Another great thing about "walking around with a problem" is that it forces you to think before acting -- since you can't act until you get back to your desk. You know those moments when you're in the thick of coding, and you suddenly realize that one detail which you had thought would be easy, is in fact going to force you to rip up a bunch of code? I make it a rule, at that moment, to stand up and go for a walk. Often, by the time I get back, I've found a better solution.
> you suddenly realize that one detail which you had thought would be easy, is in fact going to force you to rip up a bunch of code? I make it a rule, at that moment, to stand up and go for a walk.
This is why I like drinking water a lot. It forces me to get up away from my desk to fill my glass, and then to go to the bathroom. I've had lots of cases where I found better solutions in front of a urinal (forgive the imagery) than in front of a monitor because I felt like I eliminated a lot of irrelevant data that helped me see more clearly what the better solution was.
> Often, by the time I get back, I've found a better solution.
Yet, the article says:
While the study showed that walking benefited creative brainstorming, it did not have a positive effect on the kind of focused thinking required for single, correct answers. [...]
Productive creativity involves a series of steps – from idea generation to execution – and the research, Oppezzo said, demonstrated that the benefits of walking applied to the "divergent" element of creative thinking, but not to the more "convergent" or focused thinking characteristic of insight.
"There's work to be done to find out the causal mechanisms," Schwartz said.
Hmm. Perhaps, for the scenario I'm describing, the key is simply to get away from my desk (and thus, away from heat-of-the-moment coding). The actual walking around might be irrelevant or worse. I could believe that... though the walk does have other benefits, unrelated to the immediate task at hand.
I very much agree. When that happens to me, it's usually because I'm thinking about the issue in the wrong way because of how I have read (or perceived) the code and how I think the code should be. Wrong notions, assumptions, etc. Getting away from the code, allows me to carefully focus only on the problem. Then things become clear.
In an extremely perverse way, this is why smoking "feels" like it helps creativity. All of the same mechanisms and benefits apply as walking + a bit of stimulation via nicotine. Of course, the health hazards make this a crappy technique, and it would be healthier just to go out for a stroll. But this boost is definitely a part of the addiction (among other things), which makes the habit that much harder to kick once started among creative types (they feel like they are losing more than just the nicotine).
Not just lose the nicotine, I would lose my mind or would need to take a pharmaceutical...better, right? I quit for seven months and not a second of the day or night was I not jonesing for nicotine. I am an addict, my mom quit 20 years ago and got breast cancer last year, my 93yo grandfather is one & his deceased 92yo father was one(neither ever stepped foot in a hospital). Our genes seem to abide the smoking, the other things we all have in common is we never stop moving...well except for great grampa that one fateful day he never got up to fill his pipe. If I too last until I'm 90, yay! If not, so what? Nobody gets out alive & I'm going to live well until the end. The 7 billion of the rest of you will have to go on without me. Try to be strong.
Oh yeah, TFA: The pedometer on my phone tells me I walk 2.5+ miles a day... while smoking. My uncle was director of IT for Fortune 20 corp and does the same thing, he swears it is 'his process'. I concur, however, YMMV.
I'm collecting little stories like these to show my kids as they hit their teens.
Everyone does a few dumb things while they are teenagers. A frighteningly large number of teens (esp. here in France) start smoking. Choose something else, please!
It'd probably be better to get pregnant; we'll be here to help you stay in school etc., and having a kid can be quite a difficult commitment for a few years, but gradually gets easier. It will make some things harder in your life, but it won't generally shut many doors.
Starting smoking is a lifelong commitment that will never have a positive payoff beyond "hey a little buzz", has a decent chance of a fucking horrible cost (hello, young people with cancer) if you have the wrong genes, and relatively-horrible costs even if you don't (having a lower quality of life when you're old and dying younger, yes, but also the financial cost is staggering -- the cost of the cigarettes is just a bit of it; you'll pay more for health/homeowners/car/life insurance, everything you own and might re-sell will have lower value, if you start a fire like one of the hundreds of thousands of other smokers who do in any given year, you'll pay for that, etc.).
Or you may quit, and live the possibly-quite-unpleasant life of an addict who has quit their addiction. See above; it can suck intensely, and you will crumble, you will choose "worse life with" vs. "worse life without" and construct flimsy rationalizations around it, but the only winning move is not to play.
I lost two grandparents early to smoking-related illness/cancers, and I have a once-smoking friend who got lung cancer when she was 20, though she's still alive, so I can make sure they won't have any illusions about "the bad outcomes only happen to other people".
[huh, this didn't start as a rant, but it sure is one now.]
I cannot deny I wish I had never gotten hooked. That doesn't mean I do not care or am making flimsy excuses. I am personally responsible for every choice I make, whether I like the results or not. To benefit my health I live a very non-sedentary lifestyle, drink a liter of water every day(minimum, I live in a desert), eat fresh veggies and home prepared meals daily and rarely eat fast food as it makes me feel heavy & uncomfortable(same goes for chips, bakery sweets, candies, etc). I do not take any pharmaceuticals and do not smoke tailpipe exhaust commuting daily(which is worse?). When not working & walking/smoking on breaks, I am hiking desert washes and game trails. Oh yeah, I'm a butt nazi, too...just because the ignoramuses on the big screen do it, doesn't mean flicking butts is not littering and I couldn't live with myself if I caused a fire that destroyed my playground.
My point is, besides the cigs, the marketing department would label me a health nut...6'0" @ 165lbs and still able to carry 80lbs compressors up a ladder or stone a 2000sqft floor when I have off-time from the keyboard. Thanks to the cigs, this witch hunt has made me a 2nd class citizen all the while the majority benevolently deride me while eating big macs, popping 'good' pills to 'manage' their weight problems, idly watching their 'shows' while smoking equivalent fumes in their vehicles everyday.
PS: I had three schoolmates with cancer by 9th grade, none smoked, they just lived in N/W Indiana of which they had no choice(I was a transplant).
Edit: I NEVER smoke indoors, hate the stale cig smell more than most. My nose olfactory senses are still quite acute at 42yo.
How many months/years has your friend been smoking for?
I'm 23, and picked up smoking 5 months ago. I smoked heavily during this time period, but quit and went back to my healthy/athletic lifestyle. Stories like yours scare the hell out of me.
Then you'd better make sure you know your surroundings. In my building we've had quite a few of diseases, including a ~10 year old dying to brain tumors, attributed to a bad floor glue. At some point the social insurance paid the inhabitants the reconstruction costs to get rid of it. It's called "lepik asfaltowy" (asphalt glue-ish?) in Polish, there's no Wikipedia page for it in any other language.
Having seen a few people spend their (rapidly failing) final years with emphysema and related health complications due to smoking... I can't say that you'll live well to the end necessarily. I hope you avoid that fate, random internet stranger, but there are ways to improve your chances...
As I said in 1st post, I mitigate my risks as well as I know how. Check my 2nd rant above. Also, my step-father died a short battle with Endocratic cancer in 2012 @ 63yo. He smoked on tour in Nam for < 2years. 42 years later his death was attributed to 'tobacco', "Probably". The certificate actually had a check box for 'probably'.
Ignore, if you will, the agent orange, forget the smog, forget the crap he ate and his voluminous waistband or the fact that he sat in his chair for 8+hours a day after work and definitely forget the lacquers & paints he inhaled as a gifted cabinet maker for decades. It was the tobacco that killed him, says so on his death certificate.
Tried it, didn't do anything for me but dull the cravings and never for longer than 4 hours. I longed for the sensation of burning vegetable, the process of flicking the ashes, the laps I walk for the burn duration and the smell on my fingers.
Not proud of it, it just is.
Frankly, when I don't smoke, I also miss the social aspect of smoking. Whenever a smoke break is called, everyone stops what we're doing, gets up, goes outside, walks around a bit, bullshits and talks, and then heads back in refreshed. Half the time, it ends up being an excuse to do a quick walk around the park near us. I probably miss that more than I miss the actual smoking, and even after mostly "quitting", I'll still often go share a puff or two off someone's cig while we stand / walk and chat, just so I can get the social part, without as much of the actual smoke.
> Four experiments demonstrate that walking boosts creative ideation in real time and shortly after. In
Experiment 1, while seated and then when walking on a treadmill, adults completed Guilford’s alternate
uses (GAU) test of creative divergent thinking and the compound remote associates (CRA) test of
convergent thinking. Walking increased 81% of participants’ creativity on the GAU, but only increased
23% of participants’ scores for the CRA. In Experiment 2, participants completed the GAU when seated
and then walking, when walking and then seated, or when seated twice. Again, walking led to higher
GAU scores. Moreover, when seated after walking, participants exhibited a residual creative boost.
Experiment 3 generalized the prior effects to outdoor walking. Experiment 4 tested the effect of walking
on creative analogy generation. Participants sat inside, walked on a treadmill inside, walked outside, or
were rolled outside in a wheelchair. Walking outside produced the most novel and highest quality
analogies. The effects of outdoor stimulation and walking were separable. Walking opens up the free flow
of ideas, and it is a simple and robust solution to the goals of increasing creativity and increasing physical
activity.
I would link this to the relatively recent research that connected lactic acid, which is created with muscle use, acting as a neurotransmitter that works on motivational systems in the brain. You need motivation to be and maintain creativity. I am sure there are other factors here at play like using the body grounds oneself, pulls you out of your mind, and will allow you to "pull away" from certain stories - or pathways - that you've been deeply reenforcing by maintaining your focus on them.
Honestly, I think it's much more simpler than that. Walking is an alone activity, and almost forces your mind to wander with no goal in sight. Plus, the rhythmic stepping is almost like meditation.
When you use your body it interrupts certain depths of thinking some. So if you're in deep thought or stuck there, it will pull you out of those crevices. Movement basically helps break up thought, I feel especially when it's bilateral movement.
I do it a lot when programming. My ideal work environment would be an office in / near a forest and being able to take a walk to the forest whenever I feel the need to.
Get a programming job in the burbs. Yeah I know not very trendy, but you gotta live for yourself first and others later. Both my first and second real job were in suburban office parks with massive forest stands around the buildings to separate them, duck ponds, etc. Both formal garden-ish areas and informal trail areas. My third job (also suburban) was kitty corner to a city park full of picnic tables and wooded walking trails.
Currently I'm in a very extremely urban ___location, no place to park, loud heavy traffic, nothing green for a couple miles unless its a hyper manicured lawn covered in blowing garbage or a potted plant, panhandlers all over, garbage everywhere, super high crime (relatively). Other than that, its a good job, but I miss working in better more civilized environments.
If I would ever start a business, I'd love to create a work environment like this, the problem is, that the employees would have to spend more time and money travelling to work...
I live a couple hundred meters away from a large park. Not quite the same thing if you really want solitude, but still very nice for taking breaks and thinking.
Creativity or innovation - the icon for these two words is Steve Jobs, atleast in our contemporary. That's why I guess he was chosen as a primary example, so the audience would easily gel with the context of the study.
Anecdotally, walking outside in a city or forest seems to work better for me than a treadmill, though this study seems to indicate it shouldn't make a difference. Lots of confounders there I suppose.
Maybe specifically for creativity there's no difference but other things (mood etc) benefit from getting outside.
I would find walking in a city to be a barrier to creativity. You have to keep engaging your concious, safety brain to deal with other pedestrians, road crossings and immunize your brain from all the advertising and noise that is trying to penetrate.
The ideal walking for me is somewhere outside with fresh air, but without constant interruptions to the flow of walking and thinking.
Ideally you want to be able to walk alone, but in a type of daydream where you're thinking about the problem at hand instead of spending many cycles on the process of walking. That means covering a well known route with few interruptions.
Luckily for me I have access to this type of environment right near my front door. But for those who don't, a treadmill could offer a similar experience, but I suspect the treadmill needs to be a good space (light, airy room, nice outlook from a window).
My guess is that walking around a city or a forest is more helpful to creativity because of the gradual change in environment. And there is a lot of evidence environment has significant effects on thinking and behavior.
Other studies have found high ceilings are good for creativity while low ceilings have a negative effect on creativity. I would imagine walking outside without any ceiling would be as good or better than a space with high ceilings.
I think it has more to do with engaging all your senses with the complexity of a natural environment. Many layers of sound, sight, smell, touch that are supressed indoors.
A good experiment would be trying an urban track, like you'd see stereotypically at a high school or some parks. Then you'd have the extreme artificial urbanism, yet also have the lazy "just walk the path no interruptions" of a trail.
I also walk at lunch time, also whenever shifting gears during the day, and hike on the weekends on trails, and I don't find a huge difference.
I have never found that running or cycling worked nearly as well as walking. You can't lose yourself in thought in those activities -- too much alertness is required. Maybe a slow jog, or very slow bike ride, on a very smooth trail with no traffic of any kind would work, I don't know. But in general I haven't found these conducive.
What has worked very well for me, though, is 15 minutes of vigorous running followed by 60 - 90 minutes of walking.
It actually does work wonders. If I have a really difficult design problem, I'll take an hour walk on the trail and have it solved by the time I get home.
For me sleeping on a problem works too. Some times when I'm obsessed with something, it seems like my mind goes to work while I'm sleeping. I wake up and find myself with two or three different ways to approach the problem.
Track down a copy of An essay on the psychology of invention in the mathematical field by Jacques Hadamard. Hadamard was a mathematician, and he used 'introspection' to explore the springs of his own creativity and those of colleagues he interviewed. The results are entertaining in a quaint sort of way, but your experience is not unusual at all in the mathematical world.
Playing the "social butterfly" at work has been my cover, I swear. Still, I do two heart walks weather permitting each day spaced out while at work, these are quarter mile walks across the parking deck and back. Combine that with my visits which themselves spark my thoughts and I can see how just changing your surroundings wakes up parts of your mind.
I find I get creative ideas while driving home from work and while taking a shower. It's something about putting the clutch in on the mind while doing a rote task that releases the creative thought.
There once was a graduate level electrodynamics homework assignment that I waited* until 5-6 hours before the due time to start (it was due at 11:59 PM). An hour until, I found it so difficult that I gave up and decided to turn it in late. So, I left the physics building and walked to a 24 hour coffee shop for coffee, and as I walked, I thought about a particular problem, flipping the system around in my head. I then came across the solution midwalk. Of course, at that point, it was too late to finish it and submit it on time, but it shows how taking time to step back and relax can be conducive to thought as opposed to sharp focus. I find that focus is important when I already know what to do (I just have to just code it or I have to just calculate it) as opposed to _figuring_out_ what to do.
*I didn't wait until then out of negligence, I had enrolled in too many classes last semester and it became close to what I could handle.
Any act that gets you away from work for a while and allows your mind to wander is ultimately helpful. A long shower, a long walk, a long drive, interstitial spaces that give you time to think are invaluable.
I used to drive for about an hour to get to my former place of work, and I had time to think about things, whether they were related to a problem I was trying to solve or what haqppened to be on the radio at the time or the meanderings that usually lead to new ideas. While the job became increasingly unpleasant, I did enjoy those drives.
Acting on those ideas is key though, if you generate all these great ideas while you're on a constitutional but never do anything with them, how does that help your creative output?
It music circles, there's a rumor that Bach used to do most of his brain storming while walking. There may be something to it, he was one of the most prolific creatives in history and a great many of his works are played at a "walking tempo".
It seems like there is a less empirically measurable thing happening where a displaced sense of 'going somewhere' when walking gets pushed onto a different point of focus ( a creative project , problem , etc )
Just a thought about this. I wonder if the improved creative thinking has anything to do with increased heart bpm and blood flow to the brain that is stimulated by walking or other exercise. I noticed the article said "creative juices continued to flow even when a person sat back down shortly after a walk." Perhaps this could be because after a short while a person's heart rate will go back to resting bpm, and the brain blood flow will return to resting state levels.
No hard evidence on my part to back this up, just a thought.
You're probably on to an interesting idea. Another topic to google for is blood sugar and insulin levels immediately after exercising.
I once worked with a type-2 and a type-1 diabetic (not the same guy obviously) and as you'd expect with a control loop malfunction illness, both predictable and unpredictable effects were in play.
If I recall correctly the type-2 guy complained that his innards would release lots of glucose while exercising and continue shortly after but his insulin production (or response?) was not so good, so his blood sugar measurably spiked high after exercise while the type-1 had his drop unless he adjusted his dosages. Or perhaps it was the other way around wrt the type 1 guy and the type 2 guy.
Being a spectrum disease, I suspect even a "healthy" individual might have some peculiar short term changes to blood sugar and/or insulin levels.
What is interesting about this research is that, unlike in many psychological papers, the effect sizes are relatively large. That means that this research may actually have some practical consequences.
Although the authors do not report effect sizes directly it seems that, in many cases, walking shifted the distribution at least one standard deviation in a direction of higher creativity (that is a lot).
At the same time I wish the results were reported better, in many cases they do not even report the mean and standard deviation of different experimental groups.
That's interesting. Research has shown that alcohol increases creativity while caffeine increases efficiency. Alcohol is better for reducing inhibitions and thinking outside the box whereas caffeine temporarily increases blood flow thereby allowing you to more quickly breeze through permutations around decision making.
I am wondering how much this is related to oxygenating the brain better. I can't readily find a supporting link, but my understanding is you breathe best while walking (and I do a lot of walking these days -- I am supposed to have serious lung issues and mostly do not anymore).
I've always had a feeling about this and have always tried to fit a walk or a trip up/down the stairs after lunch. Walking is also a great walk to clear the mind after a long day of work or even after an intense discussion/argument, sort of like resetting your brain.
Well, from my anecdotal experience, running and cycling don't help (but running a bit will make walking later more powerful, and cycling very slowly can help). And yes, a podcast would prevent the effect.
Anyway, make your own opinion. It's a huge effect, you'll perceive it if you try. It's so big an effect that it's on folklore for as long as people started documenting such things.
"Thinking on your feet" allows you to not only be creative but also to be spontaneous so you can also apply new ideas in context. I'd be curious to know the optimal amount of walking needed/the inflection point at which there are marginal returns.
For me, it's work meetings. Whenever I'm in a meeting and something non-technical is being discussed my minds starts to wander, usually thinking about algorithms. This is quite dangerous in case you get called out on it, but I just can't help it.
I love the lack of distractions that comes with walking. You have nothing except your own thoughts and ideas; nothing to implement them with. Nothing to detract you from your own unmitigated thoughts.
Anecdotical (10+ years running experience). I've found that jogging at slow speeds (~6 MPH) has a similar effect creatively on me as walking does (2-4 MPH). Running at medium speeds (~8 MPH), I still notice an increase in creativity as long as I have enough energy in me, but it's a bit reduced than jogging. Running at high speeds (10+ MPH), things are so intense that my mind can only focus on breathing, running, and mind tricks to keep going, so creative thinking goes right out the door.
It would be interesting to see a scientific study done on it.
I wonder how this plays out in terms of long-term benefits. There's an established association between exercise and increased BDNF, but I don't think there's been any investigation as to if that effect is modulated by exercise intensity or longer than average duration.
I'd like to get a (passive) treadmill desk at some point for these reasons. I don't think I've ever found myself to be particularly creative on runs. I think I treat it too seriously, and when I'm not too serious, then I'm trying to be meditative with it or listening to nature. Interesting to hear other people's experiences.
I often have coding breakthroughs while on a run. Other reply is right though, I have these during my easy runs. I do not have coding breakthroughs during intervals or insane fast runs.
holy crap this is awesome. i remember when i was a reporter and i had writers block, i'd go walking around the block a bit. I'd always come back with an idea of where I wanted to take the story next. It's nice to see my 'home remedy' validated.
I don't see how this is even news, based on a lifetime of experiences. I have always favored walking meetings when just two or three people are involved.
I write a lot, in addition to coding, and taking walks on the trails behind our house (I live on the edge of national forest) is a daily practice. I like to think about problems, what to write about, etc.
I don't see how this is even news, based on a lifetime of experiences
Lots of people have a lifetime of experience to support that faith healing, astrology or homeopathic medicine works. Should we take their claims at face value as well or should we try to test them scientifically in a controlled manner?
For what it's worth I also love to walk and find that it helps my thinking, but I'm also willing to accept that anecdotes, personal or otherwise, aren't evidence of anything.
> I don't see how this is even news, based on a lifetime of experiences.
Like the article says:
"Many people anecdotally claim they do their best thinking when walking. We finally may be taking a step, or two, toward discovering why."
It's news because it's a scientific study into how walking makes people more creative, not whether. And it what ways: note how the study suggested that walking was better for some situations ("creative brainstorming") than others ("focused thinking").
Do you have any strategies for remembering what you come up with while you're out? Too many times I feel like I've had a great idea when I'm walking or hiking, only to sit down later and have no idea what it was. Or to not be able to access it in quite the same way.
Everybody should get a dog for this reason. I'm a student and I find I'm much more creative when I'm visiting home, either because I'm meant to be revising or because I can walk the dog.. I like to think the latter :)
Hm, do we need a study for that? IMHO goes without saying. It's a very well known technique in management when you have to make an important decision. To take a 30-40 minutes walk and concentrate on the issue, review your initial assumptions etc. I've heard it more than once from different management coaches. Of course it boosts creativity too.
