Completely a co-incidence for me. Yesterday, I had a discussion with some friends about creative process and how I like long walks. Today, I saw this 2014 article on my Twitter TL. Hence, the share.
I hate how people implicitly demand counter-points when others express their hatred regarding Steve Jobs being commonly referenced as an example of walking to be creative.
> It's an examination of the philosophy of various thinkers for whom walking was central to their work – Nietzsche, Rimbaud, Kant, Rousseau, Thoreau (they're all men; it's unclear if women don't walk or don't think)
This little line came out nowhere, hah! Well done. Thank you for sharing this.
On a related note; I really enjoyed this[1] podcast. It's an interview with Olivia Fox Cabane - the author of a book that explores the science behind creative thinking.
Is it the act of just moving? I'm assuming this also goes for cycling? I cycle to work (5 miles each way) and the 25 minutes each way have sections where I can mentally focus on other things and just let my body ride.
I can pretty much set myself up for the work that day in the morning thinking through issues very deeply. In the evening, I find it clears my head and lets me think around any issues I've had during the day or just get myself prepped for any side projects I'm working on that evening.
I like the idea of a walking meeting however the dynamics of having 5 people walk together and be able to have good conversations might not work. I'm guessing 2-3 people maximum would work.
How does this relate to standing desks? Standing desks with treadmills underneath them? ;)
For me it is anything that helps me not fix on the problem. Standing in front of the computer, staring at the code always pushes me in the same direction; once I am up to something else, but still 'lightly' thinking about the problem I come up with better solutions. It's almost as if I am thinking about it I can't think of anything valuable; once I stop thinking about the issue at hand everything just happens to fall in place.
For solving problems showers are faster, but walking is better for higher level problems requiring greater thought. A shower is great for knocking out a block quickly, while if I have a really hard problem a long walk is better.
A friend and I who worked together used to have walking discussions when it was nice outside. I think we maxed out at 3 people, but as our walk was around the parking lot, I'd say anymore than 3 would be a bit problematic.
Did this improve the discussion? Who knows, but it certainly was nice to get outside and have a reason to walk around.
These studies put "that which we already know" on a testable basis and also allow us to look at the underlying mechanisms, often we find that the underlying mechanism is counter-intuitive to our assumptions (this is often the case, the universe rarely works the way we'd expect) so dismissing it with "Of course, we knew that" is frequently wrong.
You say "eating well is good for your health" but of course eating well is predicated on knowing which things to eat for health and how do we know that via studies on human nutrition of course!.
> researchers at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, recruited 75 healthy young men and women and randomly assigned them to workspaces outfitted with a computer and either a chair or a treadmill desk....Then the volunteers were asked to complete a series of tests of their manual and mental dexterity...The manual task was simple enough, consisting of using the keyboard to type words that flashed onto the computer screen as quickly and accurately as possible while the volunteer either sat or slowly walked.
> The cognitive tests were more demanding, designed to measure practical aspects of cognition, such as working memory and delayed recall, and the ability to concentrate, all of which are important in performing office work. In one of these tests, volunteers had to learn and later recall lists of words; in another, they were asked to juggle lists of numbers and add them up in their heads even as new numbers were added to the list...
> The results, when the researchers compared the treadmill walkers with the people sitting at their desks, substantially favored sitting. The people who had walked during the testing performed worse on almost all aspects of thinking, including the ability to concentrate and remember, compared with those who had been seated.
Fair enough, I guess. This still lowers my expectation that there is a significant positive improvement in the long term, and is strong evidence against the sort of anecdotal claims that "you immediately feel better and more alert" that I hear all the time.
I think something else that could have impacted their results is that for some people, the knowledge that they are being tested changes the way they think/perform quite drastically. When I sit at a desk and do menial work, I get restless and my productivity plummets. But if you tell me that I'm being assessed, and you give me a straightforward task, I will have no trouble focusing on it for at least an hour. Maybe treadmill desks help you stay on task, but at the same time inhibit your cognitive performance slightly.
It is remarkable how a really high percentage of the biographies I've read (of famous/"great" people) mention walking as a critical routine - Jobs, Beethoven, Jefferson, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt spring to mind.
Minnesotan Fitbit users average 8675 daily steps in summer (64F) and 7486 in winter (16F), only 14% less. I infer that people in cold climates acclimate and dress for the weather, although walking indoors could partially explain it.
You would be surprised. On a day that I don't get to the gym, I average around 9000 and I spend most of my day working at a desk or moving between meetings (i.e. I don't consider myself very active).
Out of curiosity, do you move your hands a lot when talking? A coworker uses his Fitbit daily, but has mentioned that it falsely reads his arm movements when he talks (which he does a lot of hand waving and other movements).
I worked a physical job, stocking books and filling book orders for a summer while in college[1]. I used a pedometer and rarely went much above 10k steps (for the 8 hour shift anyway). That's walking basically for 8 hours straight (with stops to place or grab a book).
[1] - not my only physical job, but the one I walked the most, and the only one I ever had a pedometer on.
> I worked a physical job, stocking books and filling book orders for a summer while in college[1]. I used a pedometer and rarely went much above 10k steps (for the 8 hour shift anyway). That's walking basically for 8 hours straight (with stops to place or grab a book).
Despite how it might subjectively seem, its not anything even approximately like walking 8 hours straight if you don't get over 10k steps; a fairly average walking pace is ~80 steps per minute, for 8 hours that works out to 38,400 steps.
> 8,700 daily steps is a lot...it implies a conscious effort to exercise
Well, yeah, you'd kind of expect that with active Fitbit users.
> so I wouldn't expect a significant drop with the weather.
I would, though I'd expect it to be less than you'd see from more casual people. Conscious effort doesn't completely negate the effects of convenient opportunities vs. adverse conditions.
How often do you really get -40 plus significant wind chill anywhere in the world. Even your traditional 'cold' cities rarely see temperatures below -25C (-13F).
I'd venture that anything down, say -10C (15F), assuming moderate wind, doesn't cause much real problem for walking.
If you want the least pleasant weather for walking I'd say half a degree above freezing and pouring rain wins every time.
Walking outdoors helps my creativity in winter in Minnesota. I think walking in a place with more varied seasons may help creativity even more than walking in a place where the scenery and foliage always look much the same. I enjoy seeing the seasonal changes here.
Novosibirsk in January has an average low temperature of -21C/-6F:
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Novosibirsk
Winnipeg is about the same:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnipeg#Climate
In fact, 'Temperatures do occasionally drop below −40.0 °C (−40 °F) but this has become quite rare in the last few decades and has in fact not occurred since February 2007.'
Which suggests that -40 with windchill is a relatively uncommon condition.
A half-hour walk in 20F weather is perfectly comfortable with decent clothing (an insulated jacket, wool socks, long johns under one's pants, a scarf), and that's about as cold as it gets in most of the inhabited world.
On the other hand, a walk in California can be pretty uncomfortable due to the beating sun & high-speed traffic situation in many areas.
> Which suggests that -40 with windchill is a relatively uncommon condition
-40 is uncommon, but "-40 with windchill" can mean something different. In Canada it's common to report the temperature along with a lower number that takes wind chill into account. Thus a weather reporter might say, "-25 (Celsius), -40 with wind chill", meaning it's windy enough that if you go out walking it'll feel like -40 and the creativity won't exactly flow.
This became standard about a generation ago. I believe they started doing it to alert people to the risk of frostbite. But every time I hear it I can't help thinking that previous generations of Canadians would look down their possibly frostbitten noses at us for weakness.
I also find icy cold wintertime walks to be incredibly satisfying–especially during a snow storm. The hush of freshly fallen snow is magical. All of the people and cars have retreated inside, it's just you and the snow crunching underfoot, the cold air stinging your cheeks, sounds around muffled by the snow. Absolutely my favorite time to walk and think.
it might be pop sci, but the explanation I heard long time ago is:
creativity is boosted by beta brain waves, (associated with daydreaming)
Physical activities that don't fully engage your brain (walking, exercising, taking a shower, etc..) increment beta waves.
On the other hand, increased focus and alertness, is associated with alpha waves, coffee produces that effect thus reduces your creativity
This made me think that perhaps part of the reason adults seem to often be less creative than young children is due to how little movement adults often do during the day at their jobs. Maybe we've been impeding ourselves by how much more of a sedentary lifestyle we live from sitting at a desk all day, to sitting in a car, to sitting to eat, to sitting to watch tv, etc.. If you could prove that the increased creativity leads to increased productivity, you might start seeing startups pushing for people to take walks whenever they hit a snag.
> adults seem to often be less creative than young children
I think there are a number of reasons for this. I don't have a lot of time to write it all out here, and I would like to get my thoughts more focused on the whole subject before I write too much but here are a few reasons that I think lead to a so-called loss of creativity.
Inactivity and stress leads to a whole host of issues, which I think loss of creativity is a side effect of. I suffered a severe loss of creativity during my early to late 20s. I attribute this to high stress, too much work, and a loss of focus. Also depression didn't help at all.
Inactivity and stress makes you feel like crap. So does depression. I would go through bursts of creativity even at my low points, but I could never finish anything I started. Depression would always make me fail. Learning to live with depression, getting rid of my stress and focusing in hard on the things I want to make has boosted me to (what at least feels like) a whole new creative level.
I think people lose their creative focus. They forget the reason for creating in the first place and so they see no reason to remain creative perhaps, or they can't see whatever it may be they enjoy creating panning out into a profitable business, so they stop. They allow social norms to smash their creativity at various critical stages in their life perhaps. Some parents are pretty down on creativity as well. Society as a whole celebrates people who think differently, but in day to day life the people you encounter openly show their disapproval (if you speak your mind).
If you don't practice your creativity, study techniques, test yourself, fail at whatever you're doing and learn from your mistakes (just like literally everything else) you will end up "losing" your creativity... though I like to think that some people who were "creative" never really found it in the first place. They perhaps started down the right path, and then abandoned it, like a child who gives up on reading.
During my youth (I can remember as young as 5ish but I have one story saved which i wrote at age "3 1/2") I created things nearly every day. I have piles of papers saved from nearly every stage of my life, be they sketches, doodles, or something more. Most of it is unfinished and pretty much rubbish. I like to look at that pile of garbage and compare it to what I have now (just like I do with the stuff I made a few years or months ago).
I think that kids are just less inhibited, are able to make weird connections because they don't know how the world works (this can be simulated though, so don't despair), have less stress, less obligations, have more time, are healthier and more active like you said.
Another thing I think also kills creativity is obligations. Jobs. Deadlines, things you have to do soon "or else" - be it in private or work life.
As a kid I could spend hours or days (or, during summer, even weeks) doing whatever it is I was interested at the moment - be it playing games, writing code or drawing things. I could go easy and take as much time as creativity requires. If I fail, no problem. There was always tomorrow afternoon. There was always next Saturday.
As an adult, I can no longer do that. There's tons of obligation, and every scrap of free time I have must be allocated well. I feel this pressure to be immediately successful, immediately rewarded, because there's very little time left in between errands and having to get some sleep.
This pressure is what I think makes people just not bother. Not think creative thoughts, because there won't be time to do anything with them anyway. There's this bit of "statistics" floating around the Internet, that "Americans [or other first-worlders] spend on average 4 hours a day in front of TV". If only they could channel that time into something creative... Except they can't. Because when you come home tired, your willpower drained at work, after you're done with your chores, for many drinking beer and watching a movie (or reading a book; somehow, no one ever says reading books is a waste of time) is the only reasonable way to wind down. Because you don't have to commit. You don't have to allocate time, worry that you won't have enough of it. You just sit down and enjoy the show, and then repeat the loop 'till you retire.
Obligations and also the expectation of "intention". Just doing things without intending to become an expert of it or using it for some sort of more "purposeful" purpose has become so rare.
Agreed - I have spent the last 3 years working from home making very little money but educating myself on the various gaps in my education so that I could make modern video games. Money has gotten really tight a few times but I've managed to survive along with my girlfriend on a very small income. We put almost all of our free time into learning game development for the sake of learning something new, but with the goal to produce an independent commercial game. After I found a way to get rid of most of my obligations I was able to pursue this as a life path.
The difficulty is reversing the impact of stagnation on a mind and body. It takes time and varying levels of support depending on how rigid a person and their life has become - whether someone started to get stuck during childhood or later. Properly applied preventative and proactive health I feel are the solution for this.
Yes, and while we're being creative, perhaps we can think of a way to solve the problem of increasing productivity while never seeing the benefit of any of it.
I was under the impression that the major reason for the difference in creativity between children and adults was due to synaptic pruning. Children learn much easier, and adults are better/faster at using what they've learned. It's an evolutionary trade-off.
Perhaps a boost in creativity isn't solely restricted to walking but other activities which don't involve the task at hand (as others have mentioned)?
For example, even doing a simple crossword puzzle to distract yourself may boost your creativity vs concentrating solely on trying to do something 'creative'.
I highly recommend Professor Richard Wiseman's book: '59 Seconds: Think a little, change a lot' which references some studies involving topics similar to this.
When I'm wrestling with a problem I'll sometimes go outside and pace back and forth in my yard. Pacing has been a habit of mine since I was a kid, I remember doing it one time my mom told me "stop pacing, you're making me nervous."
As an adult I love walking, I feel that it's when I can think the clearest. And as an adult I still pace, especially at the gym when I'm resting before my next set.
Now I'm starting to wonder about myself. Anyways, go on walks!
My most productive day of coding ever was the day I took a day off work and went for a 10 mile walk through London. Whenever I got stuck I would shut the laptop and walk. Eventually, the answer would come to me while walking and I'd carry on coding. I think I spent about 2.5 hours coding and the rest of the day walking.
It's just a shame it was a) closed source and b) I didn't get paid for it!
I've been a remote worker for the past ten years. If I'm on the phone, I'm up walking around the neighborhood because it helps me to think clearly while talking but also it gives me an excuse to get out of my chair. Unfortunately, more and more groups want to video conference which is annoying because I can't really do that while on the move.
Intuitively I do this all the time. Whenever I have pressing life questions I go on a walk and from time to time think about the options I can take. I find for myself that it's easier to see the bigger picture than when I'm sitting. Perhaps it's also that the analogy of moving forward in life and moving forward in real-time helps.
In the case of this study, I'd guess that walking excites the supplementary, pre-motor and the motor cortex, as well as some attentional processes devoted to it from the prefrontal cortex (PFC) compared to just sitting. If this is the case, then I have two hypotheses why this works. (1) Because the motor cortices are involved, the PFC are easier excited as well. (2) Since some attentional processes are devoted to walking it's easier to think in a divergent manner, because there's less conscious and sub-conscious room for convergent thinking.
I don't know how to test hypothesis 1, but hypothesis 2 has probably already been tested in cognitive science (I just didn't look it up). Reports where people get distractor tasks in the experimental group and a similar task as the main task in the control group probably exists.
84 comments
[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 134 ms ] threadBut why was this posted 3 times today?
Completely a co-incidence for me. Yesterday, I had a discussion with some friends about creative process and how I like long walks. Today, I saw this 2014 article on my Twitter TL. Hence, the share.
In the 19th century everyone knew that you could determine if someone was a criminal by studying the shape of their skull.
This little line came out nowhere, hah! Well done. Thank you for sharing this.
[1]http://theartofcharm.com/podcast-episodes/olivia-fox-cabane-...
I can pretty much set myself up for the work that day in the morning thinking through issues very deeply. In the evening, I find it clears my head and lets me think around any issues I've had during the day or just get myself prepped for any side projects I'm working on that evening.
I like the idea of a walking meeting however the dynamics of having 5 people walk together and be able to have good conversations might not work. I'm guessing 2-3 people maximum would work.
How does this relate to standing desks? Standing desks with treadmills underneath them? ;)
Did this improve the discussion? Who knows, but it certainly was nice to get outside and have a reason to walk around.
These studies put "that which we already know" on a testable basis and also allow us to look at the underlying mechanisms, often we find that the underlying mechanism is counter-intuitive to our assumptions (this is often the case, the universe rarely works the way we'd expect) so dismissing it with "Of course, we knew that" is frequently wrong.
You say "eating well is good for your health" but of course eating well is predicated on knowing which things to eat for health and how do we know that via studies on human nutrition of course!.
> The cognitive tests were more demanding, designed to measure practical aspects of cognition, such as working memory and delayed recall, and the ability to concentrate, all of which are important in performing office work. In one of these tests, volunteers had to learn and later recall lists of words; in another, they were asked to juggle lists of numbers and add them up in their heads even as new numbers were added to the list...
> The results, when the researchers compared the treadmill walkers with the people sitting at their desks, substantially favored sitting. The people who had walked during the testing performed worse on almost all aspects of thinking, including the ability to concentrate and remember, compared with those who had been seated.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/10/the-downside-of-tre...
> None of the participants had used a treadmill desk before, so they received a few minutes of instruction and practice
A few minutes? Jeez, I'd expect that getting acclimated to a completely different way to work would take at least several weeks or months.
https://blog.fitbit.com/50-states-no-excuses-see-which-state...
I worked a physical job, stocking books and filling book orders for a summer while in college[1]. I used a pedometer and rarely went much above 10k steps (for the 8 hour shift anyway). That's walking basically for 8 hours straight (with stops to place or grab a book).
[1] - not my only physical job, but the one I walked the most, and the only one I ever had a pedometer on.
Despite how it might subjectively seem, its not anything even approximately like walking 8 hours straight if you don't get over 10k steps; a fairly average walking pace is ~80 steps per minute, for 8 hours that works out to 38,400 steps.
Well, yeah, you'd kind of expect that with active Fitbit users.
> so I wouldn't expect a significant drop with the weather.
I would, though I'd expect it to be less than you'd see from more casual people. Conscious effort doesn't completely negate the effects of convenient opportunities vs. adverse conditions.
I'd venture that anything down, say -10C (15F), assuming moderate wind, doesn't cause much real problem for walking.
If you want the least pleasant weather for walking I'd say half a degree above freezing and pouring rain wins every time.
Which suggests that -40 with windchill is a relatively uncommon condition.
A half-hour walk in 20F weather is perfectly comfortable with decent clothing (an insulated jacket, wool socks, long johns under one's pants, a scarf), and that's about as cold as it gets in most of the inhabited world.
On the other hand, a walk in California can be pretty uncomfortable due to the beating sun & high-speed traffic situation in many areas.
-40 is uncommon, but "-40 with windchill" can mean something different. In Canada it's common to report the temperature along with a lower number that takes wind chill into account. Thus a weather reporter might say, "-25 (Celsius), -40 with wind chill", meaning it's windy enough that if you go out walking it'll feel like -40 and the creativity won't exactly flow.
This became standard about a generation ago. I believe they started doing it to alert people to the risk of frostbite. But every time I hear it I can't help thinking that previous generations of Canadians would look down their possibly frostbitten noses at us for weakness.
"No such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing." (Swedish saying I was told)
People who want to be outside have good boots and down-filled parkas.
And he also notes that two of the worst environments for the brain are: (1) the office (2) the classroom
I think there are a number of reasons for this. I don't have a lot of time to write it all out here, and I would like to get my thoughts more focused on the whole subject before I write too much but here are a few reasons that I think lead to a so-called loss of creativity.
Inactivity and stress leads to a whole host of issues, which I think loss of creativity is a side effect of. I suffered a severe loss of creativity during my early to late 20s. I attribute this to high stress, too much work, and a loss of focus. Also depression didn't help at all.
Inactivity and stress makes you feel like crap. So does depression. I would go through bursts of creativity even at my low points, but I could never finish anything I started. Depression would always make me fail. Learning to live with depression, getting rid of my stress and focusing in hard on the things I want to make has boosted me to (what at least feels like) a whole new creative level.
I think people lose their creative focus. They forget the reason for creating in the first place and so they see no reason to remain creative perhaps, or they can't see whatever it may be they enjoy creating panning out into a profitable business, so they stop. They allow social norms to smash their creativity at various critical stages in their life perhaps. Some parents are pretty down on creativity as well. Society as a whole celebrates people who think differently, but in day to day life the people you encounter openly show their disapproval (if you speak your mind).
If you don't practice your creativity, study techniques, test yourself, fail at whatever you're doing and learn from your mistakes (just like literally everything else) you will end up "losing" your creativity... though I like to think that some people who were "creative" never really found it in the first place. They perhaps started down the right path, and then abandoned it, like a child who gives up on reading. During my youth (I can remember as young as 5ish but I have one story saved which i wrote at age "3 1/2") I created things nearly every day. I have piles of papers saved from nearly every stage of my life, be they sketches, doodles, or something more. Most of it is unfinished and pretty much rubbish. I like to look at that pile of garbage and compare it to what I have now (just like I do with the stuff I made a few years or months ago).
I think that kids are just less inhibited, are able to make weird connections because they don't know how the world works (this can be simulated though, so don't despair), have less stress, less obligations, have more time, are healthier and more active like you said.
As a kid I could spend hours or days (or, during summer, even weeks) doing whatever it is I was interested at the moment - be it playing games, writing code or drawing things. I could go easy and take as much time as creativity requires. If I fail, no problem. There was always tomorrow afternoon. There was always next Saturday.
As an adult, I can no longer do that. There's tons of obligation, and every scrap of free time I have must be allocated well. I feel this pressure to be immediately successful, immediately rewarded, because there's very little time left in between errands and having to get some sleep.
This pressure is what I think makes people just not bother. Not think creative thoughts, because there won't be time to do anything with them anyway. There's this bit of "statistics" floating around the Internet, that "Americans [or other first-worlders] spend on average 4 hours a day in front of TV". If only they could channel that time into something creative... Except they can't. Because when you come home tired, your willpower drained at work, after you're done with your chores, for many drinking beer and watching a movie (or reading a book; somehow, no one ever says reading books is a waste of time) is the only reasonable way to wind down. Because you don't have to commit. You don't have to allocate time, worry that you won't have enough of it. You just sit down and enjoy the show, and then repeat the loop 'till you retire.
/rant
As an adult I love walking, I feel that it's when I can think the clearest. And as an adult I still pace, especially at the gym when I'm resting before my next set.
Now I'm starting to wonder about myself. Anyways, go on walks!
It's just a shame it was a) closed source and b) I didn't get paid for it!
Strangely enough I saw a similar tool that Facebook built being demoed at a meetup this week. Theirs was much nicer-looking (mine was text only).
I enjoy writing time-saving tools, but now I try and profit from it myself.
In the case of this study, I'd guess that walking excites the supplementary, pre-motor and the motor cortex, as well as some attentional processes devoted to it from the prefrontal cortex (PFC) compared to just sitting. If this is the case, then I have two hypotheses why this works. (1) Because the motor cortices are involved, the PFC are easier excited as well. (2) Since some attentional processes are devoted to walking it's easier to think in a divergent manner, because there's less conscious and sub-conscious room for convergent thinking.
I don't know how to test hypothesis 1, but hypothesis 2 has probably already been tested in cognitive science (I just didn't look it up). Reports where people get distractor tasks in the experimental group and a similar task as the main task in the control group probably exists.
What do you think?