TREADMILL WORKSTATIONS

I was investigating the latest workplace wellness fad - treadmill desks. There's a variety of them (here's one - http://www.nextdesks.com/treadmill-desk?gclid=CKmas_yAm8sCFQmqaQodxqYCLA ). You can get powered ones or what is called an "incline model, which has no motor but relies on gravity to get you to drive the belt against an incline. There are beautiful high-end models , up to $4k and there are bargain designs where you can retro-fit a desk and a surplus treadmill.
Basically, the idea is to get you off you ass while working, a "step above" (so to speak :) ) the standing workstations that appeared a few years ago. It seems we can be as lazy with the standing versions as just sitting all the time. We need to move to benefit from a standing workstation. 

Do we really want our kids (or ourselves) having more excuses to avoid being outdoors and staring at screens?

While I laud the efforts to get us more active, it seems to me we are missing a few critical points:
1. Walking on a treadmill is hardly a substitute for a brisk walk in a non-work natural space. Perhaps what we need more than high-end fitness equipment crossbred with desks is more opportunities to interrupt work with exposure to natural environments?
2. Do we really want to find new ways for our kids or ourselves to spend less time outdoors and staring at screens in an isolated space?
3. How does getting some exercise while staring at a screen cultivate any greater sense of our physical lives? Its not that different from the banks of gym-people watching Ellen DeG while they workout?

I'm more inclined to ask questions about the nature and form of work in our lives. We are being engineered to be less and less autonomous individuals and more like "units". I can't see how these desks are step in the right direction.

WALKING AND GENIUS

In his new book, The Geography of Genius, Eric Weiner proposes that genius is not something resident in an individual but rather the product of certain conditions in the person's social, political and physical environment – their geography. One of the common threads for geography and genius in Weiner's findings is walking. Charles Dickens walked through London at night working on plots, Mark Twain was known as a constant pacer. Many of Greece's most important philosophers walked to the Agora, into life and chaos, which fed the imagination.

There is, in fact a wonderful book which documents the role of walking in the life and work of centuries of great Western minds. A Philosophy of Walking is a fascinating work by Frederic Gros. He writes:

Walking is not sport. Sport is a discipline, "an ethic, a labour". It is a performance. Walking, on the other hand, is the best way to go more slowly than any other method that has ever been found. If you want to go faster, don't walk. Do something else: drive, slide, fly.

Creative thinking improves while a person is walking and shortly thereafter, according to a study co-authored by Marilyn Oppezzo, a Stanford doctoral graduate in educational psychology, and Daniel Schwartz, an Education professor at Stanford.
The study found that walking indoors or outdoors similarly boosted creative inspiration. The act of walking itself, and not the environment, was the main factor. Across the board, creativity levels were consistently and significantly higher for those walking compared to those sitting.
"Many people anecdotally claim they do their best thinking when walking. We finally may be taking a step, or two, toward discovering why," Oppezzo and Schwartz wrote in the study published this week in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition.

Weiner was interviewed on CBC's The Current a few days ago. Hear the interview here:

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-february-3-2016-1.3431564/genius-linked-to-geography-more-than-genes-says-author-eric-weiner-1.3431585

The Stanford article is here:

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/april/walking-vs-sitting-042414.html

Yours , on the journey,

Ray

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks ~John Muir