I recognise the plight "in some ways". Professional work does not tend to keep pace with the constant need for ever more stimulating activities. I have no hope in hell of applying recent learning about discrete mathematics in my day job - there's only so many ways you can rub a CRUD app. Out of the Tarpit got me thinking though - I applied lessons from this and other learning in functional programming to a data migration project (from a manually maintained excel sheet to my own DB schema - they refuse to give me a dump of their current DB).

Although not for everybody, a ketogenic diet helps with focus and clarity, providing a constant and consistent stream of energy (no after lunch crash). This goes hand in hand with cardio - I actually did cardio on impulse.