Maybe we need to, I dunno, rethink the way we work in general. Stop chasing silver bullets and admit that movement is medicine. Reading articles like this reminds me of the people I've watched exhaust every possible option for weight loss save for mindful eating and exercise.
Completely agree with you. However, what does this mean for a software engineer or anyone who must be in front of a computer for extended periods of time? I’ve moved to biking everywhere and daily walks with the dogs, but still have 8 hours where I’m mostly sedentary
1. Taking walks during the day. I have figured out a lot of tricky design and even debugging questions by taking a walk. And even if I don't think about programming directly, it still clears my head. Splitting my day up with an hour (or longer) walk leaves me more effective than spending the same time in front of my computer. I usually work remotely, so often this involves walking to a cafe, doing some work there and walking back.
2. Taking walking meetings. I've found this works well for 1:1s, and it works reasonably well for large calls where I don't need to participate much. There are lots of meetings where it's too awkward or doesn't work at all, but converting even a small fraction of my meetings to walking meetings is a real improvement.
Of course, both of these assume a flexible culture where this does not make me look like a slacker and where I can take meetings in different ways. But I figure that's a minimum for having a healthy and productive work environment regardless!