Your Brain on Treadmill Desks
Posted by Human Solution on Feb 4th 2015
I've written before about the productivity benefits of treadmill desks with the hope of dispelling the idea that "you can't get anything done on a treadmill desk." Time and time again, however, I continue to hear that walking while working is best used for low-intensity tasks, such as phone calls and e-mails. I personally never bought into these recommendations, as I've found myself better able to focus and remember key details for big projects that I worked on while walking at my UPLIFT Treadmill Desk. As it turns out, it's not just me; walking while working can in fact improve your memory!
Newly-published research from HEC Montreal suggests that students who were tasked with reading a large "reading task" while also dealing with common side tasks via e-mail (which were sometimes related and sometimes weren't) were able to better recall details related to the material than their non-walking peers. It wasn't a minor bump in performance, either. When the true-or-false questions about the task were reviewed, researchers noted that a "walker" was nearly 35% more likely to answer the question correctly than someone who had performed the task while seated. The study participants also reported a higher level of focus on the task as they worked, corroborating the findings of other studies, as well as my own experiences.
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