Burst activity menu
This page has been built to act as a reference for everyone involved in designing Bursts.
If you're in the brainstorming phase, read down the list and note anything you want to include. Use the duration advice to keep the overall length of your Burst in mind. If you're refining an existing draft, scan for what else might fit, especially from themes you haven't drawn from yet.
So what's on the menu? 46 of the strongest evidence-backed activities we could find.
How to understand the timing suggestions
- Practice durations
- The practice length window where an activity session tends to score highest. It spans the lowest end of a 'short' practice length up to the longest end of an 'optimal' practice length, based on a load of data and research.
- Setup
- Suggested time before the practice itself. We factor in starting the session in the app, getting into the right clothes, gathering any gear, and getting to (and preparing) the right space.
- Reset
- Suggested time after the practice. We factor in ending the session in the app, getting back into normal clothes, putting gear away, resetting the space, and showering if needed.
- With that said…
- Activity sessions using times outside what's suggested below are still possible to include, it's just that logistic scoring may be impacted.
Move
Anything where the body is doing the work. Sweat-and-strain workouts at one end, slow breath-led flow at the other, and everything in between.
Hot & cold
Your body works while you sit there. Cold plunges, saunas, hot baths, cryo and red light. Exposure and recovery rather than effort.
In nature
Time in green or wild spaces. Be in it (a walk, a sit), work with it (gardening), or watch it (wildlife observation).
Sit & breathe
Quiet, mostly-seated practices. Breath work, plus several meditation flavours: sharpening focus, cultivating warmth, dropping into deep rest. Eyes-closed-ish, no equipment, just attention.
Life basics
Stuff you'd do every day anyway, done with care rather than on autopilot. Cooking, eating, tidying, reading, listening to music. The shift is in how, not what.
Work things out
Practices that work with mental and emotional content directly. Some look backward (gratitude, journaling, tapping), some look forward (intention setting, visualisation), and some bring in another voice (talk therapy, AI therapy, neurofeedback).
Create & help
Action that lands beyond yourself. Make something: craft, music, writing, visual arts. Or help someone: acts of kindness, volunteering. Both leave a trace.
Other Burst items
Beyond activities, you can include three other items in a Burst. They don't have a suggested practice duration in the same way, but they affect logistic scoring in their own ways.
Travel
Time getting between activities, or to and from a venue.
Counted as part of the gap between activities. Long stretches of activity plus travel with no break begin to drag the score.
Break
A pause built into the Burst with no activity and no meal.
Best kept under 3 hours between breaks. 3 to 4 hours starts to drag attention; over 4 hours flags as a problem.
Nutrition
Time built in to eat properly.
For longer Bursts, going more than 4 to 6 hours without refuelling will hurt energy and focus. Beyond 6 hours flags as a problem.
Pick your activities, then tell us the shape of it.
The Burst brief walks you through the same menu — theme by theme — and captures the detail we need to build, score and publish your Burst.