The Ultimate ROI: How AI Turned My Daily Run Into My Most Productive Hour
Let’s be honest: running is already a sport with extraordinary time efficiency. Not only from the perspective that you can start nearly anywhere with zero entry costs and no barriers, but it is also one of the most effective methods for reliably improving your cardiovascular system. But if you are just running, you are leaving massive amounts of value on the table. Running is an extremely time-efficient workout when you leverage that time to multitask effectively. For years, I used my runs to:
- Passively inform myself by listening to audiobooks and podcasts.
- Engage in active human connection—calling friends or business partners.
- Conduct "running meetings" (if you are lucky enough to have a manager who runs), unlocking valuable one-on-one time and health benefits simultaneously.
We already know that running—and walking in general—creates an ideal environment for focusing and structuring thoughts. The problem used to be capturing those thoughts.
The AI Paradigm Shift
Previously, AI assistants like Siri or Google Assistant were just command interfaces—clunky tools used to trigger existing apps. That has changed completely. Nowadays, with tools like ChatGPT and Gemini, you can generate serious output while on the move. You can have actual, high-level dialogues with an AI agent to learn new things in real-time or structure complex ideas through conversation. But the real unlock—the workflow that has changed everything for me—is the long-form voice memo.
With modern voice transcription (like on iOS 18), you can record yourself talking through the things that are keeping you busy. You can engage in a very active reflection process, thinking out loud as you run. Later, you simply copy-paste that raw transcript into an LLM and ask it to:
- Rewrite your thoughts.
- Compress them into concise protocols.
- Generate serious articles or papers while preserving your original tone of voice.
You are getting serious work done just by going outdoors. You aren't just having clear thoughts; you are capturing them and having an AI turn them into immediate return on investment—documents you can share right away with friends or your business.
The Incentive to Run Every Day
This incredible boost in ROI gave me a massive incentive to run more often. You heard me right: I’m talking about running every day.
I practiced this in 2025, netting almost 330 days of running throughout the year. The immediate question I get is:
"Isn't that bad for your joints? Are you supposed to do that?"
I can tell you my model for sustaining this is very simple. The time I spend running is a function of two variables: Distance and Pace.
Distance is very controllable based on how fit you are and how much time you want to allocate. But the critical variable—the independent variable that determines whether you can run every day or just every third day—is pace.
Pace is Everything
Pace has a direct effect on your consistency. If you run day in, day out at a strong pace that fatigues your body to the degree that you cannot fully regenerate, you are not only more prone to injury, but you also break the productivity model. Running at a high heart rate (anything above your Zone 2, typically around 130–140 bpm) means you are out of breath. You cannot hold a conversation with a human, and you certainly can't dictate complex thoughts to an AI. Your focus narrows to the physical exertion of the moment.
Therefore, pace directly correlates with how productive your run can be. To run daily, you must be willing to dial down the pace. Remember, a walk is a perfectly acceptable starting point for daily exercise—think of a very slow run as nothing more than an upgraded walk. Over time, through the compounding effects of consistency, your body physiologically reshapes itself to become more efficient. Your "slow" pace automatically becomes faster without extra effort.
The Ultimate Win-Win
The incentives are clear. First and foremost, running gives you time for yourself. It offers tremendous long-term physiological benefits and dumps excess cortisol to alleviate mental stress. There are only wins on the positive side. To foster running as a daily ritual that is actually healthy, you must control the distance and the pace. But now, combined with new human-like voice interfaces and AI tools that allow you to structure your best thinking while on the move, you have the ultimate tool to maximize the benefits of the time you spend running.