The Benefit of Walking
Walking provides you a hard reset. It forces you to disconnect (provided you're not glued to your phone). Nearly every corporate campus provides a space for you to walk, even if it's just a small and simple path. But, almost no one utilizes it.
The problem is that knowledge worker folks at companies believe they are paid for their time at a desk or a location. You're not. You're very much not. You're paid for your output. At almost no meeting about talent does it ever go "so and so is incredible, but man, he only works 30 hours a week" or "well, so and so sucks, but he's always at his desk."
Well, alright maybe they start like that, but when push comes to shove it comes down to output. Because most managers and executives don't have the time or the will to micromanage at the hourly level. Seriously, go tell a manager they're getting an intern and the first thing they will complain about isn't training a new person or onboarding, it's the fact they now need to log into Kronos and keep track of someone hour by hour. It's excruciating.
The point being knowledge worker's are paid by output. I am, of course, just summarizing points Reed Hastings and Andy Grove have made in their books, but the gist being: you're paid to produce output, optimize for producing output. Your output is related to hours you put in, but it is also directly related to how creative you can be and productive in the hours you put in.
That's why going for a walk is so powerful. It breaks you out of your desk and your notifications and your meetings and your coffee chats. It helps remind you of what got you into that desk in the first place and the things that matter. For the vast majority of us, it was a passion for a subject and for making things that help people. With those are north stars, it is harder to go astray.
Go for a walk.