Walking Boosts Creativity

If you want to boost your creativity, take a walk. There's a lot of evidence that walking is very, very good for stimulating the brain and stimulating creativity, and it's to do with your physiology because your heart's working a little bit harder, you're pumping more blood, and it stimulates the brain. Funnily enough, if you're running or doing something strenuous, you can't think of great ideas at the same time, but a lot of great writers and artists went for walks. Charles Dickens walked all through London and got inspiration for many of the characters and storylines in his novels. The poet William Wordsworth, it's reckoned he walked at least 6 or 7 miles every day in order to get inspiration for his poetry. There's a researcher called Marilee Orpezzo, and she and David Schwartz of Stanford University did some research where they studied creativity amongst people who walked and people who sat. The control group sat and the, the other group did a walk, and what they found was that people who went on the walk were much more creative and came up with better ideas. And this didn't just work when they were on the walk. after they came back and then sat down, they were still more creative than the people who sat down throughout the whole period. And a man called Mark Berman at the University of South Carolina found that people going on country walks were more creative than people who went on town walks, urban walks. So Marilee Oppezzo, if you search for her on YouTube, you'll find a very interesting TED Talk that she did. So if you've got a problem, lodge it. You're struggling with your talk or your poem or your song, and then go for a walk. And as the brain works on it in the subconscious, and then as you stimulate the brain through walking, you'll find you get more ideas. So that's a tip for you. When you want to be more creative, simply go for a walk. Right, I'm going to carry on with my walk now. See you later.