How many push-ups for an hour of Instagram?
The exact calculation, the five drain rates, and how to set your rate in the first week without putting yourself off — then when to make it tougher.
The Pushtank team31 August 20263 min readAlso inFrançaisEspañolDeutschItalianoPortuguês
The short answer: at the starting rate, a push-up is worth 1 min of screen time, so an hour in an app set to the normal drain rate costs sixty push-ups. The long answer is that this number is yours, and you’re better off starting too soft.
Two settings, not one
The price of your scrolling is set in two places, and people often mix them up. An exercise’s rate says what a push-up puts into the tank. A group’s drain rate says what a minute in those apps takes out of it. The first is set per exercise, the second per app group.
That’s what lets you treat a podcast and a news feed differently without changing anything about what a push-up is worth: you put the two in separate groups, and set each one’s drain rate.
The calculation, at the five drain rates
Here is what an hour spent in an app costs, depending on its group’s drain rate, and what that comes to in push-ups at the starting rate.
| Group drain rate | One hour costs | In push-ups |
|---|---|---|
| ½ min in the app for 1 min of tank | 2 h | 120 push-ups |
| 1 min in the app for 1 min of tank | 1 h | 60 push-ups |
| 2 min in the app for 1 min of tank | 30 min | 30 push-ups |
| 5 min in the app for 1 min of tank | 12 min | 12 push-ups |
| 10 min in the app for 1 min of tank | 6 min | 6 push-ups |
Group drain rateOne hour costs
- ½ min in the app for 1 min of tank2 h120 push-ups
- 1 min in the app for 1 min of tank1 h60 push-ups
- 2 min in the app for 1 min of tank30 min30 push-ups
- 5 min in the app for 1 min of tank12 min12 push-ups
- 10 min in the app for 1 min of tank6 min6 push-ups
The tank tops out at 3 h: beyond that, the time you earn is lost, and the app tells you the moment it happens. So there’s no point doing two hundred push-ups on Sunday to cover the week — it doesn’t keep.
In the first week, aim too soft
The most common mistake is setting the app up on day one the way you’d like to be a month from now. The tank runs dry, the effort it asks for outstrips what your body can give, and you uninstall before the weekend.
- 1Start with a single group, and put in it the two or three apps that really take your evenings. The rest can wait.
- 2Keep the normal drain rate: one minute of tank for one minute in the app. That’s already a real price.
- 3Don’t touch the exercise rates for seven days. You don’t know yet how many push-ups you do on an ordinary day — after a week, you will.
- 4After that, toughen one setting at a time, and let it run for a week before the next.
A past rate stays a past rate
Changing a rate doesn’t revalue what you’ve already earned. Minutes earned stay earned: the new rate applies to the sets to come. So you can toughen things up without losing anything.
When to toughen it
Two signs. The first: you fill the tank without thinking about it, and it no longer runs dry. The price has become a formality. The second, more interesting: you do the push-ups for their own sake, and open the app out of a sense of duty. At that point, the drain rate can go up a notch.
The sign you need to ease off, on the other hand, is borrowing twice in the same week. Emergency credit is there for a bad moment, not for holding on to a setting that’s too tough.
