I Tried a Week of Daily Outdoor Time to Reset My Brain

Over the past week, I set myself a challenge: spend one hour outside every day.

I spend so much of my time on screens that I wanted to see what would happen if I carved out space to step away from all that.

I have been amazed by how much better I feel, so today, I want to share how you can replicate this feeling.

📱Why Set This Challenge

Technology is now a crucial part of our lives, whether that’s for work, keeping connected, or as a source of entertainment.

But recently, I have noticed how I feel more controlled by my devices. This can be as simple as feeling drawn to my phone or losing track of time in front of a screen.

Getting outside into nature has been shown as a critical factor in supporting good mental health and preventing distress.  For this reason, finding ways to get outside as much as we can provides the basis for supporting a strong mental outlook.

🚶‍♂️How The Challenge Looked

To keep the challenge interesting, I knew that I needed to vary what I was doing each day. My week mainly consisted of walking in the following areas:

Saturday: Countryside footpath

Sunday: Local woods

Monday: Coastal path

Tuesday: Coastal path to a historic chapel

Wednesday: Countryside footpath

Thursday: Local woods

Friday: The beach, ending with a swim in the sea

If you don’t have access to these types of areas, then consider what options are available to you. The key element is getting outside, although the more greenery the better for helping us feel like we are returning to nature.

🎒What I Needed

The beauty of this challenge was that the only things I needed were good trail walking/running trainers, appropriate clothing for walking in hot conditions (it’s been high 20 degrees Celsius this week), water, and a backpack for carrying my filming equipment.

If it wasn’t for filming this week, you need very little to replicate this.

The greatest resource I had available this week was time. I spaced out around two hours each day to do this challenge. That isn’t easy to do in a normal working week, so it should be more about finding where you can fit getting into nature.

📈The Benefits

The major benefit of swapping pick-ups for screen time is that I believe it is a better gauge of how deliberately we use our technology. At the end of my challenge, I have noticed the following benefits:

1. Feeling More Present: Appreciating my surroundings for an hour has led me to feel more in the moment.
2. Less Drawn to Dopamine Cravings: Without creating obstacles to my technology, as the week went on, I found myself looking less and less for my screens to distract me.
3. More Energy: I will admit that I got to the end of the day feeling tired, but before that point, I had been feeling energised. Before this challenge, I was suffering from a post-lunch slump, which went away during this week.

💭Closing Thoughts

Getting outside has been an amazing journey, providing me with some important benefits to how I feel.

Try to implement this for yourself in the week ahead, to see what changes you notice. This doesn’t have to be as extreme as an hour a day for a week, but find spaces in your schedule to get outside.

If you find the time to get outdoors this week, then I’d love to hear how you get on and what changes you notice.

For more insights like this, delivered to your inbox every week, be sure to subscribe.