Seeing the history of great tech giants like Facebook, Twitter, and Zynga, it’s been seen time and again that all the great ideas by these men struck them when they were out for wasteful yet gainful strolls.
Steve Jobs, who was famous in his area for long walk, which he used for exercise, contemplation, problem solving and even meetings, helped him create a revolutionary product, Apple.
Though most people have always thought that their best ideas came when they were on the move, now there is scientific evidence to back them up.
A 2014 study from Stanford University in the US has shown that people are much more creative when they are walking around as opposed to when they are sitting still.
In this study, the authors used an experiment known as Guilford’s Alternative Uses Task. With this, they participants are asked to list as many alternative uses for a common object as they can. For instance, a knife could be used to spread butter, to cut bread, to stab someone, or to flick peas. The answers are then scored on originality, number of ideas and detail.
Another interesting finding from the study was that there was no difference between walking on a boring treadmill indoors, and being outside among the birds and the bees. This shows that it is not the environment or sensation that is making walkers more creative, but just the act of walking alone.
For many it will be many more as they sit at their desks for the working day and then head home to slump in front of the TV or computer. This is not good for us. Not only are our flabby behinds not built for sitting, but neither are our hearts.
Meetings on the move or walking meetings are very “in vogue†at the moment, particularly in Silicon Valley. The idea being that there is no reason really to hold a meeting over a big piece of wood, so why not take it outside and get some exercise at the same time.
Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg both like first meetings with people to be on the move. This is because a walking conversation is so much more natural and distraction-free than most other types of meetings.
Another Victorian heavyweight that enjoyed a ramble around Kent was another Charles, Charles Darwin. Darwin had a gravel path installed at his home, not unlike a race track, that we would walk around each day as he thought about problems. The number of laps he did depended on the difficultly of the problem at hand. He would stack stones at the start of his walk and the knock them down one by one as he went round, describing the difficulty of the problem as a three, four, or five-flint problem.