> Why not just start your day with a bike ride for leisure? Unbound by the location of your office you can now cycle to any arbitrary location. If you struggle to do it without a reason, perhaps cycle to a bakery or store and pickup some fresh food for the day.

For me, it's a motivation issue. I had to go to work and had to cycle/walk there. Now, going out in the morning is optional. If I stayed up too late or if the weather is bad (it's almost always bad in Scotland) I'll make an excuse and not go out. After doing it a few times, I broke my morning habit and it's extremely difficult to force myself to go out.

I know it doesn't really make sense but that just adds to frustration. I hate that I cannot force myself to do daily exercise and it makes me feel like shit, creating a sort of feedback loop. I don't go out and do exercise because I feel like shit and I feel more shit because I don't exercise.

It's much easier to do something when you have no choice but to do it. If you have to commute to office, you have to do it, period. If you want to do "virtual commute time" when working from home, you have to somehow justify it to yourself (and your spouse), against the ongoing pressure of thoughts and words like, "I can skip my 'commute' this time to do just this one errand / complete this one task / read this HN article...".

If it's not a necessity, it's hard for people to maintain habits, particularly physical ones. The reality is many people are just not very disciplined if there's not an outside factor forcing them into it.

There are many comments here about missing their commutes as they could meditate/reflect on things, etc. One can quite easily do this with meditation or walking/running/biking for ~30 mins. However it takes discipline to carve out that 30 mins and leave it specifically for meditation or whatever.