Why running is great for introverts that love learning?

For the first 30 years of my life I never was someone who did any sport or any workout. Once our kid arrived on earth, that changed as I had a reason to stay healthy.

The type of sport that I found works best for me is running.

You can do it alone

As an introvert, that's maybe the most important thing. It's a sport where you can recharge your battery by having some alone time. For someone who is a Service Design educator and dad, I spend a lot of time with others. Running gives me some precious time alone.

It has no mental effort so you can read audiobooks

When running, you don't have to do a specific type of movements and have to be very concentrated. You just run. That means you can listen to audio books or podcasts while running. These days I really like running with audio books in my ears. With a 30 minute run per day, I can read a new book each 2 weeks without having to find any special time for it.

I wish I could more easily bookmark parts of an audio book, like you can do with Snipd for podcasts. It's a tool where you can tap to bookmark and it then uses the transcript of the audio and takes the sentences you were listening to as a bookmark and note. I know there is an option to upload your audibooks to Snipd, but most of the time DRM block that, and I'm still looking for a hack that makes this possible.

You can do it everywhere

Running does take a lot of equipment. So you can do it everywhere. Even on holidays or when you're visiting friends and family.

You don't have preparation time

You put your shoes, and you can start directly from home, do a tour and you're back home. You don't have to go to a gym or to a special place to be able to practice the sport. As someone who does sport not for the love of it, but for staying in shape that makes a big difference.