Work Inspirations to Exercise
May. 30th, 2007 10:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebToday in a professional development meeting, one of the bigwigs asked the participants if there were anything our office could do to inspire those of us who don't exercise to start exercising. One person recommended giving us time off to exercise. Nice try.
I thought of two ideas, one of which I even got to say. At the dorm my first year in grad school, we had a big chart. Every time you ran a mile, bicycled 5 miles or swam 1/3 of a mile, you could enter the number of miles you jogged (or the jogging equivalent) next to your name for that day. Each day the sum would be calculated and the total would be plotted on a map. When we got to a particular destination, we would have a party.
Certain people who enter a number virtually every day get made fun of on the few days they leave blank, even though they are the best people participating.
Our original destination was somewhere in Florida, and we did make it, but not until finals, so we didn't have a party. Fortunately we had partied earlier when we hit New Orleans.
The idea I didn't mention is that we could have lunchtime walks to places like the various campus museums. We could bring sandwiches and other things that could be eaten on the way there.
Oh, I did also mention that we could have "grade runs" (walking to several departments to hand deliver a list of outstanding grade sheets during finals week) every single day. I also mentioned that parking (and bus stops) could be made even further away (although that's not in the control of our office).
In the past, the employers that have encouraged me to exercise have done it mainly by requiring it on the job. So, I liked playing soccer 6-on-1 in the sand box when I worked at a day care center. And I did all kinds of hiking and carrying things around when I worked at a summer camp.
The summer camp also had a chart from the Red Cross where you could fill in a box each time you swam a quarter mile, and you were allowed to swim it using any stroke you wanted. Whoever swam the most, second most, and third most was going to win a prize. I actually swam the third most! (Ten miles in ten weeks.) I didn't get any prizes after all, but as you can see, the thrill of victory was memorable enough in itself.
I also used to have a gym membership at my current employer, mostly because it allowed staff members to join the ballroom dance club and get lessons. However, once the price for that doubled, it was cheaper to take classes from the place where I go now. Also, eventually all my friends graduated from college and I quit meeting new college students (because I was no longer in the ballroom dance club, I suppose), so I joined a different gym, too.
I also just read a surprising article somewhere about people working on a computer attached to a treadmill. The surprising part was that they could saunter while working and it didn't seem to make working any more difficult or make it harder to concentrate.
This topic came up because of wellness plans, and wellness plans are getting popular because companies with good wellness plans tend to make fewer health insurance claims, and so they can get better group health insurance rates, and of course rates are rising into the stratosphere, so people are looking for ways to reduce the rates.
Strangely, I remember our wellness plans being better in the past. I've seen some wellness fairs and the poker walk recently, but there used to be training sessions on all kinds of topics pretty regularly.
Journal entry of the day - Empirical Question's The Pain of Paying. Find out if you are a tightwad, a spendthrift, or something in between. The definitions aren't what I expected--I think according to these, I am more of a spendthrift than a tightwad. "The survey is based on the theory that the immediate emotion (experienced at the moment of choosing to buy or not buy) of the anticipatory pain of spending money varies between individuals and impacts spending choices above and beyond the influence of old-school, rationalistic considerations of the forgone future consumption that a present purchase represents."
I thought of two ideas, one of which I even got to say. At the dorm my first year in grad school, we had a big chart. Every time you ran a mile, bicycled 5 miles or swam 1/3 of a mile, you could enter the number of miles you jogged (or the jogging equivalent) next to your name for that day. Each day the sum would be calculated and the total would be plotted on a map. When we got to a particular destination, we would have a party.
Certain people who enter a number virtually every day get made fun of on the few days they leave blank, even though they are the best people participating.
Our original destination was somewhere in Florida, and we did make it, but not until finals, so we didn't have a party. Fortunately we had partied earlier when we hit New Orleans.
The idea I didn't mention is that we could have lunchtime walks to places like the various campus museums. We could bring sandwiches and other things that could be eaten on the way there.
Oh, I did also mention that we could have "grade runs" (walking to several departments to hand deliver a list of outstanding grade sheets during finals week) every single day. I also mentioned that parking (and bus stops) could be made even further away (although that's not in the control of our office).
In the past, the employers that have encouraged me to exercise have done it mainly by requiring it on the job. So, I liked playing soccer 6-on-1 in the sand box when I worked at a day care center. And I did all kinds of hiking and carrying things around when I worked at a summer camp.
The summer camp also had a chart from the Red Cross where you could fill in a box each time you swam a quarter mile, and you were allowed to swim it using any stroke you wanted. Whoever swam the most, second most, and third most was going to win a prize. I actually swam the third most! (Ten miles in ten weeks.) I didn't get any prizes after all, but as you can see, the thrill of victory was memorable enough in itself.
I also used to have a gym membership at my current employer, mostly because it allowed staff members to join the ballroom dance club and get lessons. However, once the price for that doubled, it was cheaper to take classes from the place where I go now. Also, eventually all my friends graduated from college and I quit meeting new college students (because I was no longer in the ballroom dance club, I suppose), so I joined a different gym, too.
I also just read a surprising article somewhere about people working on a computer attached to a treadmill. The surprising part was that they could saunter while working and it didn't seem to make working any more difficult or make it harder to concentrate.
This topic came up because of wellness plans, and wellness plans are getting popular because companies with good wellness plans tend to make fewer health insurance claims, and so they can get better group health insurance rates, and of course rates are rising into the stratosphere, so people are looking for ways to reduce the rates.
Strangely, I remember our wellness plans being better in the past. I've seen some wellness fairs and the poker walk recently, but there used to be training sessions on all kinds of topics pretty regularly.
Journal entry of the day - Empirical Question's The Pain of Paying. Find out if you are a tightwad, a spendthrift, or something in between. The definitions aren't what I expected--I think according to these, I am more of a spendthrift than a tightwad. "The survey is based on the theory that the immediate emotion (experienced at the moment of choosing to buy or not buy) of the anticipatory pain of spending money varies between individuals and impacts spending choices above and beyond the influence of old-school, rationalistic considerations of the forgone future consumption that a present purchase represents."