Walking meetings have been used to brainstorm ideas by some of the greatest minds in human history. Revolutionary thinkers, from Aristotle to Steve Jobs, believed walking meetings were a successful way to bounce ideas off their co-workers and companions. Now you can follow in the footsteps of giants with Racefully’s latest Walk&Talk update!
What is the new Walk&Talk update?
Say goodbye to meetings in stuffy, cramped spaces, and say hello to your new office: the great outdoors! With Walk&Talk you can now hold conference calls with other Racefully users while you’re on-the-go. Racefully’s built-in step-counter keeps everyone up-to-date with each other’s step counts on the call, so you can keep fit as you drum up creative ideas with your colleagues – wherever they are in the world.
Calls are made using credits, which can easily be topped up before, during, or after a call. 1 credit is equal to one participant minute, so a 30-minute call with three people will use 90 credits.
Racefully wouldn’t be Racefully, though, without throwing in a little freebie to help you get as fit as you possibly can. To celebrate the launch of Walk&Talk, we are giving each Racefully user 60 Walk&Talk credits for free!
We wanted to do this because we are avid believers in the transformative effect of walking on not just your health, but your business as well. In fact, the benefits of walking are so mind-blowing that we’ve dedicated this entire post to them. We would tell you to “enjoy your read”, but we know you will – the research behind it is absolutely fascinating!
Walking meetings work wonders for employee wellbeing
Walking is an easy way to burn calories and brings with it a whole host of delightful health benefits. Walking not only reduces the risk of deadly diseases such as heart disease and diabetes, but it also boosts your mood – especially when walking in a green space like a park. With all these amazing health benefits, who needs the philosopher’s stone when you’ve got your own two feet?
The benefits of walking have been widely documented. A study consisting of more than 10,000 participants showed that “people reported being happier when they were physically active”. The study also revealed that you don’t need to work yourself to exhaustion to benefit from the mood-boosting effect of exercise. Hooray! The days of slogging away on treadmills are over! According to Dr. Jason Rentfrow, “all you’ve really got to do is periodically engage in slight physical activity throughout the day”. Small acts – even as small as “walking from the desk to the photocopier, or from the car to the office door” – are enough to put a significant spring in your step.
Now, I know it’s easy to say ‘just go for a walk and you’ll develop an almost superhuman resistance to disease and an impeccable mood to boot’, but what if your busy schedule means you have no time to exercise? Or what if you’re too tired after a long work day?
That’s where “reframing” can come to the rescue. Many of us avoid exercise because we just “don’t have the time”, or because working out during the working week takes vital hours away from the work our job demands of us. But the Harvard Business Review suggests that by “reframing” exercise and incorporating it as part of your job, “you’re not abandoning work. On the contrary: you’re ensuring the hours you put in have value”
But what’s the most effective way to “reframe” your exercise routine? What’s the best way to get the most value out of keeping fit? How can you manipulate reframing to such an extent that it gives your business an unfair advantage? That’s where Walk&Talk comes in.
Using walking meetings to give your business an advantage
Walk&Talk allows you to effectively “reframe” your exercise routine so you can seamlessly combine keeping fit with your work schedule. By incorporating walking into your otherwise mundane meetings, you can enjoy all the spectacular benefits walking has to offer – better health, increased happiness, clearer memory – whilst also getting the most value from your work. This is because walking improves productivity, sharpens your concentration, and heightens your ability to learn – all of which give you and your business the upper hand when making crucial decisions about the business’ future.
Businesses that look after their employees’ happiness can also expect their stock prices to rise. The stock prices of Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work for” rose 14% per year from 1998 to 2005, while companies not on the list only reported a 6% increase.
And as if walking couldn’t reap any more wonderful benefits, we’ll leave you with this. Steve Jobs, the creator of one of the world’s most innovative products – the iPhone – favoured long walks as his preferred method of having a “serious conversation”. One reason for this may be because walking appears to drastically boost creativity. In an experiment by Marily Oppezzo and Daniel Schwartz of Stanford University, people were asked to come up with new uses for everyday objects whilst walking on a treadmill. Three quarters of them “came up with more ideas while walking” than they did sitting down – at an average increase of 60 percent!
Whether Jobs’ long walks were what really got his creative juices flowing is a matter of debate. But one thing is for sure: whether he knew it or not, the ideas formed in his walking meetings – in one way or another – helped revolutionise and shape our society as we know it today.