Get On Your Feet with IdeaPaint
In the last year, various writers from diverse news outlets have urged us to stand on our own two feet for the sake of our health and our productivity. Whether it is an evolutionary biologist writing for the New York Times or NPR’s Morning Edition team reporting the news, it is clear that sitting is suspect. Not only do we put ourselves at a higher risk for diabetes, heart disease and a number of other health problems, we become lethargic and uninspired. Think cubicle. Not an ideal scenario to the say the least, especially when it comes to places of business where thinking creatively is paramount. The every day 9-5er is perhaps most susceptible to work-induced inertia.
A quick Google search will yield infinite tips:
• Take 10 minutes breaks.
• Move the printer further away from your desk.
• Instead of emailing, get up to ask your coworker a question to encourage intermittent walking.
In May, an article on Mashable.com, known for its coverage of the intersection of digital culture, social media and technology suggested doing jumping jacks (for the visual learners reading, check this out).
We agree with all of their tips, but dare to propose our own. Make collaboration an office-wide initiative. Turn every surface in your office into a work station where people can gather around, converse and create. At IdeaPaint, we have seen what this can do, and can offer numerous case studies that attest to how a single coat of pant can change the activity level of an entire company.
Take MIT’s Entrepreneurial Center for example. A hot bed for start-ups, the E-Center could easily be a silent workplace with people hunched over computers and scribbling notes. In steps Director Bill Aulet, IdeaPaint in hand, and amplifies the Center’s energy.
"The day we put IdeaPaint's whiteboard paint in to try it in one room, we realized that people were flocking to that room,” he remembers. “And it wasn't just the fact that they could write on the wall, it was the fact that it was unconstrained space. The fact that they could write from the ceiling down to the ground unleashed some sort of creativity that we hadn't seen otherwise."
IdeaPaint can change the way you work. Ditto for how you teach and how your students learn. Given the recent push to maximize activity in early education, we believe the classroom is the perfect place for IdeaPaint-inspired collaboration. Regardless of where, IdeaPaint contributes to keeping the body and the brain active.
At the end of her NYT’s article entitled “Stand Up While You Read This!” Olivia Judson states, “You may think you have no choice about how much you sit. But this isn’t true.” We wholeheartedly agree. Whether you’re in the board room or the classroom, we (and James Brown) encourage you to get up, get on up.
