Going for a Walk Stimulates Ideas

How unfocused downtime not only refreshes us but also leads to better ideas

What I read: “Why You May Do Your Best Thinking in the Shower” by Richard E. Cytowic M.D. Published March 4, 2023.

For many years I’ve championed the idea of going for a walk. Short walks. Long walks. Challenging hikes. Any kind of outdoor ambulatory activity, especially when done alone. Countless articles have been written about the benefits of walking. The physical benefits are obvious, but the mental benefits are considerable.

In “Don’t Underestimate the Power of a Walk” (possible firewall if you’ve already viewed their maximum number of free articles) by Deborah Grayson Riegel, it’s pointed out that people like Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche, William Wordsworth, and Aristotle all walked frequently and used walking to unlock new ideas and boost their creativity.

In “Do Yourself a Favor Today... and Go For a Walk,” Ryan Holiday espouses the benefits of walking.

Why does walking work? Why has it worked for so many different kinds of people in so many different kinds of careers?

Walking is a deliberate, repetitive, ritualized motion. It is an exercise in peace.

And In “How Japanese People Stay Fit for Life, Without Ever Visiting a Gym” by Kaki Okumura, Okumura highlights the health and longevity benefits of Japanese culture in which walking is more common than in many other cultures.

Richard E. Cytowic’s article title alludes to the unlocking of ideas when you’re taking a shower, but I’m going to dissuade you from doing that since I’m trying to encourage people to take shorter showers. I say that as someone who loves long showers, but I know that’s not something we should be encouraging at this point in our climate’s trajectory.

So, walking is what I tend to encourage to unleash your idea generating mental machine. The important part is that supposedly mindless activities like walking and showering create a mental environment in which your brain relaxes and thereby accesses your subconscious, connects dots more readily, and often induces a state of flow.

When the rational mind focuses on a problem, it eats up much of your allotted bandwidth, whereas letting the mind wander while you carry out a “mindless” task lets your subconscious thoughts roam beyond the activity at hand.

Cytowic rightfully notes that many activities for which we don’t have to engage an intentional focus can elicit the same idea generation mechanisms. Driving your car along your daily route that you know so well. Following your regular exercise regimen. Hiking in nature. These types of activities create a mental landscape that frees up your brain to generate ideas and spark creativity.

Carving out mental space and freeing the mind of deliberate thought is a proven incubator of creative insight. The lack of outside stimulation can lead to the state of “flow,” in which we are deeply, if absentmindedly, engaged with inner contemplations.

I’d like people to focus a bit more while driving. Hiking is great if one has access to it. Showers are great but we need to conserve water these days. Exercising is good but not everyone has a regular exercise regimen. But, barring physical impairment of some kind, most people walk and could likely walk more than they do.

Also, if you’re captive to the ubiquitous notion that you should walk at least 10,000 steps a day, Bruce Feiler points out in “The Myth of 10,000 Steps: Why Walks Are Good for You – But Not All Walks” that it’s not a metric you should care too much about.

Finally, even within the cult of walking, there’s an even more cultish number: 10,000 steps. Like 10,000 hours, another myth, 10,000 steps is a lie that sounds good. (It turns out, the number came from a decades-old marketing campaign for a Japanese pedometer.)

Great ideas and spurts of creativity aren’t useful if they’re not somehow captured. That’s why I always suggest people have some sort of note taking ability with them at all times. Mine is my Evernote app on my phone. Yours might be a small pad and pen. Doesn’t matter. The important thing it to be ready to capture ideas, random thoughts, and bits of information as they come to you because otherwise they might be lost minutes later. I wrote about this in “Life Hack: Write It Down”.

The bottom line is walking is good for us on so many levels. It improves our health. Walking in nature especially recharges us. Walking can help you think better, calm your mind, and empower your brain to create and solve problems in ways you might not without such intentional disconnection. Give it a try.

I’m going to stop writing and go for a walk.

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