[MrScruff]

I think what the parent post was saying is that there is a finite amount of useful mental function time in any one day, and once you’ve exhausted this any attempted learning will be pretty inefficient. Also some jobs will have a faster burn rate. Doing a workout is separate as it doesn’t draw on the mental energy pool.

[storus]

From my experience, workout draws exactly from the same pool as mental effort, so after a tough day at work/school, there is little left for a workout and vice versa. Instead of brain spending its energy on thinking, it spends it on muscle/movement coordination.

[black_knight]

I find it easier to work out when being mentally exhausted than doing something mentally challenging when physically exhausted. My main sport is climbing and it is perfect for a Friday evening when I am exhausted from my research and teaching job.

Also there are all these feedback loops. Staying active gives motivation to do mentally challenging things, and some of this mental energy can also be invested in learning new ways of staying active!

[storus]

I find it slightly easier to do mental work after a hard workout, especially when it's cardio, but not by much.

[lacunary]

is true that if you've done some amount of mental effort in the day, learning becomes "pretty inefficient"? I could see that being true if you're exhausted, but then doing a workout would also be a problem.

[coderc]

I would say that learning draws from the pool of "mental energy", but working out draws from the pool of "physical energy". Just because your brain is tired, it doesn't mean that your biceps are.

[MrScruff]

Yeah exactly. After a hard day when my brain is frazzled, a workout will actually make me feel better.

[marginalia_nu]

Probably good to align mental and physical tiredness. Being physically tired makes rest feel very good.

Being mentally worn out just kinda makes you feel like shit. It's a terrible state to be in, you don't want to do anything, but doing nothing also feels bad.

[Levitz]

I'm almost certain people are different on this point, but I just want to put this out there in case it applies.

A lot of our entertainments and hobbies, especially in urban areas, are mental to begin with. The most evident example would be scrolling on your phone, which evidently is 100% a mental thing, but there's a lot in this box, videogames, music, reading can all really demand a lot from you mentally.

Explicitly physical things are not so common. Gym. Dancing. Climbing. Running. All of these are things that people who work with their brains often talk about as "relaxing" or "great against stress", even if they can put the body until great physical strain.

It is my experience that when mentally worn out, the "don't want to do anything" really translates to "don't want to do anything mentally", problem being, thinking about doing the physical thing instead is actually a little bit of mental, albeit more emotional, work, but once you ACTUALLY do that, then after spending the whole day focused on deep, complex stuff, being the caveman bench pressing is actually absolute bliss.

[marginalia_nu]

Yeah this is largely my experience as well, and few things will raise your quality of life if you do have a mentally taxing life as having one or more hobbies that are physical and ideally requires you to get out of your head (gym kinda does that and if nothing else is a good sort of stress degauss, but dance is arguably even more fantastic as it literally will not work if you're in your head; not that one excludes the other).