Amazing Humans of Rubies, remember we once talked about the bromance between tech and soft skills? How soft skills are important to techies – including kids. 

Today, we shall talk about how some outdoor activities can also positively influence an individual’s ability to write codes, build solutions, and think on their feet.  

Introduction

Balancing screen time with outdoor activities is important for the all-round development of the body, brain, and soul. While engaging in outdoor activities may sound stressful, it has lots of benefits, especially for people who spend a great deal of their time in front of the screen.

Below are some outdoor activities you can engage in and how they can help you grow and get better

• Archery

Helps with Precision and Focus. It requires a great deal of patience, concentration, and precision, all of which are skills directly transferable to coding. Like an archer would focus on hitting their target without a miss, so would a coder pay attention to their codes and debug accurately. Besides, learning archery comes with learning discipline, which can help kids develop the perseverance, grit, and tenacity needed to tackle complex coding problems.

From algorithms to archery would bang as a hashtag, wouldn’t it?

• Skateboarding

Skateboarding may not be common in Nigeria. But it does improve creativity and build resilience because it requires creativity to master new tricks and resilience to keep trying after numerous falls. Both of which are not alien to coding.  

Coding requires creativity to build innovative solutions to problems. It involves too many trials and errors that a non-resilient person cannot stomach. When kids learn resilience through skating, it will help them persist through any challenges they face when coding. 

From Python to skateboard tricks, it’s high time you learned how to grind! 

• Cycling

Bicycles!

Bicycles!!

Bicycles!!!

Cycling is an interesting outdoor activity you can engage in to boost your problem-solving skills. It has to do with making quick decisions without jeopardizing the safety of the next moments. The relation between cycling and coding is special.

A cyclist must create a mental pathway to ride in his mind, just exactly as a programmer must steer through complex codes and find optimum solutions. Beyond skills, cycling is also known to enhance brain function, develop cognitive abilities, and boost cardiovascular health. 

From bytes to biking. Doesn’t that sound fun?

• Swimming

While many see swimming as a pleasure act, it may also be a testament to a person’s endurance and systemic thinking. How do I mean?

Like how every single line of code must be written and executed in their right order, each stroke and breath reflects the same. Perfect timing!

Swimming builds endurance and promotes tells on timing, builds endurance, and promotes organized thinking. Medical discoveries also mention that swimming improves our cardiovascular health, supports brain function, and increases cognitive clarity.

• Horse Riding

This is giving Ojude Oba or Durba vibes, right?

Well, horse riding teaches children responsibility, discipline, and control. You know, it takes great discipline to manage and control a mighty animal as a horse.

These skills are related to managing a project. Horse riding also helps with problem-solving in terms of dealing with a rebel horse, an uncooperative horse. Just like refining a code and mirror debugging. 

Saddle up for fun. Enough with the mainframes and wireframes, time to master the reins.

 

• Golfing

Golfing (learning and playing) teaches patience, precision, and analytical thinking. Golfers learn to study the terrain, analyze the wind, and distance to make precise shots. This is much like how programmers would analyze their data sets and debug codes.

The analytical skills developed in golf can help kids approach coding problems methodically and thoughtfully. 

Now, go trade your Ctrl+Del+Del for Par, Birdie, and Eagle!

While you are here, below are some of the health benefits of engaging in outdoor activities;

1.  Activities like cycling, swimming, and skateboarding can improve cardiovascular health, build muscle strength, and improve reflex actions. But don’t ask me why hippos are fat.

2. What is that one activity common with most businessmen? Golfing! Golfing is not a one-player activity. It is a group game. Playing golf can improve an individual’s social skills and help develop communication skills, team spirit, and team bonding. Same as horse riding.

3. Some of these outdoor activities also relieve mental stress. It improves mood and is an enabler to achieving mental clarity.  This is beneficial to be in the perfect shape for cognitive functions and problem-solving activities.

Conclusion 

Having read this article, which of these activities will you enroll your kids or which will you learn yourself? 

Written by Abdullateef Badmus