Treadmill Workspace — Early Days

My crack research team just unearthed a 1989 study entitled "Walking on an electric treadmill while performing VDT office work."

Does Dr. James Levine know about this?

The abstract of the nearly two-decade-old paper concludes "... that treadmill walking and routine word processing can be performed concurrently without a decrement in work performance, and that certain physiological and psychological benefits may result," which is certainly borne out by my own personal experience.

You could look it up.

Here's the abstract.

Walking on an electric treadmill while performing VDT office work

The physiological and psychological health problems associated with sedentary office work are well documented, but their solution has proved elusive. In this study a specially designed office permitted the comparison of conventional word processing (sedentary condition) to word processing performed while walking on an electric treadmill at 1.4 to 2.8 km/hr (active condition). Five subjects after several days of practice produced two test trials each consisting of six 20-minute intervals of word processing. For the sedentary condition the subjects were seated, during all six intervals. For the active condition, treadmill-walking and seated intervals were alternated. Variables measured included word processing performance score, stress and arousal indices, and body complaint count. The first of these was tested with a repeated ANOVA and Newman-Keuls post hoc, and the latter three with correlated t-tests. No significant differences were found between the two conditions for performance or body complaints. Stress was significantly lower (p < .05), and arousal was higher but not quite significant (P < .07) for the active condition. We conclude that treadmill walking and routine word processing can be performed concurrently without a decrement in work performance, and that certain physiological and psychological benefits may result.

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My guess is that VDT stands for video display terminal — why, you got a better one?