The Rundown

Go Green. The next time you’re finding it hard to focus, take a walk outside. A new paper suggests that exercising outside improves working memory and concentration more than doing the same activity inside.

The small study looked at the neurological effects of “green exercise,” or exercise performed in nature by testing 30 college students’ working memory and ability to focus. On alternate days, the students walked inside a building for about 15 minutes or outside on tree-lined paths, then repeated the cognitive tests.

On the outside walk days, the students concentrated better and responded faster. The results reflect one widely held theory that nature encourages us to relax our minds. Scientists call this “soft fascination” — the natural world holds our attention without demanding continual intellectual processing, which allows our minds to reset and later, concentrate and reason easier.

The study’s lead author notes that this process happens in addition to the expected physiological effects that walking has on thinking, including the magnified flow of blood and oxygen to the brain.

Future Fit. Technology meets personal training with Future, a fitness app that lets you choose a coach who will then develop a workout plan tailored specifically to your needs and goals. One reviewer commented that of all the fitness apps he had tested, Future was “the closest to having a live, in-person trainer.”

When you launch the app to start a session, your coach greets you with a personalized recording to review your goals and progress. The coach then leads you through that day’s workout while a prerecorded video of the exercises plays. You can pause the video by tapping your iPhone or Apple Watch so you can go at your own pace.

If you use an Apple Watch, your coach can also see your workout stats and the phone will vibrate to indicate when you should rest and start your next set. If you want your coach to evaluate your form, you can take a short video and send it through the app’s message thread.

Communication with coaches is simple so if the exercises are feeling too tough or life simply gets in the way of a workout, you can let them know and they will adjust your plan accordingly.

Extra Point

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Running for My Truth: Alex Schwazer. In 2012, Olympic gold medalist Alex Schwazer made headlines for testing positive for the blood-boosting hormone EPO prior to representing Italy at the London Olympics. He was banned for three years from race-walking. When he returned to the sport in 2016, he was accused of doping and banned again. While Schwazer admitted to doping in 2012, he says of the second accusation, “Either someone gave me this substance in the days prior or the test was manipulated.”

Running for My Truth, now streaming on Netflix, tracks Schwazer’s career from a “golden boy of Italian sport to national disappointment,” chronicling his return to racing and the long legal drama that unfolded after his second ban.

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70 Over 70. Max Linsky introduces his podcast this way, “You know those ‘30 over 30’ lists that make you feel kind of inadequate and terrible? This is going to be the opposite of that.” Linsky talks to a variety of notable over-70 guests to ask the big questions we all ask, no matter our age, and to explore what it means to live well later in life.

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A Journey From Work to Home is About More Than Just Getting There—The Psychological Benefits of Commuting That Remote Work Doesn’t Provide. If you hate your commute, you might want to reconsider. In this interesting look at the mental health benefits of commuting to work, Matthew Piszczek and Kristie McAlpine argue that commutes are a source of liminal space, “a time free of both home and work roles that provides an opportunity to recover from work and mentally switch gears to home.”