I go out walking...
Written by Anthony Demangone
You know how much I like a good walk.Â
- I wrote about how walking is perhaps the easiest path to good health.Â
- I wrote how a credit union created a walking track on one of its floors.Â
- And then there are the Walkie-Talkies, NAFCU's own band of lunch-time walkers.Â
It seems the New York Times is joining the chorus. Last week, it published an article that shows the science behind a lunch-time stroll. A study took fairly inactive workers and had them begin a 10-week walking program, which required at least a 30 minute walk over the lunch hour. There was a control group that didn't walk as well for part of the time.Â
The responses, as it turned out, were substantially different when people had walked. On the afternoons after a lunchtime stroll, walkers said they felt considerably more enthusiastic, less tense, and generally more relaxed and able to cope than on afternoons when they hadnâÂÂt walked and even compared with their own moods from a morning before a walk.
Although the authors did not directly measure workplace productivity in their study, âÂÂthere is now quite strong research evidence that feeling more positive and enthusiastic at work is very important to productivity,â Dr. Thogersen-Ntoumani said. âÂÂSo we would expect that people who walked at lunchtime would be more productive.âÂÂ
As a pleasant, additional outcome, all of the volunteers showed gains in their aerobic fitness and other measures of health at the completion of their 10 weeks of walking.
I think we all want colleagues who are enthusiastic, less tense and more able to cope. Not to mention more productive. Ironically, some workers who stopped walking indicated that they only stopped because management required them to work over their lunch hour.Â
So, here's to the power of walking! How many of you build something into your day akin to a lunch-time stroll? Any good stories about what it does for you?
Have a great week, guys.Â
