I was a doubter until COVID. Then I built a habit of 30 to 60+ minutes of walking a day, ~1.5 to 5mi depending on length and pace.
Geez, the amount of stuff I got done, problems I solved, and general boost to well-being I achieved was lost on me until a job pushed those walks out of the workday. My productivity wasn’t the same.
Definitely going to block off a walk around the harbor during most workdays going forward so I can refresh the slate so to speak.
Walking, showering, sleeping, and riding a bike are great ways to debug code.
It's very cool to go to sleep and wake up knowing what the solution to the problem is.
The key for incubation for me is to make sure my brain can churn without distractions (that means no listening to podcasts, music, etc while performing said action).
It's the daydreaming/mind-wandering state that occurs when you're not focused on an external task. With all the stimuli of the modern world, I feel like we're being starved of crucial DMN time if we don't engineer conditions like the ones you describe.
but sometimes I need a little burst of the phone/music to serve as a distraction and force me to unplug from the hard problem that i'm fixated on. once i've successfully started thinking about something else, phone/music off and let the productive mind wandering begin
It makes sense. It hard to think creatively when your environment is stagnant. You need some new sights and sounds to kick things along, especially when you’re stuck on something.
I like the story of Shigeru Miyamoto getting the idea for flying through archways in Star Fox from walking through archways in a Shinto shrine near the Nintendo headquarters. It wasn’t from playing other video games or reading about game development, it was just from thinking creatively about his real world environment right outside the office.
Days after I graduated high school in 2004, my parents moved me and my family out to a 15 acre property in the middle of nowhere. Mowing the lawn on a riding mower was an all-day affair. The time I spent on that mower with just my own thoughts were some of the most meditative and creative of my life.
Lots of famous historical figures walked. Darwin, Jefferson, Nietzsche, Dickens, Thoreau. More recently (obviously): Jobs.
I wrote a small piece a several years ago on it but have found walking immensely helpful in my debugging efforts. And there's so much research that backs it up.
One transformation, for example, required getting permission to sell songs for $1 each when the labels all wanted to price each song differently. That required getting alignment from various titans at the record companies.
The way he accomplished this was to take these leaders on walks in the hills behind apple hq. Read about it in the biography of Jobs by Walter Isaacson.
> One place where you’d always find someone from Netflix: the Los Gatos Creek Trail, a paved walking path right behind the office. “We would take our one-on-one [meetings] by just walking out of the building, down to the river, up to the reservoir and back, chatting,” .. Among the people frequently seen on the trail.. was [Reed] Hastings himself. That walk-and-talk tradition is still alive: On a recent spring day, it took just a few minutes after arriving for two people to emerge from Netflix’s office complex to stroll alongside the water, deep in discussion.
Some of the most complex problems I've ever solved were solved when I was mowing my own lawn with a push mower. Just in a trance. Many of the best life decisions I've ever made were when I was on a walk, thinking things through.
I recommend moving towards a place, where you have access to peaceful, green places tomgo for a walk. In a busy city, I guess most people won't find their peace of mind. (I am just moving away from the city, partly for this reason)
I walk at 6.2 km/h average (measured over ~15km downtown distances). This means just weaving through the pedestrian traffic, with some practice it just them all fading into background, no different from lightpoles, bushes or cars. Though an actual forest path is ofc preferrable.
It's astounding how many work problems I've found the solution to in just. the 80 ft walk to the bathroom. If I ever managed people, I would absolutely mandate scheduled movement/calisthenics/walking breaks. Almost seems like a cheat code.
Dictation + Claude enable this to be an actual working modality now. Does anyone else find themselves working in this way. (In addition to decompression walks of course!)
There’s a Kmart near me that I sometimes walk around when it’s raining outside. Even though it’s not endless like outside, the tall isles block your sight lines so you can wander for a while.
Absolutely agree. I circumnavigate Lake Merritt pretty much every day mostly because it puts my brain a good place to be productive. The exercise is helpful too.
Geez, the amount of stuff I got done, problems I solved, and general boost to well-being I achieved was lost on me until a job pushed those walks out of the workday. My productivity wasn’t the same.
Definitely going to block off a walk around the harbor during most workdays going forward so I can refresh the slate so to speak.
It's very cool to go to sleep and wake up knowing what the solution to the problem is.
The key for incubation for me is to make sure my brain can churn without distractions (that means no listening to podcasts, music, etc while performing said action).
It's the daydreaming/mind-wandering state that occurs when you're not focused on an external task. With all the stimuli of the modern world, I feel like we're being starved of crucial DMN time if we don't engineer conditions like the ones you describe.
I like the story of Shigeru Miyamoto getting the idea for flying through archways in Star Fox from walking through archways in a Shinto shrine near the Nintendo headquarters. It wasn’t from playing other video games or reading about game development, it was just from thinking creatively about his real world environment right outside the office.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvitur_ambulando
I wrote a small piece a several years ago on it but have found walking immensely helpful in my debugging efforts. And there's so much research that backs it up.
One transformation, for example, required getting permission to sell songs for $1 each when the labels all wanted to price each song differently. That required getting alignment from various titans at the record companies.
The way he accomplished this was to take these leaders on walks in the hills behind apple hq. Read about it in the biography of Jobs by Walter Isaacson.
> One place where you’d always find someone from Netflix: the Los Gatos Creek Trail, a paved walking path right behind the office. “We would take our one-on-one [meetings] by just walking out of the building, down to the river, up to the reservoir and back, chatting,” .. Among the people frequently seen on the trail.. was [Reed] Hastings himself. That walk-and-talk tradition is still alive: On a recent spring day, it took just a few minutes after arriving for two people to emerge from Netflix’s office complex to stroll alongside the water, deep in discussion.
1. people walking like turtle in front of you
2. people on phone not looking at where they go
3. both
It’s a good opportunity to “triage” the day ahead.
If I have a vexing bug, I often “fix” it, during my morning walk.
https://www.inferterra.com/the-new-workspace-a-first-princip...
(reading that in German might have more nuances)