Boost Productivity and Creativity and Earn More Motivate adults to take more activity breaks for reasons other than fat loss, looking good, sleeping better.  You may be able to leverage your business clients – and swing some corporate coaching gigs because activity supports creativity and productivity.  No one is encouraged to take vacations, personal days, rest, or get a massage. At least not without a little teasing or guilt.  Accomplishments and work is rewarded far more today than vacation, rest, rejuvenation. But there’s a wealth of information available proving that the breaks you take from the grind are where your breakthroughs will happen. Albert Einstein’s breakthrough insights on relativity came not while at his desk but while riding his bicycle outside. A creativity moment is not uncommon among exercisers. It’s no surprise that many writers tend to also be runners – or is it runners tend to be writers ? Following exercise brain waves enter an alpha state associated with a reflective, clearheaded state of mind that is ripe for new ideas. Could that be sabotaged by constant listening to podcasts or conducting phone calls while you’re working out? My guess is that the typical millennial (and my apologies to Millenials who don’t) who is scrolling through emails, Instagram, and Twitter between sets is not getting any creative breakthroughs. Exercise is a Game Changer Exercise could be a game changer – not just for longevity, and disease prevention, or fat reduction, getting into those back-of-the-closet clothes, but for reaching career goals. For men and women in midlife stressed, pushed, crunched for time, the break could mean avoiding breakdown and having breakthrough energy. It’s longstanding knowledge that exercise decreases stress. This is so very related. Exercise is often the very thing we humans may not do while we’re in the middle of a final or important project because of the need to finish it.  There we are never realizing, or acknowledging that the longer we stare at a computer screen, sit in the stacks of library studying, pull together lesson plans for the semester, we could be avoiding the very thing that will help increase the quality and decrease the time it takes to finish the task. Similar to the rest between fitness sessions being where the body actually gains the fitness… it’s not the actual doing of the research, the pulling together of the presentation or the notes for the report, but in the breaks for physical activity (and of course proper sleep and food) that the ideas happen. The right passage for this chapter or activity to bring learning to life, or the slogan for an ad campaign come to life not because of pushing hard but because of allowing that work foundation to then flourish when you’re away from it.  Most important to remember is fitness won’t happen in the presence of overtraining. So too could productivity and creativity suffer in the presence of overwork. Major projects aren’t born out of pushing through as much as planning, working, rejuvenating, and reworking with better ideas.  Intuitively we know this. You write an email or an article. You don’t send it. You come back later proof read, edit and then send. The time away is what lets you get it right. Google is known for establishing campuses for employees that supposedly encourage them to stay longer. Yet, Google creates playful environments, and bike shops within it’s buildings where employees can tinker on bikes, they feel encouraged and supported to be active not in small ways but big ones. Dedicated space and tools are provided for bikers in the active bike community of Boulder. Showers are on site so employees can ride to work or take midday rides to free creativity. Why does Google do it? They know it will boost creativity and productivity.  A 2014 study by scientists at Stanford University showed that walking significantly improves certain types of cognitive efforts involved in creativity, specifically convergent thinking,