A short spoken piece (YouTube video) by Vishen Lakhiani describing a study of hotel maids which found that when maids were told their routine work (vacuuming, stairs, making beds) counted as exercise, their health measurably improved within a month. The central claim is that perceiving daily activities as exercise, not just the physical activity itself, can change health outcomes.
Chapters
Crazy study fit hotel mates. So in this study, the researchers were wondering, why is it that so many hotel maids in the United States are clinically obese, even though if you actually look at their job, they are running up and down stairs, they are flipping over mattresses, they are vacuuming, they're actually taking 10,000 steps a day. So they created this fake research project. But at the end of asking these mates questions, the researcher said this. Wow, Matilda, did you know that based on what you're telling me, you are walking 10,000 steps a day? You must feel so healthy. Now, one month later, they go back. All the maids who were given that statement were suddenly healthier. You see, these maids in their mind never saw vacuuming or walking upstairs or hurling or making a bed as exercise. But when the researcher told them to see it as exercise, all of a sudden their bodies responded. So it turns out it's not even the exercise you do. It's do you perceive what you do as exercise?