Ep 263 | Want to be More Creative? Go For a Walk

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick and welcome to the No Days Off podcast where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Let's get into it today. I want to talk about health and I want to do so by discussing a Stanford study done about a decade ago. That proved that walking improves creativity and why we should all maybe start walking a little bit more, have the byproduct that is, you know, being more active, maybe burning a bit more calories, you know, not being stagnant, not sitting, you know, the health benefit of that and also the mental health benefit that comes with creativity. So Stanford researchers found as I mentioned, that walking boosts creative inspiration. What they did was examine the creative levels of people while they walked versus while they sat. And what it, what it found, what the study found at Stanford was a person's creative output increased by an average of 60% when walking. Now, what prompted them to even look into this? There've been an awful lot of stories or I guess studies, I should say, around cognitive ability and how exercise impacts cognitive ability, but no one had ever studied creativity as it pertains to just movement or walking. And you gotta remember, about a decade ago, you know, there was focus on Steve Jobs, who unfortunately just recently passed at the time, but Jobs, co-founder of Apple, was known for having walking meetings. And Facebook, you know, Zuckerberg had been seen holding meetings on foot. And a lot of Silicon Valley kind of picked up on this practice following Jobs and following Zuckerberg. And so you saw a lot of these meetings being held by foot around the Google campus and Apple campus and Facebook campus, all these places. And so Stanford, of course, being up that way, does some research, does a study. And so what they found was an explanation for maybe the, the positive results that were coming out of these meetings. Creative thinking apparently improves while a person is walking. And then shortly thereafter, according to this study, the study found that walking indoors or outdoors similarly boosted creative inspiration. So I know my, my thought prior to reading the study was, or just reading the headline was, Okay, if you're walking, great. And if you're walking outside in the sun, I bet there's even more creative inspiration. The study actually didn't find that. It was the act of walking itself and not the environment that was the main factor. So across the board, creativity levels were consistently and significantly higher for those walking in comparison to those sitting. Uh, as I mentioned, we've always studied kind of how aerobic exercise protects against long-term cognitive function. But until this study, uh, there, there did not appear to be a study that specifically examined the effect of non-aerobic walking. So again, walking indoors, maybe on a treadmill in a room facing a blank wall, or walking outdoors in the fresh air, those two things, like those actions, just walking, produce twice as many creative responses compared to a person sitting down. So how do they go about doing this? They actually went through 4 experiments involving 176 college students and other adults who completed tasks commonly used by researchers to gauge creative thinking. They were placed in different conditions: walking indoors on, on a treadmill, or sitting indoors, maybe both facing a blank wall. Maybe it's walking outdoors or sitting outdoors while being pushed in a wheelchair on a predetermined path. I mean, they really got creative with respect to how they were going to test this and determine it. And researchers just found that different combinations, such as maybe 2 consecutive seated sessions or a walking session followed by a seated one— these things were also compared. And no matter how they spun it, walking produced more creative results. 3 of the experiments relied on what they were calling divergent thinking, a divergent thinking creativity test. Divergent thinking is a thought process or a method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions. So maybe participants had to think of alternative uses for a given object, or they had to think of an alternative explanation for something that was given to them. Again, those that were walking came up with dramatically more creative solutions than those that were in fact sitting. The fourth test— three out of the four tests uses divergent, divergent thinking. The fourth experiment evaluated creative output by measuring a person's ability to generate analogies, complex analogies to certain phrases. Again, The more complex analogies that got greater or more creative responses came from those that were in fact walking versus those that were sitting. I think this is a huge discovery. I really do. And again, the health— health is the focus here today. What am I trying to encourage us all to do? If we want to be more creative, we need to get up and walk. And again, if you're going to pace around your office, are you going to pace outside? I'm always going to aim to pace outside. No matter what this study tells me, there's going to be benefit in other way to me walking outside in the sun if you're in a place where you have that. But just the simple fact of moving, walking, pacing around leads to more creativity and just more movement is going to be better for your health than sitting stagnant for 8 hours. There are days that I have where I am actually headset on, pacing around for hours at a time. And I may be pacing in circles, but that movement is creating more creativity, is generating more creativity for me. And I'm accumulating just activity. I'm accumulating steps. Now, there was no link with respect to walking or sitting, this analysis, there was no link to focus thinking. So while the studies showed that walking benefited creative brainstorming, it did not necessarily have a positive effect, effect on the kind of focused thinking required for single correct answers. Whether you were sitting or you were, or you were walking, that was pretty much the same result there. So when you had to have focused thinking, there was no change. This is about Creativity. So the focusing question for you today, when you have to be creative, when you're looking to be more creative, how can you stand up from the desk and start to walk? You know, when is this appropriate? I know some of you, you know, listening to the No Days Off podcast, you have these treadmills at your desk. You know, given this research, if you're moving, you might be a bit more creative. Now I would guess if you're walking on a treadmill and typing at the same time, you probably lose some of the creative flow that's occurring here. But point being, how or when can you implement this strategy? I want to encourage you today, now that you've listened to this podcast, I want you— I want to encourage you today, to get up from your desk and walk. Maybe it's for a call that you've got to be a bit more creative around. Maybe you're looking to come up with some creative solutions and you need some thinking time. I'm a— you hear me say it all the time here at No Days Off. I always use this, this reference to the whiteboard and a marker in hand. Sit, you know, sit in front of a whiteboard, have that marker in hand and brainstorm. And while I love that exercise, I might say, you know what, How about we go for a walk with a notepad or go for a walk with our, with our notes function on our iPhone? How can we take advantage of that today and both benefit our mind from a creative standpoint and our health from an activity standpoint? That's all I have for you today. The No Days Off podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.