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.

Photo by Silvestri Matteo on Unsplash

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 uncertainty oversteps its old boundaries, going beyond food to any unknown circumstance. This is why many people become trapped within that safety net of the indoors.

The nature research suggests that braving the uncertainty of the outdoors is one of the best things we can do to reduce stress, tame burnout, and increase happiness and productivity. The more time in nature, the better. But you needn’t go all Christopher McCandless to see benefits.

For example, one study found there’s a little magic in just 20 minutes. The scientists discovered that 20 minutes outside, three times a week is the dose of nature that most efficiently dropped peoples’ levels of the stress hormone cortisol. The catch: You can’t be on your cell phone, you must be focused on the outdoors.

An ideal quick dose is 20 minutes, three times a week of, let’s call it, “urban nature.” This nature is found in cities, suburbs, and towns. But we can…