that, “because we don’t see the effects of our actions immediately, we are not motivated enough to make the right decisions.” In other words if a bad decision resulted in an immediate effect, people would most likely make better decisions.

The occupational hazards of being a programmer include back pain, carpal tunnel, eye problems such as Computer Vision Syndrome (CVS), headaches, and unhealthy eating habits. A healthy programmer’s role is to resolve these “bugs”.

As legend has it, I then spoke for 30 minutes on a single PowerPoint slide focusing on the below points:

• Plan: everyday have a stand-up with yourself reviewing what healthy choices you made the previous day, what went wrong, and plan for the day.
• Walk: aim to walk frequently during breaks and at least one brisk 20-minute walk in a day.
• Move: take a 5 minutes break every hour and change between sitting and standing every 20 minutes.
• Eat: know your calorie count and use that to customise your diet with five servings of fruits or vegetables.
• Build: perform exercises that target your various muscle groups and strengthen your core. This helps reverse the damage caused by sitting for long hours.

The key takeaway is to be intentional by planning to become a healthy programmer. Have goals. Use a daily checklist. Make small incremental changes, which overtime have an exponential effect on your health. Even if you are not a programmer, as long as you work on a computer, this applies to you as well.