Illustration by Leyla Baxman.

The modern world is obsessed with hyper-efficiency. We streamline supply chains and shave minutes off of delivery times. We move very little during the day – using electric scooters, getting food and other essentials delivered to our doorstep – only to have to compensate later at the gym for this lack of movement.

I have nothing against exercise, or the gym, but I think it’s worth pointing out that there’s a more holistic way to incorporate movement into your daily routine. I’m from California, where driving is the default form of transportation, but my preferred form of exercise is running. I would drive to complete errands during the day, only to run loops around my neighborhood at night. This made me feel both silly and inefficient: I was burning fossil fuels only to fruitlessly burn energy later. I was spending time driving to get errands done more quickly, only to have to schedule in extra time to move my body.

So, I began experimenting with integrating exercise into my daily routine. Rather than driving to the drug store to pick up my prescriptions, I would run. I would do the same to get my flu shot, or to meet friends for a coffee. Grocery shopping proved more difficult, but it wasn’t impossible if I just needed to pick up a thing or two. If I was meeting a friend to do work at a café, I would give them my computer and a jumper beforehand and run to meet them there. It proved much more efficient in the frenetic day-to-day routine of being a student.

This lifestyle change had additional, more practical benefits. I once had trouble picking up a prescription, and the pharmacist asked me when I had last collected it. I would never have remembered, but I had a memory of running home with a three-month supply of birth control rattling in my hand. So I looked up “birth control” on my Strava, an app that logs runs, and was able to provide her with the exact date.

In Wanderlust: A History of Walking, author Rebecca Solnit directly tackles the bizarre nature of our aversion to moving outdoors and our attraction instead to the gym. The treadmill, she reveals, was originally invented in 1818 to provide exercise for incarcerated people. Solnit describes the roundabout nature of this machine: “once, a person might have hitched two horses to a carriage to go out into the world without walking; now she might plug in a two horsepower motor to walk without going into the world.” If jogging to run an errand seems like turning a bad thing into something even worse, then simply walking more during the day could offer a similarly integrated approach to activity. When I’m worried about making time for movement, early in the day I’ll walk to a café to do work, as this guarantees me a walk home in the evening as well.

People are happy to pay delivery fees on Deliveroo and UberEats, only to spend even more money on a gym membership to make up for their sedentary lifestyle, ignoring the perfectly valid option of walking. Though delivery services may save time, what I have to say is: you can hide, but eventually you’ll have to run. We live in a world in which walking is a privilege. Save the delivery charges and treadmill for when they’re the only option, and find ways of incorporating exercise into your daily routine.