I’ve set up a regimen that breaks up the day, and periodically stimulates my brain, and doesn’t require quite that much of a monetary investment:

Pick a sequence of exercises that can be done in about 5 minutes, and that doesn’t get you too sweaty. I use a kettlebell to do about 10-20 reps (but a dumbbell works fine), a jumprope to skip rope about 100 skips, then head out the door to walk around the block. But any combo of large body movements, with a walking cooldown will work.

Do this as soon as you get to work, then before lunch, after lunch, mid-PM, and before heading home for dinner. M/W/F, or T/R/Sat.

Investing in exercise equippage. Get a pedometer and work up to 10,000 steps daily. A walk around the block will yield about 1000 steps, and it’s addictive checking your pedometer and seeing how you can sneak in some more numbers.

And you’ll be pleased to know I take your warning about excessive exercise to heart.

@ Deb – I’m old enough but not American enough. In the UK we used to have a kid’s show that opened with a song that went “Why don’t you just turn off your television set and go and do something less boring instead”, which I thought was pretty cool for a TV show.

As it is, I know I don’t get enough exercise, but I do try to get my dog out for a walk every day, weather permitting … and, does knitting while watching television count as fidgeting? (grin)

While I totally agree that sitting all day is highly unnatural, and that fitness is important for cognitive and creative work, I disagree totally with Medina’s claim that individuals in tribal societies could not sit around for 8 minutes without being “somebody’s lunch.” There is a large body of evidence that shows that the life of a tribal hunter and gatherer was full of leisure, with lots of sitting around (or rather squatting around), and only about 2-4 hours of work a day.

I’d also argue that walking 12 miles a day only takes 4-6 hours, hardly that of an Olympic athlete. We do not need to be anywhere near Olympic-level extreme fitness to function optimally, either in a tribal society or in a cubicle. Too much of a good thing can be very bad indeed. Far too many people overtrain, causing injuries and illness in the pursuit of maximum fitness.

This is an important fact, for we tend to interpret pre-historical tribal societies through our own lens of anxiety and fear of the natural world. Not only is it unnatural to sit 8 hours a day, it’s unnatural to *work* 8 hours a day. If we were truly to try and return to authentic, natural prehistorical existence, we should aim to only work 2 or 3 hours a day too–but of course, that is very unlikely.

That said, human beings are highly adaptable, and the quest to find our “natural state” is a simulacrum–an illusion with no original. Human beings have been continuously evolving and changing. The key is not to freeze some previous authentic state in a romanticized past, but to find what works today, given our existing and changing contexts.

I would take Medina’s moderate exercise recommendation as a minimum, but be wary of too much exercise (something rarely noted but often engaged in), and emphasize finding one’s own personal optimum balance.

@Zhenya – Creativity moves in mysterious ways, so nothing works for everyone. Fresh air is probably ideal, but my experience is that even exercising in the gym clears my mind and sharpens my thinking.

Now if you’ll excuse me I must go to the gym…

It’s more likely that being outside and having to think about things quickly would aid improvisatory problem-solving skills rather than being in a grey room with strip lighting walking to nowhere.

If you’re truly creative, you’ll already have found something to do to keep you moving; walking in a line on a conveyor belt isn’t it.