◆ MAKING THINGS · 2026-10-19

Why Exercise Is a Productivity Tool, Not a Distraction From Work

There's a version of the hustle myth that says every minute away from your desk is a minute wasted. Skip the gym. Power through. Rest is for when the project is done. I believed some version of that for longer than I'd like to admit, and I paid for it in flat ideas, foggy afternoons, and that particular low-grade dread that sets in when you've been sitting too long and nothing is clicking.

What changed it for me wasn't a productivity book. It was getting on the mats.

Movement Is an Input, Not a Break

I train Jiu Jitsu at Valeo Performance Lab. It is a demanding, physical, fully-present practice that asks everything of you for the time you're there. You cannot zone out on the mat. You cannot be thinking about a client deadline while someone is trying to pass your guard. That enforced presence is, I've come to believe, a huge part of why I come back to my work better after training than I left it.

The framing I had wrong for years was treating exercise as time subtracted from work. I was running a mental ledger where an hour of training meant an hour less of output. That math is seductive and completely false. What I've actually found is that the hour on the mat tends to multiply the quality of the hours around it. Focus is sharper. Mood is higher. The mental fog that builds up after a long stretch of screen time clears out. I sit back down and I can actually think.

This is not me selling you on any particular fitness approach. I am not a trainer and this is not medical advice. I'm just telling you what I've noticed about my own output, and asking you to take that seriously, because I think a lot of creative people and knowledge workers are leaving real performance on the table by treating movement as optional.

The Mats Are Where I Think

There's a specific thing that happens during physical training that I haven't found a substitute for: problems get solved without you trying to solve them. I will go into a session carrying some creative knot, a concept that won't resolve, a structural problem in a project, something I've been staring at for too long. I stop thinking about it because I have no choice. And then somewhere in the middle of rolling, or on the drive home, or in the shower after, the answer just surfaces. Clean and obvious.

I don't fully understand the neuroscience of why this happens, and I'm not going to pretend I do. But it happens consistently enough that I've started treating it as a reliable part of my creative process rather than a happy accident. The mat is not where I escape work. It is where some of the work actually gets done.

If you want to read more about what Jiu Jitsu has taught me that goes beyond the physical, I wrote about it over here: What Jiu Jitsu Taught Me About Business. A lot of the lessons overlap.

Making It Non-Negotiable

The practical shift that made the difference for me was deciding that training is not a reward for finishing work. It is not something that happens if there's time left over. It goes in the calendar first, and the rest of the day gets built around it. That sounds rigid, but in practice it's the opposite. When the training is protected, I'm not negotiating with myself about it every single morning. The decision is already made, so the energy that would go into that negotiation goes into actual work instead.

I also think there's something about having a physical practice that is genuinely hard. Jiu Jitsu is not a gentle walk. There are days I do not want to be there. There are sessions that are humbling in ways that are uncomfortable. Showing up anyway, and getting through it anyway, does something for your confidence that carries back into the studio. You remember that hard things are survivable. That you are capable of more than you feel like in the moment. That is not a small thing when you are deep in a difficult project and the internal voice is telling you it isn't working.

The Honest Case

I'm not saying you need Jiu Jitsu specifically. I'm not saying you need anything specific. What I am saying is that for me, and for a lot of the creative and entrepreneurial people I respect, movement is not a distraction from the work. It is one of the conditions that makes the work possible at its best level.

When I look back at the periods in my life where I was producing the best creative output, staying consistent, solving problems with some fluency, the common thread is not that I was sitting at a desk more hours. It's that I was also moving. The two things reinforce each other when you let them.

If you are someone who makes things for a living, whether that's design or animation or writing or building companies, your body is part of the tool. Treating it like an afterthought shows up in the work eventually. Treating it as an input shows up there too.

You can see more of what I'm working on and thinking about at davidzak.com.

Follow along: davidzak.com · YouTube · Instagram · Facebook · 100 Days of Art Workbook on Amazon

← All articles · About David Zak · The 40-year timeline · Art gallery