What it seems to miss is that we get to walk around while doing some work, not the other way around. The alternative would be being stuck at a desk or in a meeting room, not quietly enjoying nature on a day off.
Put another way: if my twin and I are both working at competing firms doing the same job, but I do it via satellite phone while hiking the PCT and he does it from in front of a keyboard, there is no way he's not getting more done, even with AI. The bandwidth of voice/text to speech is a tiny fraction of visual.
Believe it or not, it was not practical to take my gear into nature haha. But with the advent of agentic coding (and stt solutions like handy), I can be productive with much less typing and equipment.
I have considered leaving the tech sector because of the aforementioned friction, and just like in my message above, I don't think we are considering the same dilemmas. OP said work vs contemplation, I said indoor work vs outdoor work. You mention productivity trade-offs, but for me working in tech used to feel physically unsustainable.
Cheers
> quietly enjoying nature on a day off
You seem to have your concepts mixed up!
I for one much prefer to do work at a desk instead of wandering around.