Walk and Talk for Meetings

Quick Win

Walking is good for your body and mind. Shake up your routine and take a sit-down meeting on the road. It may even help you generate ideas!

Try This Today

• Break the mold. For your next one-on-one or small-group meeting, at work or your volunteer group, propose taking a walk while you talk, instead of sitting.
• Be prepared. Bring your phone so you can easily record audio notes if you need to.
• Don’t race. Maintain a leisurely or moderate pace that won’t detract from your conversation.

Why

Walking has been shown to boost creativity, and we know that moving more — and sitting less — is good for brain health, heart health and overall health. Being sedentary was linked to an increased risk of dementia among nearly 50,000 adults (average age 67), in a 2023 report in JAMA. People with sedentary jobs had a 16 percent higher risk of early death compared with those who spent most of their workday not sitting, according to a study of more than 481,000 adults, average age 39, published in 2024 in JAMA Network Open. Simply alternating between sitting and not sitting or doing an extra 15 to 30 minutes a day of physical activity (hello, walking meeting!) could counteract this risk, according to the researchers.