The Benefits of a Lunch Hour Walk | Hacker News Reader

The Benefits of a Lunch Hour Walk

well.blogs.nytimes.com

150 pointsLibertatea47 comments

Shifting the topic slightly, but I've trying to encourage colleges to do walk-and-talk meetings when your not really going to be using a computer/AV equipment (and it's only one or 2 of you). I cant seem to get traction. It seems people are just so used to going to a room and sitting there it seems to foreign to do otherwise but I think it would be a good culture shift if we could do this more.

I like these when there aren't To Dos to write down. :-)

And the purpose of the downvotes were?

Correction for using a smiley? (I wouldn't used one here but come on, this isn't stackoverflow.)

Misunderstanding the post like I did on first reading? (try: "I like these as long as there aren't To Dos to write down." which is a relevant point where the parent just mentioned the lack of A/V equipment.)

Walking and talking is nice because it actually seems like the conversation moves figuratively to match the literal movement of the walk. My conversations are less likely to get stuck at an impasse or wallow in minutiae. While walking and talking on the street or sidewalk conversational "goals" or "points" seem to be met or solidify at major landmarks. This is in no way quantified, but just something that seems to have happened enough for me to notice and find it curious.

Do the walks/talks always follow the same route and physical milestones?

Nope. Three pretty different cities. Various neighborhoods in each city. Sometimes camping or hiking. Different times of day too. They're much more likely to happen with friends than coworkers though, which makes me unsure of their "business value". I do tend to get a lot of personal value out of them while with my friends.

We do this quite frequently at work when the weather permits (or occasionally in circles around the break room when it doesn't); we refer to them as "kinetic meetings". We'll also frequently find that even if there wasn't an original topic for the "meeting" and everyone just wanted to go for a walk, the team tends to cluster into groups working on related problems and there are usually at least one or two breakthroughs that people didn't even know they needed to have.

I love walk-and-talk meetings. They're the only ones where I feel like I can really speak freely. That, and it's quite nice to take 20 minutes to grab an iced tea on a mellow 70* day.

Well, I can't even encourage people on my team to simply take the stairs for meetings in other floors. Go figure. :) I'm under the impression that this is something very hard to evangelize at work; many people don't care or don't want to think about sedentarism.

I hate the walk-and-talk idea.

I've been walking at lunchtime for over 10 years. For some reason, co-workers think they're being friendly and companionable when they come along. I hate hearing the cheerful: "Hey I'll come and walk with you."

NO. That's my time to be away from you guys. I use that time to think about what I have to do in the afternoon, what I need to include in the report that I'm writing, how I'm going to fix the sticky door in the basement, or what I'm going to get for my wife for her birthday. I don't want to discuss the merits of partially deflated footballs.

I find that I have to sneak out the door when nobody is looking.

I think the suggestion is to turn your meetings into walks, not to turn your walks into meetings.

Those are two very different processes.

I was just remarking to a colleague today how beneficial a lunchtime walk really is. The walk provided: 1. Fresh air 2. Exercise 3. A chance for the eyes to change focal range from the fixed distance of the shitty monitors work provides. 4. A chance to take a brief phone call from a recruitment agent to discuss a better job 5. A chance meeting of an old colleague I had not seen for nearly twenty years as he also took a walk. 6. I was away from the desk when the boss had a crappy task so someone else had to do it. 7. I found a new coffee shop I will revisit 8. I solved a long running problem by being able to walk and think 9. I am sure the stress levels were reduced!

Also gets digestion going if you had a heavy lunch...

Depends where you are. If you are outside a big city in the US, then you can't even walk anywhere unless you like walking on roads and highways.

Seems more a downside of some locations, than of lunchtime walking per se?

You think if there are fewer roads that you are forced to walk along them??

I assume that he means along as in "on the roadway" rather than "along" as "following the road, but on a sidewalk".

The point :

> A chance for the eyes to change focal range from the fixed distance of the shitty monitors work provides.

is followed by me daily. I have a cute nice wallpaper hanging behind my pc. Every say 10 minute, I change my vision to point to the wall-paper from regular pc vision.

After following this, I haven't faced any eye stress. Really helped me.

Anyone follows over here?

I live fairly far North (above 60deg.) so getting outside while the sun is up during the winter is hugely important.

I take a walk at lunch every day, even when it's -40. Getting sun on your face changes everything.

Where are you? I'm at 57deg north, and I totally agree that getting outside is important when you go to work in the dark and come home in the dark.

Whitehorse, Yukon.

How about you?

I'm in Sitka, AK. Nice to know there are some other HNers not too far away!

Are there many (any) tech jobs there?

Here in Whitehorse if you're in tech you can basically work for the incumbent telco, or the government. I'm with the former.

I teach high school math and science, and I teach an intro programming class once a year. I've tried to connect students with professional programmers, and I have never found any in town.

I'm just starting to do some professional work around programming. This is a great natural environment to do technical work - you work when it's gray and rainy for days on end, and go play when it's sunny and nice out. A lack of programmers also means there are a number of businesses in town that could really use some tech support. There's a critical business in town that still stores all of its customer information in 4 large filing cabinets. Their work is incredibly inefficient - if I pursue freelancing I'm going to approach them and see if they want a simple electronic system built.

Happy to tell you more about our local scene, my email is in my profile.

I've worked in groups where we've had mid-afternoon "walkies," and about eight of us would participate (not all on the same day). We got a lot of interesting engineering issues out of the way (in addition to the usual bantering and social interaction that helps glue a small team together).

When no one else wanted to go on a walk, I would still go. Got some interesting designs out of it (for instance I designed an MMU, http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1383 ).

Don't know if the sewage plant paths east of Sunnyvale are still walkable, but they were pretty nice a few years ago, once you got past the main plant's icky smells :-)

Working at a botanic garden[0] definitely has its advantages :-). By the summer I aim to have thoroughly explored the opposite end, which I've neglected as it's 20 minutes walk from my desk, with three big glasshouses in between.

(What are the guidelines on mentioning jobs in comments? As we've just advertised four developer positions...)

[0] http://www.kew.org/

I would very much appreciate information on this; notably I would be interested in any junior positions that might be available.

I've scanned the site but only managed to track down two positions so far.

Many thanks!

They're listed under "Science" on the careers website, which isn't obvious — we have nothing to do with the 'business' IT of HR and finance systems.

Three positions are primarily software development jobs — there's no requirement for any knowledge of botany etc, but we want to make good, stable software. The first is a junior position, a recent graduate is fine.

1. Biodiversity Informatician: https://careers.kew.org/vacancy/biodiversity-informatician-2...

2. Senior Biodiversity Informatician: https://careers.kew.org/vacancy/senior-biodiversity-informat...

3. Lead Developer — Drupal: https://careers.kew.org/vacancy/lead-developer-drupal-208862...

The fourth is a new kind of role in the biodiversity informatics / development team, since it's focussed on research. I think that means the software is allowed to be a kludged together bundle of scripts so long as it's novel and can have papers written about it. (We all do this kind of thing sometimes, but have usually either set it aside, or turned it into a production system. It's been rare to write a paper about it.)

4. Early Career Research Fellowship — Biodiversity Informatics: https://careers.kew.org/vacancy/early-career-research-fellow...

I hope that helps!

> (What are the guidelines on mentioning jobs in comments? As we've just advertised four developer positions...)

I'd say, it's definitely encouraged, as long as you don't go into spamming territory.

At IBM Almaden in San Jose it seems like just about everyone walks all the way around the campus (~20 minutes) everyday after lunch. Apparently that is a thing that's been going on there for a very long time. After I left Almaden I went to HGST and they did the same thing. It turns out the HGST group I was in sprung out in some way from Almaden :)

I do this everyday that I don't have lunch plans and I highly recommend it.

I also try and take a picture everyday of something interesting.

I did this at a previous job, making a point to get outside. It was great.

The biggest hassle was during the summer months when I would sweat like a freaking pig when I sat back down at my desk. No showers at work, and doing a cold wipe-down in the bathroom didn't seem to really stop it.

Not exactly a "lunch walk" but I've generally been walking a lot more recently - (got my fitbit for Christmas, and need to keep my scores up) and I've noticed many of these benefits. I try to go for a break time walk for 5-10 minutes every hour or 1.5 hours. It's been pretty nice overall.

I think a lot of this comes down to where a business is located. I've worked on Business parks where the developers of the park have included ponds/lakes and footpaths to enable good circular routes and great places to get out and just sit and talk. The culture at that place was going for a walk at lunchtime. Almost too insistent that you went.

Others business parks have maximised commercial space and people pretty much sit at their desks eating at lunchtime as there is a feeling of nowhere nice to walk to.

I don't walk at lunch but working from home allows me to get a quick kettlebell workout in every day at lunch. 30 minutes of kettlebell work, a shower, and then back in the saddle by 1pm. My personal findings reflect what the article says: I'm in a better mood, more efficient, and generally just better at my job after my lunchtime workout.

I used to walk at lunch when I worked at an office. I work from home now and started to do so again this week after noticing how much damage my sedentary life has done to my body. It is nice to have some time to clear my head and hope I keep it up.

I've seen a lot of "walking is good for you" articles; I've worked at Fitbit for over a year. The interesting thing about this one for me was how the researchers used smartphones to make a mood study more tenable.

I purposefully go out for lunch, despite office providing for lunch, exactly for this. I have to walk and catch a breath of fresh air around lunch time :-). Speaking of which I'm heading out for lunch!

I highly encourage this advice. If you want to have a little gaming fun while you are out for a walk try this

https://www.ingress.com

It appears the game works only in a high pedestrian areas like downtown SFO with defined landmarks. Does the game work if you are in a suburban office with walking trails around ponds?

It depends on how much player activity in the area. In my experience I've found there is a lot of activity in suburbs around major cities.

I find that, playing Ingress, I'm not actually taking in my surroundings at all. It doesn't feel like exploration. The game just absorbs everything.

Assuming you have a lunch "hour"; it's usually a lunch "half-hour".

I wish I was fat and trying to lose weight so that I could fast and walk. Instead, I'm skinny and bulking and need to stuff myself sick during my precious hour of freedom. I sit alone at my desk with my office door closed.

I see people downvoting, but what you're saying is the truth. If you're trying to put on weight, e.g. building lean muscle, you have to eat at a caloric surplus. You're probably lifting weights so you need to eat maintenance + calories burned during workout + 200 or so more cals just to be in a surplus. You're probably eating 3 meals during work alone (mid morning snack, lunch, mid afternoon snack). That's at least 30-45 minutes eating time alone if you force it down. There's not much time to go for "walkies".

The downvotes are probably because of the "I wish I was fat so I could fast and walk". Both fasting and physical exercise are activities that are not fun when you have to do them. No one wakes up in the morning and says "yay I'm glad I'm fat so I can not eat things and work out!" They stop eating and start working out for the sole purpose of not being fat anymore.

As it was worded, it's a huge slap in the face to anyone who is overweight. It sounds like the parent is glorifying being overweight. Being underweight must suck too, but it can't make you feel any better when a fat person says "I wish I was as skinny as you so I could eat everything and just focus on bulking up" when you're trying to force yourself to do those things, likely to the point of physical illness.

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