It's not for everyone, but getting into distance and running really helped my sleep and energy levels in general. It does take a lot of time to train for a full marathon IMO, so I'm not sure that would be very manageable as a solo founder. But, eventually squeezing in 7-8 hours per week to train for a half marathon could be doable depending on your schedule and other commitments. I personally found that my increased energy levels made up for the time commitment in productivity and general well-being, although I have to temporarily sacrifice other hobbies and some social life in the middle of rough training cycles. Finding friends to run with helps make the latter more tolerable.
I struggled a lot with sleep issues in the past - both falling and staying asleep - but I surprisingly found it really difficult to not fall asleep early and stay asleep for at least 8 hours after some very long runs during training. It takes time to build up endurance, but once I was able to run ~5 days a week with a few 6-8 mile runs without excessive effort, I found it easy to maintain a schedule that keeps me tired enough at night to sleep quite well. I also found that marathon training improved my time management skills a lot.
If you don't run at all, couch to 5k is a good place to start. Measure weekly distance and increase mileage at most 10% of week after that. Reddit's /r/running is a good place to find more learning resources.
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It's not for everyone, but getting into distance and running really helped my sleep and energy levels in general. It does take a lot of time to train for a full marathon IMO, so I'm not sure that would be very manageable as a solo founder. But, eventually squeezing in 7-8 hours per week to train for a half marathon could be doable depending on your schedule and other commitments. I personally found that my increased energy levels made up for the time commitment in productivity and general well-being, although I have to temporarily sacrifice other hobbies and some social life in the middle of rough training cycles. Finding friends to run with helps make the latter more tolerable.
I struggled a lot with sleep issues in the past - both falling and staying asleep - but I surprisingly found it really difficult to not fall asleep early and stay asleep for at least 8 hours after some very long runs during training. It takes time to build up endurance, but once I was able to run ~5 days a week with a few 6-8 mile runs without excessive effort, I found it easy to maintain a schedule that keeps me tired enough at night to sleep quite well. I also found that marathon training improved my time management skills a lot.
If you don't run at all, couch to 5k is a good place to start. Measure weekly distance and increase mileage at most 10% of week after that. Reddit's /r/running is a good place to find more learning resources.