How nature can help you be productive

Day 291 / 365

I read about a great research experiment today. It involves two groups of people who were given some logical puzzles to solve. The first group was made to walk around in a park first. The other was asked to walk around in the busy city streets, surrounded by all the chaos and noise. Can you guess which group performed better in the tests?

It wouldn’t come as much of a shock to you that the first group performed better than the second group. You would say that walking through the park just puts the people in a better mood, and that leads to them performing better. But that’s not what's happening here, and to prove that the same experiment was carried on a group that was made to walk through heavy snow. That definitely didn’t make them feel any happier, but they still did better at the tests.

The reason behind this is something known as ART (Attention Restoration Theory). To concentrate on a task, we require direct attention, and this is a finite resource for us. The group which had to walk through the busy streets used a lot of it navigate. Which is why there was less left when they had to solve the problems.

On the other hand, when you walk through nature, it doesn’t take a lot of concentration. Also, nature provides you with a lot of inherent beauty, that keeps your mind occupied without using up a lot of direct attention. This is why the first group did better.

And this is the reason why everyone of us can benefit from a morning walk in the park or a stroll down the office garden every once in a while.

This post is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here

Yesterday’s blog — The 4 Philosophies of Deep Work