The blog

For you who prefer listening to reading, this post is also available as an episode of the ""Done!"" podcast:

Walk your­self creative

In a study pub­lished in April 2014, they con­duct­ed a series of exper­i­ments to inves­ti­gate the impact of walk­ing on our cre­ative abil­i­ty. Par­tic­i­pants were asked to com­plete two types of tests, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing as many inno­v­a­tive and cre­ative uses as pos­si­ble for every­day items. They com­plet­ed the tests while sit­ting, walk­ing indoors, and walk­ing outdoors.

So, how did it go? Well, it turned out that par­tic­i­pants per­formed bet­ter on the cre­ativ­i­ty tests while walk­ing than when sit­ting. They also per­formed bet­ter on the tests when sit­ting down, pro­vid­ed they had walked for a while before­hand. When they walked out­doors (instead of on a tread­mill indoors), they per­formed best of all!

So, judg­ing by what the study (which was report­ed­ly sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant) revealed, tak­ing a walk helps boost your cre­ative abil­i­ty when you’re try­ing to solve a tricky problem.

Do this

Next time you’re stuck and need to see new possibilities,

1. Get up and go for a walk.
2. Take your prob­lem with you so you have some­thing con­crete to ponder.
3. Wan­der aim­less­ly until you feel you’ve gath­ered enough new mate­r­i­al to work with — or decide to do a cou­ple of laps around the block and trust that the effect of walk­ing will linger when you sit down to con­tin­ue the task.
4. Be ready to cap­ture your ideas. Record a voice memo for your­self, jot them down in your favorite note-tak­ing app on your phone, or scrib­ble them on a slip of paper you’ve brought in your pocket.

Is this ​“eas­i­er said than done” for some­one who seem­ing­ly con­trols their own sched­ule, but hard for you with a full cal­en­dar? Don’t have time to walk around dur­ing the day? Maybe so — but being stuck on a tan­gled task takes up more of your pre­cious time than doing some­thing that gets your ideas flowing.

If noth­ing else, take an extra walk at the end of your lunch break so you return to work fresh­ly ​“walked” and full of ideas!

A way to spark momentum

If you go for a walk when you need new ideas about a prob­lem you’re wrestling with, you’re more like­ly to break through, accord­ing to the study above. Instead of watch­ing the time fly by as your stress mounts and you’re still stuck, you’re doing some­thing that looks like a break, but actu­al­ly gives you a much-need­ed boost forward.

What about you?

What tricks do you use to get new ideas when you’re stuck? Please write to me and share. Hear­ing about sim­ple tricks like these makes me hap­py, so I’m curi­ous about what works for you.

(Speak­ing of the out­doors. Feel free to read about this inter­est­ing exper­i­ment: Enjoy nature and make few­er mis­takes)