Strangely, Going Outside Is a Revolutionary Idea

Posettes Trail, Chamonix, France

It’s strange to think that in order to get myself outside every day, to leave the house and move my body through the natural world, I had to set myself a goal to consciously do just that. On top of that, it took me several years before I successfully reached 365 days in a row.

When the urge to pursue this Outside 365 challenge bubbled up in my soul, I was working from home on my computer as I always have, but at that time things were… not great. I was slaving behind the screen for long hours every day, and those long hours combined with short daylight in the winter and physical limitations brought on by injuries and surgeries led me to the point where I could sometimes go days at a time without even leaving my house. Many days, my only contact with the outside world was opening the front door to let the dog go make use of the nearby field.

Granted, I lived in a beautiful house at that time, and when fully stocked with food, I could easily lead a comfortable daily existence that consisted of rolling out of bed, wandering into my office to work, and relaxing in the living room afterward with a cold one while watching Netflix.

It was all too comfortable.

And yet, the reality is that on a weekly basis, I was still more active than the average American. I still spent more time outside in the mountains than most people. Even if I could go 3-4 days during the workweek without leaving the house, that still meant I could log 3-4 days of adventuring in the mountains per week. Way above the average. 

But that still didn't feel like enough.

The fact that it took a defined goal to jerk me out of my indoor-centric habits is a shocking indictment of our culture… and it’s only getting worse.

The Downward Spiral

I had considered giving the Outside 365 concept into its own dedicated website for years now, but I resisted because it just didn’t feel that exceptional. That original. Like that much of a revolutionary idea.

But as it turns out, it is.

I did some digging, and it turns out that the average person spends four hours per day, on average, watching television. Four hours per day, which adds up to over 77 days per year.

And that number doesn’t include total screen time. In fact, according to some sources, the average person spends at least 11 hours per day in front of a screen. If anything, that number might be a bit low. If you combine an 8- to 9-hour day behind the computer with four hours of television watching, you get to an 11 hour average pretty quickly.

Wait, but we all have a small screen that rides around in our pocket with us wherever we go—the average person spends 3.5 hours per day using the internet on their phone. (Source) How much of that 3.5 hours is spent swiping while we’re supposed to be working or supposedly watching a formulaic, predictable TV show is unclear.

The crazy thing is, this trend is only accelerating. Virtual reality, which was once the sole realm of sci fi movies, is now not only real, but it’s gaining traction and spreading at an unprecedented rate. In 2010, the first Oculus Rift prototype was designed. By 2016, at least 230 different companies were developing VR-related technologies. (Source)

Our present day pandemic experience is only accelerating every single one of these trends. The arrival of the COVID pandemic led to a 60% increase in app downloads in March 2020, according to VR travel platform Ascape. And screen time usage across all platforms, and especially on mobile phones, has skyrocketed.

Perhaps now more than ever before, going outside to experience the natural world—not just every now and then, but every single day, and as much as humanly possible—is a revolutionary idea. If you wait long enough, everything comes ‘round again, and the majority of human animals have somehow succeeded in disconnecting themselves from their roots dramatically enough that the idea of going out into nature has come around to us again.

Actually, perhaps this is the first time this idea has had to come 'round in the history of our species. We were born from mud—we evolved slowly into the complex beings you now curse at football games. The forest is our home. It’s where we were born, it's where we were bred, it's where we belong. Our brains are still wired for the forests and the mountains and the plains, not the cubicle or the television set. Never before have we needed to try to get outside and experience nature.

And yet now, in 2020, we so desperately do.

PS: For an overview of the Outside 365 project, be sure to read the Manifesto.