the lot

a little green · two minutes · the fence

The story

Being near living things feels good; the interesting part is how little it takes. A 2015 meta-analysis pooled 32 studies of brief contact with nature — a walk, a view, sometimes only pictures — and found a reliable lift in positive feeling from minutes, not hours. A 2019 study of nearly twenty thousand adults in England found the weekly dose that matters most: about two hours, in any pieces, with the benefit topping out around three or four.

What it does to you

Attention rests differently on things that are alive and moving slowly — leaves, a bird, a dog — than on a screen. Two minutes at a window won’t pay the weekly bill on its own, but it starts the account, and it gets you looking up.

The receipts

• McMahan & Estes (2015), Journal of Positive Psychology 10(6) — meta-analysis of 32 studies of brief contact with natural environments (including images and short exposures): positive affect up, negative affect slightly down. The right anchor for a two-minute dose. DOI
• White et al. (2019), Scientific Reports — 19,806 adults in England: those with at least 120 minutes a week in nature reported better health and well-being; the curve peaks around 200–300 minutes, and it didn’t matter whether the time came in one visit or many. Nature

The honest part

How the city does it

Sweep a flashlight across a dark lot; each thing the beam finds is the thing to go find for real out the window. Raise the phone to confirm you looked up.

Try it in the city →