I’ve been a walker my whole life – walking to the Pak-a-Sak for a 10 cent Icee when I was a little kid, walking with my bestie discussing boys when I was in high school, walking in cities all over the world in my twenties, walking the hills in Athens and Atlanta, GA during grad school, and nowadays walking around my neighborhoods in Baton Rouge and New Orleans.
Walking is always my preference. A good walk clears my head and often I return to my desk with a problem solved or an idea for a new creation. And now there’s research supporting what I’ve always known – that walking enhances creativity. In a study conducted at Stanford, it was found that walking enhanced creativity based on two different measures.
The researchers, Oppezzo and Schwarz, put subjects in a variety of conditions including sitting, walking outdoors, and walking on a treadmill. Participants were then asked to generate novel ideas for using common objects or come up with a different but parallel metaphor to one given. The walkers performed significantly better than the sitters.
From a business standpoint, walking meetings should be an option whenever creative thinking is needed. And that’s pretty regularly in today’s business environment. Steve Jobs was known to have walking meetings as did Aristotle and Charles Dickens – all great thinkers.
In addition to boosting creativity, walking meetings also address health concerns related to sitting for too long. These are clearly illustrated in this attention-getting infographic. In her TED talk, Nilofer Merchant, calls sitting the smoking of our generation.
Definitely not good.
What do you think about walking and creativity? Share your thoughts in the comment section.
My goal is to write 30 blog posts in 30 days the month of September.
#30in30
Regularly, I receive emails that start with an apology for the delayed response. Usually, it’s only a day or two, maybe a week after my previous e-mail. Not long enough in my book to be a problem or warrant an apology. Once when I was teaching, a student complained about my slow response. I looked at our email correspondence and saw that I had replied to him in less than 24 hours!
Most people recognize the importance of their network these days because it’s pretty well understood that getting where you want to go is often about who you know.