If you can find exercise that's "play" for you, that's the trick.

I like hacky sack and kettlebells. I can play hacky sack for 15 minutes, wherever I am, and easily keep my heart rate between 160 and 190 bpm. I can do kettlebells in my bedroom in 15 minutes, and stay pretty strong and capable. They're both genuinely fun for me, and leave me feeling better (lower stress, more alert, stronger, more agile, more attractive, less like a lazy slob).

I never could spend 10 minutes to and from the gym, and another 45 there, or anything like that. I feel lucky to have found these things I do like.

I also thought I naturally didn't enjoy exercise and had resigned myself to at best forcing myself to go to the gym and grind out a session on a rowing machine or something. I then, in one of the best impulse decisions I've ever made, decided I'd go check out the climbing gym nearby and it turns out I just hadn't found the exercise that clicked for me.

On topic for the wider thread of gamifying doing things that are good for you, bouldering in particular works perfectly with my brain. Every few weeks there's a whole set of new things to try and climb to the top of, and its often as much about working out a sequence of moves that works for as it is about brute strength.

I've never really been able to make exercise stick for an extended period but this time round I'm on about 18 months of consistently making it to the gym twice a week or so and pulling on plastic holds for a while. Its (mostly, unless I have a bad session) fun while doing it, the combination of exercise and problem solving means my system is flooded with endorphins and dopamine afterwards, and I'm fitter than I've ever been.

IME a huge proportion of people who exercise do so (at least at first) because they enjoy the results (including how they feel afterwards, eg endorphins), not doing the exercise itself. The idea that only some people are wired to enjoy it and you're not one of them sounds like an excuse not to endure some discomfort to reap the benefits.

> Exercise, for example, is bullshit make-work that only some subset of people are wired to enjoy for some reason (never worked out how, I'm gonna guess they're either wired to receive reward signal for this, or it's social activity; half of life's motivation is low-key sexual drive anyway). I don't. So I have to find whatever proxy that works for me.

I honestly think nobody enjoys the exercise itself. The real motivation is second order effects like becoming more appealing to other people.