Ron Friedman

But one of the more surprising findings in the last few decades is that exercise also makes us smarter.

And it's for some very concrete reasons.

When we exercise, we get more blood flowing to our brain, which helps us sustain our attention and makes us less distractible.

It activates the memory regions of the brain.

So we are able to soak up information more quickly and retrieve it when we need it.

And critically, exercise puts you in a good mood.

And when you're in a good mood, you do everything better at work, including connecting with colleagues and winning over new clients.

And so exercise isn't simply something that makes us look good or feel good.

It actively makes us better at our jobs.

And on super teams, we find that they exercise more often.

Members of super teams tend to exercise for 84 more minutes per week.

That's right.

In fact, one of the more fascinating findings in the research on super teams is we looked at what are the amenities they have at the office.

And we looked to see, are there particular amenities that make a team more effective?

And among those amenities that we tested were office gyms.

And super teams were not any more likely to have an office gym.

In fact, there were all these amenities in our study.

We included things like ping pong tables and collaborative spaces.

And the only office amenity that made a difference when it came to team performance was having a quiet space to do focused work.

And that says so much about what people really want from their workplace.