To Tame Burnout, Microdose Nature
A neuroscientist is discovering that time in nature is one of the best ways to reduce stress and increase happiness and productivity. Here are the specific doses that work the magic.
In my new book The Comfort Crisis, which looks at the benefits of engaging with forms of mind-and-body-enhancing discomfort our ancestors faced every day, I spend a section unpacking all the benefits of the outdoors … of which, I found, there are a metric shit-ton.
The problem: Most of us today rarely experience the natural world. We spend 93 percent of our time indoors. More than half of Americans don’t go outside for any type of recreation at all. That includes the simple stuff like walking and jogging. The time we spend outdoors has declined over the past few of decades and American kids play outside 50 percent less than their parents did. Camping in the woods is down about 30 percent since 2006.
We shouldn’t be surprised. “If given a choice, human brains are going to say ‘give me something that I can control or predict,’” a Brown University Medical School neuroscience research told me. Humans evolved to jones for future knowledge for survival. Knowing where our next meal was coming from kept us from dying. But now this fear of…
