Rediscovering the Creative Benefits of Walking
Paredes que gritan. Eduardo Sánchez. Downloaded from Unsplash and cropped slightly.
I love to walk and, like many people, have learned through experience that walking can be a great way to become creatively unstuck. But sometimes I need reminding. I all but stopped walking when the pandemic hit. For the first couple months, we were not allowed outside here in Barcelona, except for tense trips to the grocery store. And once we were allowed out (initially at prescribed times), walking in my urban neighborhood was more stressful than relaxing for me. Then, just as we were getting used to donning masks and figuring out how to keep our eyeglasses from fogging, the Barcelona summer heat and humidity hit, which made walking around with a mandated mask like having your face stuck in a cramped sauna.
With the recent sudden shift in the weather toward something more like autumn, I have once again been getting outside just for the enjoyment of walking. And I have learned – all over again – that walking is great for clearing my head and sparking ideas. Now that I’m getting back into the habit of walking, my inner scientist is wondering what it is about walking that seems to boost creativity. Is it the exercise? Being outdoors? Or simply the act of taking a mental break?
Green light – go. Waldemar Brandt. Downloaded from Unsplash and cropped.
Some Science Behind Walking and Creativity
A study done several years ago by Marily Oppezzo and Daniel Schwartz at Stanford University sheds some light on these questions. These researchers did four small studies that measured how well people did on creativity tasks during a variety of scenarios – including while seated, while walking indoors on a treadmill, while walking outdoors, and while being pushed in a wheelchair outdoors. They found that walking gave a huge boost to participants’ ability to come up with creative ideas. One of the measures that walkers scored much higher on, for example, borrowed from a standard improv theater game and involved coming up with as many atypical uses as possible for a common object, like a button.
What surprised me, was that even walkers on a treadmill facing a blank wall got a big boost in creativity (although not as big as the outdoor walkers). People sitting in a wheelchair and being pushed outdoors did better on the creativity tasks than people sitting inside, but not as well as the indoor walkers and not nearly as well as the outdoor walkers.
What’s more, the boost in creativity from walking lasted even after the walk was over. This is good news for artists, writers, students or anyone else who depends on creativity and idea generation because it means that we can continue to reap the benefits of a walk once we are back home or in the studio.
People and their shadows. Inbal Marilli. Downloaded from Unsplash and cropped slightly.
What’s Going On?
Walking seems to have an immediate benefit when it comes to creativity. Specifically, walking boosts the kind of free-flowing, non-linear thinking that we associate with brainstorming or “thinking outside the box.” It does not, however, necessarily boost other kinds of thinking, like coming up with correct answers to questions. Another study measure, for example, asked participants to come up with the single word that combines with three other words (for example, the word “cheese” for “cottage – Swiss – cake”); On this test, walkers actually performed slightly worse than sitters.
The type of walking also seems to matter. Robert Patterson and colleagues at the University of Mississippi found that “acute” walking, which in this experiment meant walking on a treadmill for 15 minutes at a “late to class” pace rather than a “leisurely” pace, improved neither creative free-flowing thinking nor the “correct answer” type of thinking. Apparently, the mental focus that was required to keep up the more intense walking pace didn’t leave enough room in the head for the type of “mind-wandering” that underlies creativity. This helps explain why I often experience a free-flow of ideas while on a stroll by myself, but not necessarily while taking a quick focused walk to the shops or while social walking and chatting.
Tea’s me. William Moreland. Downloaded from Unsplash and cropped slightly.
Small Experiments
For me, these studies raise as many questions as they answer. Will any type of mild exercise that leaves enough space in the head for the free flow of ideas give a boost to creativity? Would, for example, swimming, or pushing one’s own wheelchair have the same effect? Is there something about the rhythmic aspect of walking? Are there certain environments that are better than others at getting the creative juices flowing? Or is exercise not, in fact, the important factor. Could you get a similar creative boost from doing other physical activities that allow the mind to roam free – like knitting or sweeping?
Luckily, we don’t have to wait for science to catch up with us on these questions. We can do our own small experiments to see what works for us personally. (Keep your eye out for a future post with more on doing small experiments in and out of the studio.) Do I need to take a full-fledged walk when I hit a creative block, or could some light stretching on the terrace do the trick? Can I get a micro-creativity boost in 10 minutes or do I need to invest more time?
I’m also going to experiment with ways to get myself walking when I need it. Paradoxically, I find that when I’m most creatively stuck, I’m least likely to do something about it. Instead, I tend to get grumpy which makes me even more inclined to keep pounding away at whatever is not working. Maybe something as simple as putting a sign on my studio wall that asks, “Time for a walk?” would help me pause for a mid-day creativity intervention.
What do you do to get your creative juices flowing? What have you learned from your own small experiments? I’d love to hear!
