Why You Should Work Outside
We’ve discussed the “nature-deficit disorder” running rampant throughout contemporary society before. Kids are more likely to control characters in video games who explore vast outdoor worlds (and complain about the graphics “not being realistic enough”) rather than get out and explore the real world themselves (which has excellent graphics, a pretty snazzy physics engine, and killer AI). Adults are likely to go entire days without stopping to smell a flower, pluck a leaf, caress a blade of grass, or even see a shred of foliage. We’ve also written about some of the incredible health benefits that occur once people correct that deficit and go forest bathing, or hiking, or commiserating with animals, or even planting a small garden on their property. In other words, a lack of nature seems to cause physical and mental health problems, while an exposure to nature seems to improve physical and mental health.
What’s going on here?
If you look at things through the lens of evolution, you notice that we’re doing things differently than we’ve ever done before. People live in suburbs or urban centers. Rural communities are shrinking, urban sprawl is widening. Green space is disappearing. And we’re suffering. A lack of nature is incredibly unhealthy. Being in and around leaves and trees and sand and bugs and dirt and desert and all the rest is the natural state of the animal known as man. It’s home. It’s in our blood and in our genes. We might have adapted to spending lots of time indoors, but not completely. The evidence is all around us, if you just pay attention:
The young child who runs around the park like a chicken with his head removed just to do it.
The sullen teen, whose parents drag him kicking and screaming to the redwoods for a hike, who has to leave behind his iPhone, who enjoys himself despite his best efforts to the contrary.
That feeling when you walk through the grass with bare feet as the sun dips below the horizon and you’re hit with a flood of purples and pinks, where if you didn’t know better you wouldn’t be able to tell if it was dawn or dusk.
And finally, the office worker who goes on vacation to Costa Rica, does nothing but sit on the beach at the edge of a jungle teeming with howler monkeys and impossibly brightly-colored birds for two weeks, and comes back healthier, happier, stress-free, and down ten pounds.
Yeah, for a great many people, work stinks. Actually, let’s put that a little differently: For a great many people, indoor work stinks. What if it didn’t have to be like that? What if you could work outside, commune with nature as you typed, feel the grass underfoot as you brainstorm, and hear not the drone of the overhead lighting but rather the chirp of the bird, the caw of the crow, and the overpowering stillness of the outdoors? There’s very little direct research dealing with the effect of working outside versus indoors, but I think we can make some predictions based on the considerable evidence for the benefits of being outside in general.
Unfortunately, the benefits of working outdoors aren’t always obvious. What does your boss care if you feel more relaxed when you take your work outside? If it doesn’t translate to improved earnings, the higher-ups generally aren’t going to take it into account. They might care on a personal level, but there is no way to accurately or reliably quantify the benefits to the business. Or if you’re the boss, either of employees or yourself, why should you want to switch everything up and start working outside? What’s in it for you, besides feeling better and some random health benefits? How will it affect a person’s ability to work?
Stress Alleviation
The clear-cut, most obvious problem with work is job-related stress. We’re pushed too hard for too little pay. This can be stressful. We’re doing something we’d rather not, rather than doing something we actually enjoy. This is stressful as well. We’re competing with our workmates for promotions, pay raises, or even just to keep our jobs. Such competition, especially prolonged competition, can be stressful. We’re looking over our shoulders, worrying about layoffs and mergers and fluctuations in other markets that affect our employment. This can be stressful, especially because so much is ultimately out of our immediate control. It’s no wonder, then, that people assume that the stress comes entirely from the actual work. Doing anything for eight hours at a time, especially when you don’t particularly care for it and particularly when you sit down the entire time with nary a break, can be draining and stressful. You toss in a long commute and a boss you hate, and things get even worse.
But I think there’s much more to job-related stress than the job. I think the physical work environment – the office, the cubicle, the indoor lighting, the walls boxing you in, the uniform sameness of it all – also plays a role, perhaps even the primary role. After all, evidence is mounting that nearly all lab animals are perpetually stressed, primarily because their natural habitats are vastly different than the lab habitat. If we’re in a similar position, spending a third of our days in physical environments that are wholly alien to our genes, subject to lighting that’s not as bright as the sun, windows that only some of the UV rays through, walls that keep us penned in, chairs that keep us immobile, and a distinct lack of greenery, dirt, sand, silt, mud, muck, bugs, and trees, increased stress is a likely result.
As to why we should want to improve our experience at work and reduce stress, job-related stress isn’t just unpleasant and, well, stressful. It can also complicate, complement, and exacerbate metabolic syndrome, raising triglycerides, blood pressure, and the risk of renal and heart disease. Pretty hard to get those TPS reports done with a failing kidney. Oh, and happier and less stressed workers are also better workers. Overall, occupational stress is a huge target. If we can reduce that by working outside, we’ll probably have mitigated a big portion of the stress in our lives.
Attention Restoration
For all intents and purposes, humans have two “types” of attention: voluntary, or active attention; and involuntary, or passive attention. When we’re working (or reading, or writing, or watching a TV show, or trying to remember a phone number), we are using voluntary attention. We have chosen to direct our attention toward this task, this task demands our full and sustained attention, and we are actively attending to it. An artist, a craftsman, a teacher, a golfer, an insurance broker, a copywriter – they all use voluntary attention to do their thing. Everyone who does anything does. Of course, voluntary attention takes a lot out of us. It’s tiring. It must be sustained, but it’s not indefinitely sustainable. We need a break from it.
Involuntary attention refers to “soft fascination.” It’s watching two birds in flight, an ant carrying food back to the nest, a leaf fluttering down from the tree, carried by the wind. It’s hearing a child’s cry, a trickling creek, a distant waterfall. It’s a respite from voluntary attention, because it doesn’t really require active engagement. It’s just there, and we’re observing it, almost like we’re “meant” to see this type of stuff on a regular basis without it occupying too much brain power.
If voluntary attention is like an intense workout, involuntary attention is the low-intensity active recovery, the walking, the mobility work, the cool down. We need both to be whole and healthy and attentive. If we spend all our time engaged in voluntary, active attention – like 10 hour days at work, 2 hour commutes, and 2 hours of late night TV – our performance declines, we get mental fatigue, and we’re less able to respond to novel situations and plan ahead. In short, we get overtrained.
Research shows that nature exposure is a way to foster involuntary attention, since walking in the woods doesn’t require us to “be on.” And if we move our work outside, to even just a small sliver of nature like a garden or a park, research shows that we can restore our attentional capacity, our balance between voluntary and involuntary attention. Our voluntary attention is the precious, finite resource that allows us to excel at work-related pursuits, and going into nature can replenish our stores of voluntary attention and, subsequently, our ability to work smarter and better. Why, it’s like using your laptop while it’s plugged in – you can operate at full screen brightness, have three browsers with tons of tabs open, watch videos, render graphics, edit photos, and play music, all at the same time. Okay, so that’s probably a bit of an exaggeration, but it will almost certainly help your performance.
There’s this idea that dallying in nature is wasteful, or that it’s time that could be better spent being productive, making money (especially for someone else!). I’m not buying it. For hundreds of thousands of years, people have been making tools, setting traps, building homes, butchering beasts, discovering math, science, physics, and astronomy, all while living in or near nature. Until recently, the wild was all around most of us. Even if you lived in the city or a village, nature was waiting outside the walls. Still we worked, and worked well. Why not now? Why not today?
As John Muir once said, ”Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over civilised people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.” Going outside is “going home.” Now just imagine if you could work from home, too.
That’s the “why.” Next week, I’ll discuss the “how.” In the meantime, go outside, will ya?
Thanks for reading, folks. Thoughts, comments, and concerns are welcome, as always.
Grab a copy of Primal Blueprint Quick & Easy Meals for over 100 Primal Recipes You Can Prepare in 30 Minutes or Less
Posted By: Mark Sisson
Yeah, I wish I could spend more time outdoors. Eventually, I may get to arrange that.
But there are some times that I’m glad I don’t work outdoors. Like early last April, during a hailstorm (2- and 3-inch stones) that hammered the north DFW area (and smashed up cars near where I work). An un-armored person outdoors in that would probably have been killed.
This article has gotten me out of my office and onto my deck in the backyard. Not sure why I don’t spend more time out here.
I also got myself a laptop screen that doesn’t have glare so that I can use it outside. Wonderful invention!
Well, work gave me a mobile phone and a laptop – no desk phone, no workstation. I do have to be in the office, but god meant us to be mobile and clearly so do my employers…
Anyway, on the rare occasions we get some good weather in the uk, I have been known to take my work outside between 2-3:30. When working on one of the benches littered around the site, I have felt as fresh as I do first thing in the morning. Proper alert. I swear it’s little more than a fresh breeze and the sky above me, but to Mark’s central point, I’m sure it’s my body’s way of repaying me for being (somewhat) amongst nature.
I used to be very much a city boy, but in my late 20s now, that has flipped on its head. I feel a certain disappointment when I’m out in the parkland near work at lunch and buildings loom back into view…
I work in an almost windowless office, and am lucky if I get a glipse of sun while I’m in there. Fortunately, we live in a decent climate (Souteastern NC) and have an outdoor gym within walking distance to our building. If it wasn’t for that hour or two at lunch we can go grab a quick workout, I’d feel like a mole-person. It also helps me get my daily does of vitamin D and not feel like a total slug at quitting itme.
I totally connect with this article. The one thing I truly do love about my job is how we have giant floor to ceiling windows and can actually see the outdoors and at home, I always try to set up my desk and workstations as close to windows as possible. That said, I’m sure it’d be better to be outside for real!
Mark–
As a Christian I don’t believe in millions of years of evolution– but you and I can agree on one thing. God placed man and woman in a garden– around trees and plants and fruit and they were naked! Not too far from the ideas you espouse of hiking, taking forest baths, and commiserating with animals!
He didn’t create us for sitting down in a cave and thumbing a playstation, and in a perfect world your primal eating would be universal and we’d all be healthy as God intended.
Sadly, here in Missouri it was announced that several of our state parks will have free wi-fi due to popular demand. I am about as connected (and addicted) to connectivity as you can get but value not even being able to connect in some places.
Also from Missouri and I feel the same way. Unfortunately its a simple matter of supply and demand. I few years ago I spent a week down on the Buffallo River in Arkansas. I checked and every place we camped along the river we had cell service. I know there are still some places out west where that is not the case but its getting less and less everyday. Outside magazine had an article awhile back about the 3g service on Mt Everest….sheesh
It’s a nice idea, but so many millions of people are compressed into cities which simply do not have green spaces. I mean, NO green spaces – not even gardens.
Terraces, high rise flats … what green space there might be is covered in glass, used condoms and drug needles.
Sadly, green space is fast becoming the prerogative of those who have money. These are people without cars, too, let alone the money to fill a car with petrol and drive out anywhere.
It is a bleak picture for millions of people. “They paved paradise …” …
Still, a nice idea.
How timely! I was just thinking of taking my laptop outside to work today – it’s gorgeous out.
A couple weeks ago I went for a multi-day hike. I pitched my tent next to a tiny stream in the desert. The stream was mostly just muddy rocks and a few tiny clear puddles. I was awakened in the night by the sound of trickling water. Later I was awakened again and I swore it sounded like a babbling brook. In the morning I went to the creek and it was full and flowing! I have hiked thousands of miles and have never witnessed this before. One thing that gets lost in our domesticated lives is that childlike sense of wonder. I was filled with wonder over the beauty of this creek and I lingered over my breakfast that morning watching amazingly beautiful birds enjoy this magical creek with me.
I work from home and work outside for at least a few hours whenever the weather permits. Working from home by itself is less stressful, and getting to be outside is just a bonus.
I have begun to get up earlier and earlier just to walk a few miles before anyone else in my home is up. It’s wonderful.
I wasn’t able to walk this morning before I had to go to another town, but once I got there I parked and walked all around to do my errands. I even sat on the edge of a pier on the lake, painted a small watercolour and read a bit of my book. It was all so delightful!
It didn’t even matter that it was 50*.
Being outdoors rejuvenates me.
I am heading over to read the Forest Bathing link smiling. Yesterday my husband and I decided on where in our grove to put my “new” clawfoot tub….
I agree. Working 8 hours everyday in a cubicle is a horrible way to live. I am lucky I have a window right by my desk and get to go out a few times.
Otherwise I would go crazy!
Down here in Australia, things are getting built up at an alarming rate. We are lucky, we have never had to live where we work, and because my other half works in the maritime industry, he is away for chunks of time. So 25 years ago we bought a small farm, and raised 3 lovely boys in the dirt, grass and bugs. They comment now on how they wouldn’t tolerate working indoors as their upbringing has always been without walls. We know we are privileged and in a way that’s sad, as it seems to me to be a human right rather than a privilege to have some connection with the landscape. The landscape informs my art and the care of our patch and it’s livestock (lambing at the moment), is uppermost in our minds, we wouldn’t be anywhere else.
Cheers
I skipped the gym to go for a hike yesterday. I felt so much better afterwards!
I love hiking, there’s a trail I go to nearly every day the weather permits. The trail is approximately 1 mile from the bottom to the top with an elevation change of more than 1000 feet.
At the top there’s a flat rock that juts out over a small cliff and overlooks the plains where I lay out and catch some rays in privacy while reading a book. Physical activity, therapeutic walk in the forest and no tan lines.
I work indoors but I incorporate the outdoors by jogging there when the weather is good. I love exercising outdoors and before work is the best time for it!
Good to see a few other primal geologists here! I’m also a geo, who works in central Australia. In a good year I’ll spend up to 3 months working in the field. We are often “out bush” for 2-3 weeks at a time and are completely self-sufficient. I spend my days hiking and my evenings around the campfire. I work in some of the most remote and beautiful places in Australia and feel utterly blessed to have such an amazing job.
I would still like to know how come you have not written a blog entry on how Esselstyn is able to reverse heart disease with a no oil no animal products diet consisting of grains, fruit and veggies. He has the scientific proof of what he has accomplished with his patients. It looks as though this would be at the top of your list to write about unless you cant defend your diet against his.
I work outside every day. It’s hot, humid and I have weird tan lines. But…at least it’s not a cubicle!
I haven’t read all the posts but I suspect I’m the only one who doesn’t want to work outside. I had a job where I sometimes went out with government field biologists. They, of course, had gone into their field so they could be out in nature. Instead, they spent 90+% of their time in meetings and doing paperwork. So they wanted to stay out long after all the work they were there to do was done. To me, it was hot, dusty, buggy, air full of pollen, boring. Working outside . . . pfft!
Heat, dust, bugs and pollen might be deterents, but “boring”? Every time I am outside, I almost don’t know where to look! Finches flying every which way, flowering blue-eyed grass in the lawn, fiddlehead ferns massing in the woods, hawks soaring over the fields, the dog sniffing everywhere and running for joy, the cats hunting chipmunks and fieldmice… not to mention the smell of lilacs in bloom and fresh-mown hay, the chirps and songs of a couple dozen birds. Boring? Soothing, yes, but boring, never!
I’ve been a bike courier since 1992, and I sincerely hope that I never need to get a “grown-up’s” job. Outside in all weather, moderate exercise (small city), friendly chatting all day long with receptionists and bank tellers etc… I used to ironically describe it as “Living… The Dream” due to the comparatively low income, but the ironic aspect has faded over the years
The best birthday present I ever gave myself was a season ticket for the tram. I live about 15 min way from it. It takes 15 min to take me up to another world of over 10,000 feet. I spend one to one and a half hours up there 2-3 times a week. I stroll around in the sun gazing at various stones and wild flowers and listening to the wind in the trees and the birds here in NM. I’ve lived here 15 years and wish I had discovered this earlier. I was wearing a tee shirt the other day and tolerated the 25 deg. F temp wind chill very well. I feel like I have a spa in my back yard!
It’s depressing how difficult it is to connect with nature these days. My primary goal in life right now is to develop a career in which I can telecommute – primarily to be able to move out of the city!
Love this! I completely feel recharged when I exercise outdoors, which is why I go trail running in a nearby forest every weekend. For decades, I worked in a corporate job trapped inside a building, going from one white-walled room to the next all day long. That lifestyle was killing me. So, 2 years ago I left it. Now I work where and when I want, with plenty of time to exercise and cook my own Paleo and Primal meals from fresh ingredients. I lost 40 lbs and feel fantastic. I don’t think that my laptop and I can ever let ourselves be trapped inside the walls of some corporation ever again.
Awesome!
My walk to work and home keep me sane!
Doing a little target practice with no shirt on is a good outside activity. A 9lb rifle with no bench to rest it on builds muscle and fine motor control.
I’m outside everyday at work – I’m a Police Officer. I’m often asked if I plan on putting in for the detective division. My answer for the last 15 years has been nope, I have no desire to sit at a desk inside. While a lot of my day is sitting and driving, I’m outside and I can control where my office goes for the most part. If I plan things right, I can do some foot patrols.
Now, if I could manage to swing a lateral transfer to some place like Wyoming…
I notice I am much more creative-feeling when I’m outside. I like to write sometimes but my best ideas always come to me when I’m outside. Also, I go hiking at least once a week but when it is a full week between hikes before I get into the forest, I feel close to drunk once I get there. A few days ago, I spent an hour on the trail (it’s only 1.2 miles – I spent some time just sitting at my favorite secluded area) and when I left, I felt like I’d been dreaming the whole time I was in there – like a simple hike was suddenly so surreal. I gotta get out more >.> I was outside for some 3ish hours earlier though… that was nice.
Yes, being outdoors seems to invigorate the mind.
The necessity of living in healthy ways – which include but are not limited to: eating well, having time to care for my body, being in spaces that nurture me instead of poison me, playing, and being able to expand my intellectual horizons – never ceases to astound me. I’ve come to the conclusion that no matter how much I might love my work, I need to find a way to do it that puts the integrity of my life first, not second.
I’m a teacher – long days walled up in classrooms herding kids around certainly keeps me on my toes, and I am in love with my students, but it’s a rare day I’m not sick of the florescents and linoleum when the last bell rolls around. Things have already started changing – bringing my own lunch, making my desk a standing station, wearing minimalist shoes – but it’s time to take things further.
How are you going to spend your one and only life? Not in a place that makes me tired just thinking about it. Time for a change.