How to get outside more when you don't feel like it

Most people who want to get outside more already know it would do them good. The gap is not knowledge. It is the moment of leaving the house, and everything that makes that moment heavier than it needs to be. Here is what tends to be in the way, and what helps.

Written by the Perfect Day team. Practical suggestions, not advice about any condition; the research cited is described as its authors describe it.

Updated 16 September 2026.

The barriers are real, and they compound

A study of 1,463 Finnish parents, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, looked at how often parents took their children into nature and what stood in the way (Gustafsson and colleagues, 2021). It found that parents with poor mental well-being were more likely to perceive barriers to visiting nature, which in turn appeared to be related to a higher likelihood of having children who visited nature less frequently. In plain words: the worse you feel, the bigger the obstacles look, and the less anyone in the house goes out. That is an association, not a cause, and the study is about parents in one country; but anyone who has looked at a coat on a hook and decided against it will recognise it.

So the useful question is not “how do I want to go out more” but “what makes the obstacles look smaller on the day.”

Make the decision in advance

The heaviest part of going out is deciding to, and the decision is heaviest at the door. Move it. Decide on Tuesday that Thursday evening is the walk, and Thursday is only the doing. Better still, let the day decide for you: when you know two days ahead that Thursday will be mild and still, the question is already answered and the coat is already by the door.

This is, in the end, what Perfect Day is for. Describe a good day once; it watches the coming ten days hour by hour and tells you, days ahead, when one is coming. Most days it says nothing. When it speaks, the decision has been made for you by the weather, which is a kinder decision-maker than willpower.

Lower the bar until you cannot fail it

• Ten minutes counts. Round the block. If you want to keep going, keep going; if not, you went out.
• No destination, no kit. Shoes, coat, keys. A plan that needs a bag will not survive a low day.
• Attach it to something that already happens. The kettle, the school run, the first phone call of the day — taken outside.
• Pick the nearest green thing, not the best one. The best one needs a bus.

Remove the weather excuse, honestly

“It might rain” ends more walks than rain does. Two things help. Own one coat that makes rain irrelevant, and know the forecast for the hours you would be out, not the day. A day that is 60% likely to rain is often dry from four until six; a forecast app shows the day, and you need the hours. Perfect Day judges hours. When it says the evening is fine, the evening is fine, and if the forecast turns it tells you that too.

Go with someone, or for someone

Company halves the weight of leaving and doubles the chance of it. So does responsibility: a dog, a child, a neighbour who cannot manage the shop alone. If you are a parent, the Finnish study's finding cuts both ways — your going out is also theirs.

Notice it afterwards

Not as a gratitude exercise; just a moment, on the step, back home: that was fine. The next decision is made partly from the memory of the last one, and the memory is worth keeping accurate.

Related

• Does time outside help your mood? What the research actually says
• A day off, outside: ideas sorted by the weather