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When you’re outside and moving you feel lighter, brighter and happier: a year of walking meetings

200,000 steps. Just hold that thought…

Every Thursday for the past year, come rain, hail or shine, I’ve popped on my headphones, grabbed a jacket/hat/sun cream/brolly and headed out the door. In the middle of the working day.

I’m in Inverness and our CEO is in Bedford but we walk together every single week. We connect headphones to phones then simply walk and talk, working our way through our whole agenda for about 45 minutes. Don’t tell my other colleagues but I think it’s the best meeting of the week!

It’s great to be out moving in the fresh air – at times in nature or green space – and connecting to the outside world. That’s good for everyone but especially if you have a desk-bound job and even more so if, like me, you work from home.

I’m a pretty active person and love to cycle, paddleboard, do pilates or play pickleball. But last year I noticed that during the working day, if I hadn’t built in a walk at lunchtime or an activity later in the day, my step count was hideously low. I felt like I was basically walking from the study to the kitchen or bathroom and then back again. I was appalled by how sedentary I was some days!

Around the time I was mulling this over, David, our new CEO, started at MOVE Against Cancer. Moving during the working day was something he felt strongly about too. We wondered if we could try a walking meeting so we did it once and never looked back. At the charity we have since developed a Movement Manifesto which supports our team to incorporate movement into the working day. It includes examples of ideas or simple changes to ensure we all move more in the workplace. We love it already and hope that other organisations and individuals will be inspired to adopt some of our ideas or suggest things we can add.

So what have I learned in a year of walking meetings? Somehow when you’re outside and moving you feel lighter, brighter and happier. Your head clears, you think creatively and you talk openly. The conversations feel more like a chat than a meeting and yet we get through everything we need to discuss. I come back to my desk feeling energised, positive and a bit more connected having been out in the big wide world. And it’s such a habit now that I just grab headphones, keys, notepad and jacket then off I go – regardless of the weather.

Not every meeting will work as a walking meeting but I think it’s definitely worth trying it for some of them, whether you physically go into your workplace or work from home. Even walking for the first 10 minutes of a meeting could be beneficial, then you can revert to your desk if you need to take notes, share screens or look at documents. A colleague and I are planning to trial 10 minutes of walking at the start of our weekly meetings. I think that 10 minutes of movement is better than none and bite-sized chunks are very sustainable.

According to the app on my phone, I’m notching up around 4000-4500 steps for each Thursday  meeting. That’s 200,000 steps over the course of a year I wouldn’t have otherwise had. It feels like a win to me! Why not give it a try?