Then, it is a lot harder to reach to your cellphone when you walk. So it helps me get rid of 2 major distractions, body and phone, with very little effort. Now I can think.
I find audiobooks and podcasts are also great for walking. Popular science and good self help is interesting but the best ones for a quiet state of complementation are thoughtful interviews, biographies and story driven intellectual books (Yuval Noah Harari is particularly excellent). In some ways they are another distraction but I like to listen for a while then take off the headphones and think on a section while I walk another mile.
Thanks for the recommendation - Ill check it out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYnA9wWFHLI
Downloading it with Youtube-DL - Sadly, I forgot my headphones at home and am about to board a plane...
I think this has to be about the 'diffused mode' of the brain- they talked about in the course 'Learning How To Learn'- as opposed to the focused mode.
Though you mention that walking is what helps you keep distractions under control, I like to go walking while listening to history/science podcasts, since it helps me understand the content a lot better.
The act of walking is said to be greatly beneficial for thinking in its own right [0].
So when I get an idea, I usually drop everything I'm doing and go for walk. And my anecdata can only confirm that it's beneficial.
This is why I am so excited about the idea of working remotely using AR glasses. Just imagine going hiking through the mountains while checking your emails or being on a conference call – only taking breaks to type out some code on a portable keyboard.
Regardless of the cognitive performance boost this would give you, it would also mitigate a lot of the health issues we humans have started accumulating since we started sitting down all day.
Of course Einstein also famously claimed to have only moved to Princeton for the walks home with Gödel [1].
[0] I found this news item in a pinch, but I'm sure there are many studies to substantiate the claim: https://news.stanford.edu/2014/04/24/walking-vs-sitting-0424...
[1] I would have to do some digging to find the original phrasing (Einstein is often misattributted), so take it with a pinch of salt. But there is an entire book who's title alludes to this : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Einstein_Walked_with_G%C3...
(the book is great btw)
I dont listen to music in headphones often at all - Especially when running or biking - I like the calm silence of just me and my thoughts.