Unfortunately management thinks that lines of code written or token usage or seats in butts or {insert random quantitative metric} equals peak productivity.
I have never been at my best rock climbing performance without a substantial amount of walking; even if I am training well, eating well, sleeping well, climbing with others, and super enthusiastic, the element of walking is for some reason critical.
My suspicion is that the human body is designed for walking (eg, we are upright, our shoulders adapted to swing the arm) and that myriad processes simply will not occur or will not occur optimally without walking. I believe restoration on a cellular level is enhanced by walking, that various cognitive and sub-cognitive processes are aided by walking, and that many of these processes sync up with a sort of supermodular (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermodular_function) effect when walking.
Their solutions can involve indirect routes, paths that initially increase the distance to their targets, etc.
Walking, or jumping, is inherent to their existence. But the ability to wait and iterate on possibilities is uncommon strategy for tiny things.
Now imagine what ingenious plans they could come up with if only they took a walk instead of sitting while thinking!
Land animals first evolved intelligence when we emerged from the cloudy, murky sea and developed the ability to see shapes (predators, prey) really far into the distance. This required the ability to understand the future and perform spatial reasoning. Not all aquatic species were exposed to such pressures (opportunities), since line of sight vision (especially traveling at speed) is limited.
We got really smart when we became endurance hunters and out-walked and out-ran our prey. Bipedal locomotion and sweating were clutch advantages for sure, but our brains became especially attuned to multi-tasking when walking and running. We could see our prey far into the distance and could plan hours in advance for how to exhaust and corner it. Especially as a group activity. This engaged spatial, temporal, collaborative, and complex reasoning.
We didn't evolve to think at a desk. We evolved to think because it greatly enhanced our hunting skills and survival fitness.
When you walk or run, you're directly engaging machinery that was fine tuned over hundreds of thousands of years.
1. It’s really easy to create a fictional narrative of what our ancestor’s activity was 50k years ago because of the lack of empirical evidence. The truth is we know only a little and guess at a lot.
2. It’s been associated with many false claims. So many fad diets, fad supplements, and fad exercise routines have made use of evolution to build a narrative of why it’s healthy. I’ve seen both carnivore and vegans use evolution to explain why their diet is correct.
3. The modern environment is just different than the pre-historical environment. We have clean drinking water, unlimited sodium, modern medicine, air conditioned and heated shelter. To me the real question is what is the healthiest decision for me, not what is the healthiest decision for someone 50k years ago.
Furthermore I’m saying that even if there was a very solid evolutionary argument for a specific human health behavior, it would answer the question “what helped humans 50k years ago reproduce”, instead of “how can I live a healthy life in the 21st century.”
I don't see your point? Not seeing the forest because of all the trees?
Octopussies have fun moving in weird ways, too. Also exploring, and making fun of captors!
Birds...did you know that their five feathers on the ends of their wings are the equivalent of our fingers, neurologically/network-wise? They sense the currents of the air with them.
Whatever. I think, no matter which species you are belonging to, it can be good to have these systems in more or less autonomous action, moving by themselves, while having a somewhat detached mind, soaring along, thinking about other stuff than the usual chores.
Edit: Maybe something like micro-dosing a little bit of 'Runner's high' by walking aimlessly?
When was the last time you saw a feather? (Or a bird).
Edit: Have you ever had a big white swan spread his wings, and touch his five feathers against the spread fingers of your hand? 'Gimme five' so to speak. I did.
As I did with Seagulls, Crows/Ravens, Starlings, Blue tits, Robins, city and forest Pigeons, and really long ago a common Swift, which I successfully raised.
Thinking about the possible reason you're asking:
I've stopped trying getting good pictures anyways, long ago.
I came to the conclusion that any camera, be it digital compact, action, smartphone irritates the animals. They may be curious initially, but as soon as the electronics try to 'rangefind/sharpen/focus' the picture they are gone. Or getting angry. Not even thinking of flash.
Edit: It destroys the moment. Be it by sounds, or even visible laserfingers fanning out. Or maybe distracting me from holding my internal projection of intent and movement upright. Which I'm thinking of having some impact on the goodwill of the involved animals, too.
"If you have the option to work on something you like on your computer or just even glance outside into the sun for a moment, always choose the latter."
Convincing people it's an important part of working though, that was the tough one. And now if you spend any time thinking people want you to use Ai for the thinking bit...
I step outside and enjoy nature for those few minutes, even if it is just to watch nature.
Downtime from the algorithmic manipulation has been the breeding ground for my creativity and this is one more step to this direction.
Result is no ability to install apps and no web browsing. It's really a smart, smartphone because you get the benefits of it being smart without becoming dumb through the distractions.
Few people have the willpower to stand against the addictive design, but I'm not one of them :D
There are various ways to store the password to allow some level of management. Give half of it to a friend, write it down, make it super long.
It's like deciding to quit smoking but using an empty cigarette pack to carry your credit cards. Sure, I'm not smoking, but every time I pay for something I have to squash the urge.
Assistive Access on iPhone might be an option for people looking for something drastic. Turning it on is simple, but it's pretty brutal and a bit crude in some ways even compared to a feature phone. Your mileage will vary! It's something I often suggest, and never quite recommend.
https://support.apple.com/en-sg/guide/assistive-access-iphon...
You pick the apps you want access to, and the permissions each should have, set a password, and then when you turn Assistive Access on, the phone reboots into a very limited mode. You can have every app you want, but when I've played with it, I've still found it felt too limited for daily use. Maybe I wouldn't find that if I was at the point of buying a feature phone. I can't remember what frustrated me, except that I remember being pleasantly surprised by how much worked, and frustrated by some basic things.
As an example, I was impressed that I could turn on and off a VPN through an app, even though I couldn't see the status of it outside the app. On the other hand, the location permissions felt buggy, and the locations permission changes in Assisted Access mode seemed to mess with the settings in the normal mode too.
Here is an article I found later which did the same thing as me.
(https://jordanherzstein.neocities.org/posts/adb_vanadium/)
For Android basically:
Live in user profile, keep owner profile with appstores. Push apps that are distractions free into user profile.
Use ADB to remove the built in browser because you can't just delete it or not install it because it's a system app. On GOS it's the only system app that is distracting, but I can imagine other phones might have others. Same principle, just remove it with ADB from the user profile.
Never install an app store in the user profile.
Owner profile password mitigation. You have a few options. Make it way too long to easily type and memorize it, write it down on paper and put it away in basement/attic/friends house, give it to a friend, give part of it to a friend(so they can't unlock the owner profile, only you can, but only if you ask them so huge friction).
Personally, I just have a super long passphrase memorized and that's enough too make the friction large enough. And it's really peaceful on the user profile.
Result. Without the owner password, I am in the user profile and I can't browse the web(HN) or install a distracting app like TikTok or install a new browser. If I want to update an app or manage the device or when the device restarts
Back when I was on iOS I used Apple Configurator which is Apple's MDM solution. You need a Mac it borrow one.
You remove Safari and disable installing apps. This is the guide I followed. Pretty sure your have to factory reset your phone first.
So, to install new apps you have to connect the iPhone to the Mac and optionally add a password.
MDM is supported by Apple, uninstalling the browser is not recommended by GOS developers, but I haven't had any issues. Soon, GOS will support MDM, so hopefully that will be an even better solution.
If it’s the former, start watching your surroundings. There’s a ton of things that are fun to watch.
It fixed my back pains. It made me lose weight. It gave me time to reflect on my long-avoided problems. Productivity is like the least important benefit.
I absolutely do think exercise can help with work, in general, just not immediately after for me. A walk after work is much better, to prepare for the next day.