Work-Walk Balance! Are Under-Desk Treadmills A Path To Greater Productivity?

HAMBURG — This past August, I walked 133 kilometers (83 miles) in ten days. My mind remained pleasantly empty, nothing hurt besides a few blisters — and I was calm, relaxed, cheerful and didn’t argue a single time with my companion. I was my best self.

Then I returned from my hiking trip in Ireland to the office here in Germany.

When I walk, my mind is creative, but when I sit, my ideas stagnate. Not only that: I get tired, my back hurts and I feel listless. That’s why I’m now walking in the office — without moving from where I am, my forearms rested on a height-adjustable desk, with a treadmill underneath.

My eyes can wander from my laptop to the floor-to-ceiling window, and gaze upon trees that have shed their leaves, a sky that shifts from dark gray to light gray to dark gray again. I hear the gentle hum of the treadmill and think about how German singer Herbert Grönemeyer supposedly turns on a hairdryer for inspiration. The sound is supposed to resemble what babies hear in the womb. I find it soothing. I try not to think about how absurd I look walking in place.

For the past 30 working days, I’ve been testing a walking pad: a treadmill that doesn’t exceed a moderate walking speed. I want to see how it changes my life, and my work. Whether it makes me more creative, healthier, in a better mood.

Step 1: the idea

First, they said sitting was the new smoking. Then standing was the new smoking.

Surely, it was enough to have a standing desk and alternate between sitting and standing? Well, no: a major study conducted on more than 83,000 participants showed that standing for more than two hours doesn’t offset the risks of prolonged sitting. Prolonged standing has its own disadvantages: it increases the likelihood of varicose veins, low blood pressure and blood clots. In other words: Just standing is not enough.

On office days, I average about 7,000 steps a day, between my commute and the walk to the restaurant for lunch, sometimes evening appointments. When I’m working from home, the total number decreases dramatically.

How much movement will it take for my body to feel good, fulfilled and pain-free?

It used to be that 10,000 steps per day was considered a target for staying healthy and fit. In fact, this idea doesn’t come from medical studies, but from an advertising campaign for the first portable pedometer, Manpo-kei. It came on the market for the 1964 Olympic Games. A study from 2023 shows that just under 4,000 steps a day is enough to reduce the risk of early death. And only 2,300 daily steps can already lower the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease.

I don’t have a specific number of steps in mind — although I’ll keep an eye on it, of course. Instead, I’m aiming more toward a feeling: How much movement will it take for my body to feel good, fulfilled and pain-free? And how can I integrate that most practically into everyday life? I’m hoping for less back pain, more creativity, better mood and more efficiency for my “work-walk” balance. I want to be able to have my silly little walk in the office instead of in the dark November drizzle at 0 °C after work.

Step 2: the implementation

There’s this scene in the series The Bold Type – a kind of updated Sex and the City, about three young women working at a fashion magazine. Their boss, Jacqueline, walks on a walking pad in the office while wearing absurdly high stilettos. My thought when I first saw the series a few years ago: That’s preposterous, who does that? The answer is: I do, but in stocking feet, as I’m afraid I might otherwise crash straight into the glass window and scare the squirrels on the trees outside. I feel silly enough as it is.

The good news: You can type while walking. As a matter of fact, I’m doing it right now.

The bad news: If I turn my head even a fraction to the side, my balance is gone. So I can’t even look at my colleague in the face when he swings by and says, “So, what’s up?”

Walking pads are available from various manufacturers, starting at about 200 euros, with solid, quite attractive devices available from 400 euros. Under-desk treadmills don’t take that much space and weigh about 20 kilos, so if you use one in your home office, you can easily store it under the bed, sofa, or in a closet after use. My device is 13 centimeters high, the motor is so quiet that you can’t hear it through office walls. The walking speed can be adjusted from 0.5 km/h to 6.0 km/h — meaning that everything from very slow to brisk walking is possible. No jogging at these speeds, though.

Step 3: ​the process

In the early treadmill days, I’m walking more than 20,000 steps per day. I’m relatively athletic: I go for a swim or do yoga about four times a week. I want to see how many steps are possible, i.e. at what point I feel worn out or exhausted.

Fairly quickly, I no longer feel cold in the office, even my hands stay warm. In the evenings, I don’t feel just mentally exhausted, but also physically. In the mornings, I’m hungrier than usual. After a week of walking and staring out the window, I feel closer to Sisyphus than ever before: I’m constantly moving, but never reaching my goal.

Ha! At least I’m creative enough to make references to Greek mythology…

The connection between walking and thinking indeed goes back to the ancient Greeks. The Peripatetic School, founded by Aristotle, practiced philosophizing while walking. One of my favorite writers, bestselling British author Coco Mellors (Cleopatra and Frankenstein, Blue Sisters), does so-called “imagination walks”. She walks around outside, listens to music, and develops characters and stories in the process.

Journalism is much more craft than creativity, but I feel that I can think more freely while walking and am more likely to come up with ideas — even if that takes place in the office and not on forest paths.

Studies from recent decades show that movement actually helps with divergent thinking. A study by neuroscientist Barbara Händel and her doctoral student Supriya Murali from the Julius-Maximilians-University of Würzburg suggests that it’s not the movement itself that helps one think more flexibly, but the freedom to perform self-determined movements. Meaning that those who sit but move freely, and don’t just stare fixedly into a screen, can already think more creatively.

I call Barbara Händel to ask her what exactly happens in the brain when walking. She’s a neuroscientist, 48 years old, and works in neurology at the University Hospital Würzburg. When walking, she explains, several areas in the brain are activated. Not just those responsible for moving our feet. Motor areas are responsible for that. There are also areas and structures in the brain that regulate the coordination of individual movements and adapt movements to the environment. And then there are brain regions associated with higher cognitive functions such as attention, memory, decision-making, planning ahead, and creativity. These brain areas are also activated when walking.

It doesn’t necessarily take chirping birds or a fresh breeze to enhance useful brain activity.

“Creativity is positively influenced, it can also improve learning and memory processes,” says Händel.

Teachers have long used movement like standing up, clapping, or singing to support learning. However, neuroscientific studies on underlying brain processes are few and far between. In creativity, a distinction is made between divergent and convergent thinking. You can imagine it like this: In convergent thinking, you have many objects of knowledge that you need to bring together to a solution. In divergent thinking, you have a starting point and try to find as many solutions as possible.

Divergent thinking is required, for example, when you’re handed a newspaper and asked to come up with as many different creative things to do with it that don’t involve reading: using it as a ball, folding it into a hat, using it to start a fire.

Händel and her team found that divergent thinking is improved by movement, which is also reflected in changed brain activation. “We had subjects walk around freely or following a predetermined path in a room, and the improvement in creativity was strongest with free walking. The lowest creative performance was shown by subjects when they sat and looked at a screen, much worse than when they were allowed to look around the room while sitting,” says Händel.

This means: It doesn’t necessarily take chirping birds or a fresh breeze to enhance useful brain activity, even small movements indoors can help.

So am I doing everything right? “Unfortunately, no. If you’re walking on a walking pad but looking at a screen while doing so, it probably doesn’t do anything for creativity,” Händel suspects. “The most important thing is to get the focus away from the screen. If you want to be more creative in the office, it already helps to look away, to go to the coffee machine or to the bathroom.” Even such small breaks can help. Especially in the home office, we often forget to take them.

And then there’s looking at the next screen (your phone) during breaks, which immediately negates the creativity again.

Maybe it would be smarter to pack away the walking pad and switch from laptop to typewriter, I think.

How healthy is a walking pad?

But how healthy is walking on a walking pad? I ask Bernd Kladny. The professor is deputy general secretary of the German Society for Orthopedics and Trauma Surgery e.V. and chief physician of the Department of Orthopedics and Trauma Surgery at the m&i-Fachklinik Herzogenaurach. Kladny recommends organizing everyday life in such a way that movement is integrated. You don’t need a walking pad for that, but it can help to move more.

Movement on a treadmill is better than none.

“There is no healthy sitting, there is no healthy standing, the only healthy thing is changing positions. You should do two to three of these in an hour,” he says. You can do this by standing up when on the phone, or by getting documents yourself instead of having them brought to you.

Even placing the wastebasket away from the desk ensures movement. “Of course, there are other benefits in venturing outdoors, like fresh air, but movement on a treadmill is better than none,” says Kladny.

It’s also important to pay attention to listen to your body, the professor adds. If you suffer from previous injuries, for example if you have bad knees or back problems, you should be careful. “If you experience pain while walking, you need to take it seriously and investigate,” he says. Those who are used to moving very little on a daily basis should start slowly, with 10 or 15 minutes a day, so as not to overdo it. More athletic profiles can walk for several hours.

Real results

After a month, I have more than doubled my average step count, it’s now averaging more than 20,000.

With my stride length, that’s about 350 kilometers. If I hadn’t walked to the office but had tried to walk from Berlin toward my Bavarian hometown, I’d now be just about in Bayreuth.

When I no longer go for a walk in the evening after work but read instead, I no longer have a guilty conscience about not having moved enough. My body feels better, even though I haven’t measurably lost weight or become fitter. The biggest change is probably that I’ve never had so many colleagues come by to talk and peek — skeptically or amusedly — into my so-called treadmill office.

Of course, if you step back and look at the situation from a distance, the whole thing’s quite absurd. There I am, staring at a screen and walking in place. Walking vigorously indoors instead of outdoors, contenting myself with a view over a few trees.

A walking pad is a surrogate – not as demanding as a fast treadmill, not as credible in the way it simulates dynamic movement. But when you’re done with your day, you’ve moved enough to lie down on the couch right away. If you’re tired of juggling many things at once, this slow treadmill may just be your next multitasking challenge. That’s at least a step in the right direction.