My Outdoor Office

I’ve been running walking meetings for years. If I don’t need a screen, I’d rather be moving. But at some point every day I’d need to actually look at something, a document, a shared screen, and I’d be back inside, in a chair, feeling what I can only call contained.

A few months ago I started asking a different question. Not where I should work, but what kind of environment actually makes me feel good while I work.

The answer was obvious once I sat with it.

The Bench

I live in a 2,000-acre nature focused community outside Atlanta. There are twenty miles of hiking trails here that almost nobody uses. Benches tucked into hilltops. A blue pyramid sculpture near the top of one of them.

That bench became my office.

The setup is simpler than it sounds. I use my phone as a 5G hotspot. Never dropped a call up there. I carry a portable battery for longer days. That is really all it takes. I have run full client sessions, team calls, and real writing sessions from that bench. When I rediscovered this spot, the bench was broken. I put in a ticket with the HOA and had it fixed. I am so grateful for this spot.

The Shift

I cannot tell you I am more productive out there. I do not track it that way. What I know is that at the end of a day on that hill, time had some weight to it. Like I was actually somewhere, not just moving through hours in a room.

Between calls I meditate. Sometimes I just breathe and watch the view open out below me. The expansiveness matters. It is harder to feel stuck when you are looking at something that goes on a long way. Inside, even in a good office, the day just passes.

I also have a spot by the river. More enclosed, trees at eye level, a different kind of quiet. But I keep coming back to the hill. The walk up earns it.

What the Research Says

I figured there would be something on this, and there is.

Researchers Rachel and Stephen Kaplan developed what they called Attention Restoration Theory after decades of studying how natural environments affect the mind. Their core finding: nature lets you pay attention more broadly and with less effort. Your nervous system stops having to work so hard. That explains something I already felt but could not name. Why an hour outside leaves me sharper than an hour at a desk (actually I don’t have a desk).

A study of nearly 20,000 adults found that two hours in green space per week was the threshold for measurable improvements in health and well-being. Two hours. Spread across the week however you want.

I am getting that and then some. And honestly, I was doing it anyway before I ever looked it up.

Where It Comes From

I spent summers working at sleep-away camps from my teens into my mid-twenties. Backpacking trips, canoe expeditions, weeks at a time without phones or internet. Being outside has never been a lifestyle upgrade for me. It is where I come from.

The outdoor office is just going back to that. The pull toward nature, but close to home, the reset that does not require a plane ticket, has always been part of how I am wired.

On Remote Work

When the commute disappears, so does the transition. That moment when your body shifts from one mode to another. A lot of people working from home lose that buffer and cannot quite name what is gone.

The outdoor office is a reset. A way to remind yourself that work does not have to happen inside a box.

I wonder how many of us are one bench away from feeling a little better about our days. The trail is usually less crowded than you think.