Walk this way: meetings don't have to involve tables and chairs

My organization's magazine isn't really a magazine. We call it that, but it's just 12 pages. With such a small team, though, it takes a few months to go from brainstorming to landing in mailboxes and online. I only wrote some of the smaller articles in our most recent issue, but enjoyed directing photo shoots.

It's already time to plan the next issue, which means a lot of meetings and phone calls. I've been reading lately about the dangers of sitting too much, which sounds a little overly dramatic. I mean, how dangerous is it really to sit on a chair? Apparently, it's quite dangerous if you are doing it for hours and hours each day. And that's what happens when the work at hand calls for lots of meetings.

I have one of those bouncy exercise balls, but I don't like to sit on it for long. I'm not interested in one of those standing-up desks, so I'm certainly not going to propose my team conduct our meetings standing around in a conference room (although a stretch break here and there would help).

What if places of work conducted more meetings while walking? I work on what used to be called the ag campus of my university. We have horticultural gardens, sculptures, horticultural research gardens and crop fields. The University has invested in our campus--why don't we leave the meeting rooms behind and get out to look around during our planning meetings when the weather is good?

Roving bands of university communicators could walk, talk, and plan an editorial lineup--why not? Sure, we might need to stop and take notes, but that's what benches are for. Then we could continue on our way, forming new ideas as our brains benefit from the movement. We just might find some new stories to tell along our path.