“Walking opens up the free flow of ideas, & it is a simple & robust solution to the goals of increasing creativity”
~ Marily Oppezzo and Daniel L. Schwartz, Stanford University
Walking is an excellent opportunity for creativity. Walking in the rain, even better! The added misty ambiance of the trails adds a certain kind of magic.
The rain intensifies everything around us, it’s all magnified. It’s like I imagine it would be after eating a mushroom. The rain washes all the gunk away and you see more vividly because the rain awakens. The bark on the trees is enhanced, more colourful; moss is juicy and plump; the air feels enriched and full, but all your thoughts have room to stretch out. Breathing in deeply inflates the cells of your mind. ALIVE. You might find a really astonishing rock on the ground, and take it home to find that later it looks like it’s soul evaporated once it was dry.
The marsh birds in the rain sing for glee only much louder. They too notice there’s less people around poking and proding, and sound is intensified. Feet crunching on the path, a flutter of spray hitting the reeds as the ducks paddle away from the bank of the marsh. The intense percussion of a gang of ducks on the path deciding my giant umbrella was the belly of a big black bear and leaping frantically into the air one after the other above the trees.
I set out on my walk around Buttertubs, deciding to loop it twice for pure sanity. The second loop was key! Suddenly my mind sputtered, and went into overdrive. Eureka! I’m on it! The idea that just splashed it’s way onto my rapidly firing neurons must now go forth into the world. As I walked, the thoughts snowballed. Rapid fire is right. I whipped out my phone so I could make a voice memo to myself. Yes, I am dork. I thought if this is like a dream you remember waking up to, it doesn’t last long in the forefront of your mind unless you write it down! The red-winged blackbird perched above chimed in and then continued his mating call.
Further down the path, I made another memo. I won’t profess to say that it’s an idea that will change the world, but it’s something I can latch onto and make happen. I was excited again. And that’s all I need right now.
Later, I was wondering about the connection specifically between walking and creativity. I’ve been struggling with getting the wheels into motion lately, finding motivation, starting, finishing, staring at the canvas, eyeballing my projects, procrastinating, and finding a million other things to focus on rather than my art. One thing I know is that my own creativity does ebb and flow. Even though my days are filled with creative perspective, as in the way I see things in general or live my life, I get into ruts where I feel I’m just banging my head on the wall. But I know that on the flipside, once something clicks then I’m off like a rocket with a neverending tailfire… I can go go go go get ’em tiger, it becomes a literal obsession, nothing can distract or intervene, time stops, I create into the night, and can accomplish many different things all at once. Insane productivity, driven by burning desire! After a while, the tailfire starts to fade out, for whatever reason in that seeming cycle… maybe the project was complete or something new caught my eye for a while, and another lull begins, the infamous BRICK WALL. Doh! I’d like less of one or the other, and just simply more consistent flow. This steady consistency is what I am currently seeking, does anyone know where I can find this?! Maybe I am just who I am. But I need to somehow continue to increase my rocket fuel to stay in the air longer.
You gotta just take off when the spark happens!
I did some digging to explore walking’s effect on creativity, and one of the more useful findings was an interesting study from Stanford University. If you like to dive deeper into the science or research of things, here it is: (Give Your Ideas Some Legs: The Positive Effect of Walking on Creative Thinking by Marily Oppezzo and Daniel L. Schwartz)
In a nutshell:
- Walking has a strong effect on increasing creativity whether it’s outdoors or indoors.
- Helps most with divergent thinking (free flow): coming up with many different ideas or fresh perspectives, problem exploration, big-picture thinking
- Helps less with convergent thinking (focus): single solutions or focus/detail work (better results sitting down)
- Creativity lasts for a while after walking. After people walked, their creativity when sitting continued. Taking a walk before a brainstorming session improves performance.
- Walking in natural environments invokes “soft fascination,” which does not require direct attention and allows for the renewal of directed attention capacities.
- Walking made people more talkative. Walking however did not increase creativity simply because people talked more. Just that people were more talkative, and more of their talk included creative ideas.
- There are immediate mental processes happening in the mind that produce greater creativity. Walking had a strong influence on the expression of associative memory (the mind’s ability of linking unrelated things together, like a big web). People presented more ideas, and the ideas tapped each person’s unique associative network, which led to an increase in originality or insight compared with other people’s ideas. Cool.
- Physical exercise, rather than intellectual leisure activities, may be the best way to prevent age-related decline in brain functioning (Gow et al. 2012)
Livin’ in the moment…
- Listening: “Afterlife” by Eleni Drake on Mahogany Sessions.
- Drinking: Chai tea & pretending it’s rainwater, might as well since I skipped the sugar.
- Wondering: About envelope color options.
- Grateful: for connecting briefly with the woman who pulled in while I was stretching after my walk, a shared love of the outdoors and the opening line of “good morning!” is all it took to spur a conversation and it reminded me that there are good people all around us.