Moving for just 10 minutes at a time can boost productivity, focus, and more.
It’s been decades since most people adhered to a nine-to-five workday. And as the separation between work and, well, pretty much any other aspect of life continues to blur, it gets harder and harder to opt out of nonstop meetings and peel yourself away from your desk chair to exercise.
But here’s the thing: You don’t need to block off an hour or 45 minutes in order for a workout to “count.” Even workouts of fewer than 10 minutes contribute toward recommended weekly activity goals, according to the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, which were updated with this guidance (for the first time!) in 2018.
Small bites of “exercise snacks” — like the 10-minute Basic Core Training or five-minute Strength Endurance Finisher classes on the EQX+ app — can actually make you better at your job. It’s pretty simple: “The human body is not meant to sit all day. We need to move to increase blood flow throughout the body, including the brain,” says Saara Haapanen, Ph.D., creator of the Move At Work Challenge. That increased blood flow causes your brain to be more active and engaged, she adds, which is going to enhance your overall productivity, mental clarity, and creativity.
There’s a whole slew of science to back that up. Long-standing research shows that exercise boosts the amount of dopamine, epinephrine, and norepinephrine in the brain, all of which are involved in attention, learning, and memory. When people worked out before the end of the workday, they were able to better focus at work, 2022 research published in the Journal of Applied Psychology determined. And active people came up with more inventive ideas — and just more ideas — than people who were relatively sedentary in a 2020 study published in the journal Scientific Reports. Productivity also increased with improved muscle strength and decreased body mass index in a study published in the Journal of Sport and Health Science.
Change the word exercise to movement, and aim to get more movement throughout the day.
On a more macro level, daily physical activity also improved quality sleep and energy levels to influence work-related outcomes and increased task focus, a cognitive resource that supports enhanced information processing, attention, and concentration, in a 2023 study published in Personnel Psychology.
Plus, exercise will help you manage stress. “A lot of us at work are stuck in a stress state that causes our cortisol to spike,” says Haapanen. The spike isn’t a bad thing, as long as it comes back down — like if you were being chased by a bear, and then the bear gets killed, so your brain knows you’re safe. But when the threat — a nasty email from your coworker, the fear of presenting in front of your boss — doesn’t go away, you get stuck in a chronic stress state. “Exercise brings your cortisol back down so you can function optimally as a human being,” she adds — and as an employee.
Before you think, ‘My job would never let me work out mid-day,’ know that making room for exercise during your workday actually benefits your company, too. Productivity losses (whether from impaired job performance or sick days) add up to $2,945 per employee per year, according to data from the Integrated Benefits Institute. And checked-out employees can cost a company as much as 18 percent of their annual salary, Gallup research has found.
But workers who moved more got more work done and took fewer sick days in a 2017 study published in BMC Public Health. And on days when employees exercised, they reported managing their time more effectively, being more productive, having smoother interactions with their colleagues, and going home feeling more satisfied, older research from the International Journal of Workplace Health Management found. Plus, people were better able to focus on their work when they exercised before the end of their business day, a 2022 study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology determined. And a lunch break workout boosted performance by an average of 15 percent in an older study published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.
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From a work perspective, working out is a win-win. So how do you prioritize it? For starters, stop thinking exercise has to look a certain way or fit into a certain time block on your iCal. “Change the word exercise to movement, and aim to get more movement throughout the day,” says Haapanen.
Maybe that means you schedule meetings for 50 minutes instead of an hour, and you use five minutes in between for a quick bodyweight workout. Try 20 squats, then hold the squat for a minute, and repeat that twice, Haapanen suggests; it’ll take less than five minutes, but you better believe it will feel challenging (without turning you into a sweaty mess). Maybe it means you institute walking meetings, or regularly “forget” things in your car so you have to trek downstairs.
It may not sound like a lot, but those little exercise snacks add up over the course of the day. For example, a 2019 study published in Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism found that when sedentary young adults vigorously climbed 60 steps of stairs three times a day — leaving one to four hours between climbs for recovery — three times a week for six weeks, they still showed improvements in their cardiorespiratory fitness.
“The optimal amount of movement is two minutes for every 30 minutes you’re seated,” says Haapanen. Aiming to move at least once every half hour can help offset the effects of sitting, an older study from the Annals of Internal Medicine confirmed. And once you start incorporating those few minutes, it becomes easier and easier. “It’s like Newton’s Law: A body in motion tends to stay in motion, a body at rest tends to stay at rest,” says Haapanen.
If you do want to prioritize time for a longer workout, block it off on your calendar — that’s the most important part of actually getting away to do it. As for what type of exercise to do, well, that’s up to you. “The workout that’s going to be the best for you at work is the one you’re going to do,” says Haapanen. “Usually, at work, that’s going to be something that’s going to be a little bit fun and put you in a new environment. It doesn’t need to be hardcore, you just need to get your blood flowing.”
Just remember: “Literally one minute of movement is better than zero,” says Haapanen. “We have to get rid of this idea that it has to be all or nothing. Everything counts.”