10k Every Day

For the past month I’ve walked at least 10 000 steps every single day. And it has been fantastic for both my mental and physical health. But getting here was no easy feat.

Hah, feet

For the longest time what I did in order to reach my daily step goal was to just lower the goal whenever I didn’t feel like walking anymore for the day. Sometimes this meant 2 000 steps was the target. Now, you don’t need a mathematician to tell you that 2 000 is a lot less than 10 000, one fifth of the actual target.

The reason I did this is that walking 10 000 steps is quite hard. For my walking it’s about 8 km and I don’t tend to leave my house a lot. 8 km is not a huge distance for me to walk, but it still is not something I want to do often. So, how come I now do it every day?

Something something merge sort?

The answer is to divide an conquer. The target is big, but there’s an entire day to reach it! Two approaches to reaching the goal are: taking one hour to run at 8 km/h (hard), and taking 10 hours to walk less than 1 km each hour (easy). Walking short distances throughout the day is so much easier than walking a huge distance at once.

Okay that’s all well and good but where are we supposed to walk every hour? Go look at a specific building 10 times every day like some sort of cult ritual? Well, that’s one way to do it. However a more sensible way to do it is to pick up habits that include just a little bit more walking.

But it’s so convenient though!

Let’s start from a normal workday, where commute is done via public transport. Walking to the bus stop in the morning nets some few hundred steps. Hopping off the bus one or two stops further than the closest stop nets easily a thousand steps. Walking to wherever is the furthest (reasonable) tap to get another glass of water instead of the closest gives us a hundred or two steps per trip and this is then done, say, every hour and a half on average.

We haven’t even left the office job and we’re already over 2 000 steps. Going by foot to have lunch, or taking a thinking stroll nets another one to two thousand steps if not more. At the start of our free time we’re already pretty much halfway there. On the way home, take a detour somewhere: walk to another bus stop further away, stop at one nice stop on the way and walk to another, or hop off a few stops before home.

For city folk, walking the full distance may also be an option. Now we’re only a few k away from the magical 10k goal. A little evening stroll will get us over the finish line easily.

Yeah, but…

This is how I did it. I introduced more walking to the middle of my day, integrated it with my work. By the time I’m done with work and glance at how much is left to walk it’s always nearly nothing. Which means I have all the rest of the day to do stuff instead of walk in circles (or lines).

The ability to do this is of course hugely influenced by living conditions. But I do think that it is possible to include a bit more movement to everyone’s life, even if the full 10k is not realistic for whatever reason. I’m not here to debate, I just want to share my success story on this, because it has improved my life meaningfully and I hope this inspires you to live your best life too.

Us Earth dwellers come in all sorts and it’s a waste of time to try and fit us into neat boxes. I can’t and won’t dictate your life, it’s yours. But I want it to be the best it can. And I hope that this post can give you some more motivation to keep going. Not a revolutionary change, just make a chore a bit easier and more mundane.