And, why two hours a week might be all you need
Going outside has always been my remedy. My strategy to solve things, to get clarity. I used to think clarity came from having everything in order. Under control. Everything in its place, and space.
I’ve learned though that I will never reach a point where I have it all under control. Control isn’t possible. Chasing it, only makes you run harder. And really, that is so exhausting. So better that I let go of that unrealistic idea. With control, you try to think your way to the right answers. Reasoning, discussing, all in your head. Every time the same loop.
When I look for answers, I go outside. When I want to relax, or open up to my creativity, I want to feel the wind through my hair. I love being outside. I feel calmer, more relaxed. I am also more open to the world around me. Creativity and problem solving goes better.
It took me a long time to notice that my best thinking never happens indoors. Focused, busy, trying to get a grip on things. It happens outside. On my morning run in the hills. Walking down to the sea. Not in the first minute. Not even the first five. But once the movement becomes repetitive, the voices in my head start to change.
I thought it was just me. Raised in an agricultural corner of the Netherlands.
It isn’t just me.
90 minutes
In 2015, Stanford researchers put healthy adults through a controlled experiment: half walked 90 minutes through nature, half walked 90 minutes through an urban setting. Same duration, same effort. Afterward, the group who’d walked in nature reported less rumination. Less of that looping, self-critical replay we all recognize.
What I like most about this study: their brain scans backed it up. Measurably reduced activity in the region linked to that exact pattern of thought. All it took was 90 minutes.
The two-hour threshold nobody tells you about
A few years later, researchers at the University of Exeter tracked nearly 20,000 people in England and asked a simpler question: how much nature contact per week actually moves the needle on how healthy and well people report feeling?
Below 120 minutes, they found nothing. No measurable difference at all. But cross two hours a week, and health and wellbeing both rise consistently. Regardless of age, income, or whether that time came in one long walk or several short ones.
Two hours. Spread however you like. That’s the whole ask.
I think about this every time I’m tempted to skip a hike because I “don’t have time.” Two hours a week isn’t a lot to ask of a life that claims it has none to spare.
What four days in the mountains actually does to your mind
Longer is better. And this is the study that changed how I think about my multi-day hikes, and the GR11 long-distance hike I started this year. Above 2,000 metres. No phone signal.
In 2012, researchers sent 56 people on Outward Bound backpacking expeditions. Four to six days, zero devices. Their creative problem solving was tested, before and after. The result: a 50% improvement in performance on a standard test of creative reasoning. Not a vague sense of feeling refreshed. A measurable jump in the kind of thinking that actually solves hard problems.
I feel all of this. When I’m walking. When I’m outdoors. And I’m glad to find the studies confirming what I already knew from my own experience.
That’s also why, I started doing something this year, that feels too big to start. And doing it anyway, is where I completely let go of my control.
Presence, not just movement
In Japan, this practice has a name: shinrin-yoku, forest bathing. I did it once, in the Netherlands. A weekend under pouring rain. Even there, even soaked through, the research holds: forest environments produce lower salivary cortisol, lower pulse rate, lower blood pressure, greater parasympathetic (rest-and-digest) nervous system activity, and lower sympathetic (stress) nervous system activity than city environments do.
And it matters for leadership, specifically
This is the part that surprised me most.
In a 2024 study, participants completed a demanding cognitive task, then took a 40-minute walk. Half of the group walked through nature, half through an urban environment. Researchers measured brain activity via EEG, before and after. The group who walked in nature showed a stronger signal linked to executive control, the exact capacity leaders draw on under pressure: decision-making, holding complexity, not reacting on impulse. The urban-walking group showed no such change.
And there is more, early evidence.
There’s early evidence, too, that nature immersion lowers our neural sensitivity to external reward. This means you chase less outside validation, and hold more steadiness from within. In a world where everything is focusing on external validation, this is promising. This study is a newer one, less settled, but it points somewhere I recognise.
What this means, practically
You don’t need to quit your job and hike the Pyrenees. Although I’d understand if you wanted to. You don’t even need the mountains. You can start closer to home.
And if you can find four days, properly disconnected, properly outdoors, you come back thinking more clearly than when you left.
I’ve always known that being outdoors makes me a better, happier person. Clarity. Calmness. Now I know it’s not just me feeling it. It’s measurable.
This is also why, next year, I want to bring a small group of women along.
Not a trail-running trip. Not an ultra. Going outside, step into the outdoor, your own creativity and clarity, and being present. The kind that gets your legs moving until your head goes quiet, the kind that gave me every insight in this article. I’m still working out exactly what that looks like. But if the idea interests you, tell me. I’d rather build this with the people who actually want it than guess at it alone.
In the meantime, here are the three stretches, on the GR11 and the Camino, trails I hiked earlier this year, that inspired me the most recently for various reasons.