30 minutes a day for 30 days - can you do it?

In an everyday home-office situation it is easy to sit too much and forget to move. It is cold outside and the gyms are closed so the doorstep mile is a heck of a lot more than a mile these days. When the 30 days activity challenge was first proposed several of us jumped in action, at least the ones with the largest dogged determination among us. It is a competition after all, another opportunity for honor and glory!

But to motivate everyone at the company to join we set the threshold low. “Activity” could be everything from a walk in the park to more heavily sweating exercises such as running a half-marathon! We were to gather points and set a personal goal to strive towards during the 30 days. One point was given each day we completed at least 30 minutes of activity. Additional points were given for extra credit activities. Our colleague in Brazil also joined in on the challenge (although I think he found the snow-related activities a bit too challenging)!

Examples of extra credit activities were:

• Build a snowman
• Go for a swim outdoors (maybe it doesn't look cold, but the water held 3℃ and it was -10℃ in the air)
• Cycle 10km
• 20 seconds of headstand
• Do the plank for 4 minutes" (the pain was real!)
• Hang from a bar for 90 seconds