How many minutes, in total, have you spent outdoors in the fresh air this week? A 2019 study of roughly 20,000 adults in England offers one benchmark: 120 minutes a week.
"Spending at least 120 minutes a week in nature is associated with good health and wellbeing" — that's the actual title of the paper, published in the journal Scientific Reports. The study asked people about each visit to nature over the course of a week and added the minutes up into a weekly total. This particular analysis doesn't ask whether the destination was a park, a forest, or a coastline. Nowhere does it say you need to travel far to recover.
The line falls between zero minutes and 120
The research team used data from an annual UK survey that tracks people's contact with nature, and examined the relationship between total minutes spent in nature over the past week and self-reported health and wellbeing. The key comparison was between people who spent no time in nature at all that week and those who spent 120 minutes or more.
Compared with people who had no contact with nature at all, those who spent 120 to 179 minutes a week in nature were more likely to report good health, and more likely to report high wellbeing. These figures held even after controlling for more than a dozen factors — age, sex, occupational class, functional limitations, and the amount of green space where someone lives, among others. The type of place visited wasn't a factor. The paper reports no seasonal difference tied to when the survey was taken. Even with all those factors controlled for, a difference tied to total minutes remained.
Around 200 to 300 minutes, the gains leveled off
Here a second comparison comes into play: 120 minutes versus 200 to 300 minutes. The paper reports that this association peaked at around 200 to 300 minutes a week, with no additional benefit from spending more time beyond that. In other words, past a certain point, adding more time barely shifts the distribution of answers at all.
Another interesting point is how the time gets divided up. The paper states that it found no difference in the strength of the association whether the time came from one long walk or was broken into small pieces on the way home from work each weekday. By this math, someone who spends two hours in the forest on a single weekend outing and someone who walks the neighborhood for 20 minutes every day end up in the same category.
This part is worth stating carefully. This study was a cross-sectional survey conducted at a single point in time, and it does not prove a causal relationship in which time in nature "improved" health. The reverse explanation — that healthier people find it easier to go outside in the first place — can't be ruled out either. The paper itself reports this association while explicitly noting that it is a correlation, not causation.
Not the place you're looking for — it's the minutes
Yesterday's piece on compound rest thought about rest at the scale of a trip — a large unit. What this study points to is the opposite: a small unit. Not "where to go," but "how many minutes in total." That difference changes the barrier to actually doing it, quite a lot.
Picture a faraway hot spring or a famous nature park, and rest turns into something special — a plan you have to make. The more special a plan becomes, the less often you actually follow through on it. But what the study measured was a total that included the bench at your neighborhood park and the tree-lined street on your commute. Counted in minutes, even five or ten minutes outside on a weekday can be folded into the week's total. I think the question "have I gotten enough nature time this week?" is easier to act on than the question "where should I go?"
How many minutes of nature do you have left this week?
- Start by roughly counting up how many total minutes you've spent in outdoor nature this past week. If it's zero, 120 minutes becomes your first benchmark to aim for.
- Nudge the "outside time" you already have — your commute, your lunch break — toward routes with a bit more greenery. It doesn't need to happen all at once.
- Past around 200 to 300 minutes, this study didn't find any further difference. Whether to add more beyond that is entirely up to you.
During periods of extreme heat, choose your time of day carefully, and don't push yourself if you're at all worried about how you're feeling.
