How a natural setting can improve meetings performance

The old idea of stuffy meetings in boarded up rooms is becoming a thing of the past. While bosses used to think that distractions – even windows – kept employees and attendees from focusing, a host of new studies prove that the opposite is true. How nature can heal Greater Good magazine reported: "In one recent experiment conducted in Japan, participants were assigned to walk either in a forest or in an urban center. Results showed that those who walked in forests had significantly lower heart rates and higher heart rate variability (indicating more relaxation and less stress), and reported better moods and less anxiety, than those in urban settings." A tech break We live in a society, especially business environments, that can only be described as "sensory overload." We have 24-hour connectivity and mind-bending amounts of information at our fingertips. But many scientists believe our brains were not made for this kind of information bombardment, with the result that we often feel overwhelmed and burned out. The antidote? "Attention restoration" is needed to get back to a normal, healthy state, as reported by Greater Good . Researcher David Strayer, of the University of Utah, believes that being in nature restores our depleted attention circuits, which can then reenergize the creative parts of our brains. Creativity flourishes "If you’ve been using your brain to multitask – as most of us do most of the day – and then you set that aside and go on a walk, without all of the gadgets, you’ve let the prefrontal cortex recover," says researcher David Strayer, of the University of Utah. "And that’s when we see these bursts in creativity, problem-solving, and feelings of well-being." Yet another study, as reported by the Huffington Post, says that the more you get away from the […]

Click here to view full article