How to Teleport (Really!)
Teleporting from place to place used to be an ability reserved for futuristic starship captains. But regular people are capable of it too. All you need is one of the teleportation devices pictured below!
Researchers at Utrecht University recently released a study exploring the health outcomes of Dutch bicycling culture. If you’ve ever been to the Netherlands, you’ll know that bicycles are at the heart of city life. Rush hour is quite a sight—tall Dutch citizens riding tall cruiser bikes with impeccable posture, towering over pedestrians.
Everyone cycles. Office workers in business suits, parents with kids piled in front and back, teenagers heading out to party—no matter who you are, there’s nothing unusual about hopping on a bike to get around. In fact, here are the King and Queen of the Netherlands (with bodyguards) cycling through Washington DC on a state visit!
The researchers wanted to know how all this cycling affected public health. Using World Health Organization models on exercise and longevity, they ran their data—adjusted for confounding factors—through the numbers. The result?
The average Dutch cyclist (biking about 75 minutes a week) lives six months longer than average (de Hartog et al., 2010). That’s compelling enough, but when you crunch the math, it gets even better: over a lifetime, every hour spent cycling adds about an hour to your life expectancy.
This is how you teleport.
Hop on a bike, pedal 30 minutes to the office or the shops, and get that 30 minutes kicked back to you in lifespan. You lose some time getting to your destination, but gain it back at the other end. There’s no net loss of time between traveling fromm point A to B. Is that not the definition of teleportation?
It’s easy to view exercise as a time suck—a chore that eats into your day. This mindset leads to burnout and quick abandonment. But the bicycle study offers another perspective: exercise adds as much sand to your hourglass as it takes away. It’s a way to cheat time. The minutes you spend moving are like paid days off that reset every year. Use them or lose them.
People who say, “I don’t have time to exercise” are usually the ones who’ve never really done it. Those who get it right know that time spent exercising pays back with interest—in focus, clarity, decisiveness, vitality, and long-term health. I’ve often solved work problems not by staring at my screen, but by stepping away and moving. An idea that comes to me on a 30-minute jog can save me three hours of struggle at my desk. That run just bought me two and a half extra hours. Teleportation and time travel—this is some serious sci-fi stuff!
Research backs this up: aerobic movement like walking and running has been shown to dramatically boost creative ideation and cognitive flexibility (Oppezzo & Schwartz, 2014).
One final takeaway: the Dutch aren’t furiously pedaling through town like they’re in a spin class. They move with low intensity and high frequency. This seems to be the magic formula for longevity. Exercise has diminishing returns—the best research suggests that one hour of moderate movement per day is the sweet spot. More than that doesn’t increase lifespan and may even reduce it.
Take this to heart. Find ways to include simple, low-intensity movement in your daily routine. I’ll be working on it too. See you out there!
