On the link between great thinking and obsessive walking
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When it comes to police checks, it is important to know your rights: https://anwaltauskunft.de/magazin/gesellschaft/strafrecht-po... The police is not allowed to discriminate against you just because you look foreign. Always demand that they tell you why you were stopped and that they show their badge.
When it comes to racists, I personally would reply with irony and humor to make them look silly. But ignoring them can also be a viable strategy.
Not like Poland is better, but somehow people don't expect it in Germany.
That's actually the standard. It's easy to be xenophobic when someone has very little exposure to other cultures. Once they get exposed over a long period of time, people realise that they are just people too.
Different ways of treating women, different ways of treating animals, different ways of treating the ambient, different ways of looking at work, different ways of looking at state, different ways of looking at religion, different ways of looking at morals, different ways of looking at neighbors, different ways of looking at property, different ways of looking at mating (...) While elites from any culture may be open minded and flexible, the average individual is not.
Elites may thrive in a multicultural society but the other incumbents don't. It's not surprising when they idolize any politician that respect them.
But I’m not sure what you mean by elite. Donald Trump and the whole modern Republican Party are the elites, and I wouldn’t describe them as flexible and open-minded.
And don't let anyone fool you into thinking that this is an eastern Germany problem. I grew up in one of the largest cities in the West, don't come from africa and have been told to go back where I came from plenty of times(which is actually amusing considering my background), have been assaulted by security people, peppersprayed by elderly men, etc.
There are also some EU laws that actually make the random checks somewhat legal.
Don't forget that Germany is the place that happily called for solidarity with BLM movement by the same people that would call Chinese "ching chang chung" on national television. Sure they don't shoot you, but they will make sure you have as little upward mobility as possible.
A lot of Africans that I know, take the University education from Germany and then move the US or Canada when they get the chance. You will rarely see any people of colour in leadership positions in Germany, heck there are hardly even eastern Germans in leadership positions in publicly listed German companies.
As much as I dislike a lot of things about the US at least in the professional sense you are treated with respect if you're good at what you do.
EDIT: oh and if you want to see what Bavarian police thinks of immigrants maybe took a look at some of the drawings in the police calendar.
https://taz.de/picture/224461/948/gdp_kalender2.jpg
https://www.augsburger-allgemeine.de/img/incoming/crop190229...
Then I read about your experiences and count myself lucky. I can say nothing other than, I hope things get better over time.
Casual racists comments and jokes fall into the micro-aggression category.
Next time, I hope you build up the courage to tell your aggressors that you are not ok with racist comments.
You are right. It's not, and I didn't mean to diminish my experience, only amplify how the OP's seemed much worse.
> Next time, I hope you build up the courage to tell your aggressors that you are not ok with racist comments.
I did, a few years ago! I also left that job and warn other minority groups vocally about the hostile environment there.
Unfortunately comments like mine (and yours) don't make things better. Possibly they make things worse.
Come to the USA-- for all of our problems, you can at least walk in a park without encountering police.
And by that I mean actual sports clothing, not the archetypical tight Adidas tracksuit that the average European troublemaker wears.
Never have I ever been harassed while wearing sports or hiking clothing, including accidental trespassing in countries where I barely spoke the language. Can't say the same about the outfit I mentioned, while doing nothing wrong.
The fact that the Adidas tracksuit and the tiny bag are the closest thing to the official uniform of a drug dealer in much of Western Europe became apparent really quick.
I think the OP is likely referring to the recent incident [1] in Georgia in the US where a black man was chased down and killed while he was jogging on the street in, guess what, T-shirt and shorts.
I am aware that your recommendation is possibly about Germany. It's still ironic, and in my opinion your recommendation is ineffective.
----------------------------------------------
But yeah I should have gauged my comment towards a mostly US-centric readership.
So maybe dressing for the occasion could work. Sorry for your ordeal. You'd think police would know you after the umpteenth check.
I think even if police suspect somebody, they should still treat them with respect, though. That is the real issue.
You can not ask the police to never suspect anybody - that would make their jobs impossible and ridiculous.
Here in Berlin we have parks taken over by drug dealers and people don't feel safe. What is the solution? I don't know. Berlin's government responded by giving the drug dealers designated areas for drug dealing. I rather suspect they rely on those dealers for their personal supplies.
That changed when the police started driving their massive SUVs on the park path after 11pm to make sure nobody was in the park. The first time they did it, they argued that the park was closed, though there were no signs saying the park was closed. It turned into a big verbal argument but thankfully it didn't escalate badly. That night I looked up the city code and found that if there's no gate, then the law allows me to walk to the end of the park. I went to the police station to complain, and was told that I shouldn't worry about it because they're not trying to get "people like me".
But still, it happened again, and the cop basically told me "we're going to keep doing this until you stop". So, while the cop wasn't exactly disrespectful, he was wrong about the law in a way that manifested no differently from persistent harassment. They're just trolling for anything illegal on a default position of wronghood.
You're asking the wrong questions.
In the same time I also have some "hacker" type friends that were constantly being stopped by the police, even though they were white, but they just have a questionable fashion taste compared to the general population.
That's not meant to justify the behaviour of the police, just to find a short term solution for being able to take walks.
And look for a group of people who want to something about it. There are also a large number of Germans who find the racist discrimination by the police scandalous and think that it is high time to do something about it. Best not individually, but collectively.
Then attitudes can change, even in conservative circles. I come from a place that recently elected a mayor with a Turkish background who was supported by the conservative party (CDU). Something like this would hardly have been conceivable twenty years ago, but I hope that it will now become the norm.
I can attest that after 10 days of continuous autonomous movement the mind switches to a "primordial" state that, as a non academic, I believe can be very easily attributable to our nomadic, hunter-gatherer past.
Attention gets sharper, acumen rings free, the range of senses expands, creative impulses flourish and it's easier to perform tasks in unexpectedly smart ways.
I suggest those who would like to give it a try embark on a walking adventure that is at least two weeks long, either on pilgrimage routes (which offer great views and allow one to save money thanks to the hospitality options available) like the Camino de Santiago de Compostela / Fatima or long trails such as the Appalachian Trail.
I've met several persons lost on pilgrimage routes due to mental breakdowns. It's a know problem, people find happiness and an alternative life during a pilgrimage and keep on walking the routes back and forth through Europe until they run out of money and then become homeless. At the beginning of the French route towards Santiago de Compostela you might still find some mental health counseling offices.
Really interesting, thanks for sharing this. I've never been on a pilgrimage, but the mental side does seem to have similarities with a 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat then. Occasionally, (beginning) meditators may experience something similar: struggling to re-enter the "real world" when the camp is over. That's why the last few days of a retreat are structured in a manner that prepares people for a "soft landing" in daily life.
Most interesting to hear, though, that this phenomenon can be so serious in case of pilgrimages.
> "I used to take long walks on Sundays and get away from the work altogether, and at the end of those walks I would perhaps go on with my work a bit in a refreshed state of mind. And after one of these Sunday walks it occurred to me that the commutator might be the analogue of the Poisson bracket, but I didn’t know very well what a Poisson bracket was then. I had just read a bit about it and forgotten most of what I had read, and I wanted to check up on this idea, but I couldn’t do it because I didn’t have any book at home which gave Poisson brackets and all the libraries were closed. So I just had to wait impatiently until Monday morning when the libraries were open to go and check up on what Poisson brackets really were. Then I found that they did fit, but I had one impatient night of waiting."
[1] https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral...
...and a person who likely had ASD[1][2][3][4] (aka Asperger's, being on the spectrum, etc).
As did Charles Darwin (see my other comment in this thread).
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC539373/
[2] https://www.quora.com/Did-Paul-Dirac-have-Asperger-syndrome
[3]https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2009/jan/07/autism-...
[4]https://www.newstatesman.com/society/2010/11/dirac-autism-au...
1. The #1 example featured in the article and discussed at length — Charles Darwin — is known to have exhibited autistic symptoms, and was retro diagnosed with Asperger's by medical professionals. However, this has not been discussed well in the article.
2. Walking is a form of stimming
3. Stimming while thinking is a symptom of ASD
4. It benefits the society at large to be aware of this symptom, as it is frequently looked down upon and considered ill behavior
5. In particular regarding walking: while many people can benefit from walking while thinking, it might be required for people with ASD, like Charles Darwin. However, children in our classrooms (and most office employees) don't have that option; even fidgeting while listening is not allowed in many schools.
Sometimes I struggle with deep thinking at my desk - its too quiet / stable. A little bit of distraction helps. Not to say I don’t think while at my desk, I just think walking is a great compliment and in our sedentary lives, better to think on our feet and leave the desk to implementation / coding.
I say this after two productive walks today :)
I’ve lost track number and quality of excellent solutions I have come up with on these walks, including three provisional patents filed and a major contract saved. He’s earned increasingly indulgent treats.
Who rescued who?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4425252/ https://www.npr.org/2011/02/04/133498136/growing-a-bigger-br...
It's worth pointing out that this is one of those old-school ridiculousnesses that many scientists believed in for much longer than the available evidence ought to have afforded. Much in the same way that North American hospitals used to refrain from analgesics when performing minor surgeries on very young babies, as they were assumed to not experience pain (?!), up until the late 80s, so too was the mounting evidence (Merzenich in the 80s, etc) of adult neurogenesis generally dismissed because reasons.
[1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/sleep-is-the-mate-of-d...
However, unfortunately I forgot many of the insights since I was so endlessly tired! Should have taken notes while driving with just 3h of sleep…
Now on medication, I still walk but not near as much, maybe a mile a day. And, like others have said, i've solved many problems while walking so it's not a total waste of time.
Was surprised to see my comment initially downvoted a lot.
For all who feel like they need walk to think about things, looking into ADHD/ASD could improve y'all's lives.
The short story is that Pang went and read through the diaries of many notable thinkers, artists and creative types going back to the 19th century. Walking is one tool in the tool box. There are others, including getting enough sleep and taking naps.
>Oppezzo designed an elegant experiment. A group of Stanford students were asked to list as many creative uses for common objects as they could. A Frisbee, for example, can be used as a dog toy, but it can also be used as a hat, a plate, a bird bath, or a small shovel. The more novel uses a student listed, the higher the creativity score. Half the students sat for an hour before they were given their test. The others walked on a treadmill.
>The results were staggering. Creativity scores improved by 60 percent after a walk.
With everything in the news about reproducibility and doctored data, this seems too staggering to believe. Has this study been tried again?
Yep, totally! I'm a firm believer in the power of walking to increase thoughts, but whenever I read about studies like this a big red beeping alarm goes of in my brain that goes "replication crisis! replication crisis!"
There was a case study I read in the book linked below and it indicated that test scores improved dramatically when they had kids exercise before learning. It states that the improvements occurred regardless of physical ability as long as participants aimed to achieve their personal best during exercise.
I can't speak to the quality of the research but it is interesting and does not surprise me.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Spark-Revolutionary-Science-Exercise-...
So to hunt for great ideas, one must connect the whole experience to what we did once to track down animals.
Look at the ground, when thinking about facts, chains of evidence, the origin of your problems. Walk known routes, when traversing well known approaches, take unknown routes, go off-road, when you are stuck with the usual ways.
Move your body, like you want your mind to move, but most important, do not self-observe while you do it. Forget about yourself, think only about the pray and the hunt.
It may just be superstitious. But it is how my subconscious tries to explain away my endless pacing.
Horrido.
It does take a little while to get that perfect pace sometimes.
Also: hounds (in my case, a beagle) are excellent long walk buddies.
One more, going off the deep end: long thinking walks along trails in the woods (ideally a path that you know well so you don't have to think about it) can be a low-key spiritual experience.
I definitely feel that I am better at thinking when walking, but I also need to be looking at source code to get the details, otherwise I can only think about larger architecture.
When is this coming?
Truly a sign of the passing of time.
We have plans to eventually release a proper AR headset also, though not on first iteration.
Well, there's Nreal Light, with nice 1080p.
But it may not fit your face well. I use it without the nose piece, and with the temples down around the middle of my ears. The recurring "we didn't design it for you" China HMD fit problem. I've no idea if the EU release was identical. And some complain of its weight.
It's been variously available in Asia for years, more recently in the EU, but not yet in the US I believe (there was talk of maybe this year). In the US one has been able to ebay it from elsewhere, but US Customs duties have been highly varied and sometimes quite large.
[1] sunset silliness: https://twitter.com/mncharity/status/1397553615372529668
It's really a bit patronizing, as an adult without an AR headset I've obviously tried "just walking and reflecting".
Here's me with a monocular. https://olin.monster/about.html The cable broke and the CF interface is outdated so I don't use it anymore. For me it might be best to get into an audio desktop or record my thoughts when walking as the background distracts as it moves like a sinus wave when walking. http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/
I wouldn’t call myself a “great thinker,” but I find it useful to do these daily walks.
The walk helps me to clear my mind, and organize the day’s tasks. I generally code every day, so I often use the time to work out a tactical plan for the day’s work. Sometimes, I work out a strategy for a longer term, but it’s usually just a daily plan. I often come up with big pivots, or solve pernicious bugs, during my walk. I work in a very dynamic fashion, with frequent direction changes, during a given project, and tend to be ambitious, in my goals, so I always have problems to solve.
I frequently fix big bugs, right after getting home from a walk. I’ll walk up to the desk, log in, fire up Xcode, and apply the fix. After that, I’ll hit the shower. A standing desk helps a lot, here. Sometimes, I’m at the computer for an hour, before I take my shower.
Yeah, I can be a bit obsessive…
I tried running, a few years ago, but I tended to injure myself, which would result in gaps of up to a month at a go; so walking, it is.
The last couple of days, I’ve had to stay in, because it’s been raining buckets in the morning. I also sometimes need to have breaks in the winter, because snow makes the route downright dangerous.
Otherwise, it’s two miles, at 5:15-6AM, every day. Takes just about a half hour. I don headphones, and play rather mindless techno music (it’s usually the only time during the day, when I listen to music. I don’t listen while working). I also wear what I call my “clown suit,” or bright, reflective clothing, as it tends to be dark, and people drive like crap, in the morning. I suspect a lot of texting and emailing, while driving. Stop signs and lane markers are really just “suggestions.”
I also think personal Discipline is critical to my work and lifestyle. I find that these walks help to reinforce that. I’ve been doing it for years, and have never really come to enjoy them. I feel that it’s good for me to do at least two things, every day, that I don’t want to do. I usually have that covered before 7.
There's a bunch of benefits and I'll continue doing it because I really do enjoy it and I do think it helps get clarity but I wouldn't treat it like a magical activity that's going to make you successful on its own in whatever field you're working in.
It's still very possible to feel the pressures of what a non-walker will experience such as procrastination and everything else we all know and experience.
But with that said, I do highly recommend giving walking a shot. It's a really relaxing way to decompress.
After living in AU I'm surprised by how many of my co-workers do walking as part of their lunch break. Me on the other hand just stay at my computer, code, when I'm stuck I stop and think.. Maybe I should start walking rather than being a lazy ass
The thought of walking being a privilege of certain a subset of the population hadn't even crossed my mind, but does make me a little sad.
I found myself compulsively walking randomly in the city every night for several nights. I would walk half way to a random destination only to change directions in 30 minutes convinced I was headed the wrong way forgetting the previous destination and repeatedly heading part way to successive random destinations. I did this night after night convinced there was a place I needed to go but in retrospect they were completely arbitrary and there was no purpose. I recently read the book Crime and Punishment and there is a scene a bit like this which suggests this may be in our DNA. To share further, I eventually spoke out (at some point you have to pick your poison) and the person did die suddenly and unexpectedly. The NYPD coroner eventually ruled out foul play, but the suspects the suspects left the country immediately after his death so it wouldn't have mattered.
Had you plotted my path you would say that it was the walk of a person who is "lost", yet I knew the city perfectly. However it was accurate to say I was hopelessly lost.
Changing subjects to lighten things up, I would assume there would be a metaphor for walking in way that parallels what your brain is doing when it is searching for a solution but I can't think of a word. Contemplative walks are certainly not erratic and discontinuous as described above. They are smooth and differentiable like a gradient descent.
I got into walking due to health reason, and there's a freedom seeking / search in it yes. The internal process of finding a path from idea to idea b is probably linked to the geometry of going from spot to spot.
another thing about walking, is that it's free, and every fork in the road means you get to decide where you feel like you want to go, and that, to me, seems a deep need for our minds.
The people were desperately poor in-laws. He was becoming cash poor but was still home equity rich and often commented that if he missed too many remittances he would likely be killed. Poisoning was rumored to be a common way to accelerate the inheritance process in his native country. When this is about to happen, the rumors start but everyone is afraid to do anything. I heard the rumor from a desperate family member but who then ended the conversation with "please don't say anything" and another implying they will take revenge. The in-laws came for a quick visit, he soon became so ill he ended up in the hospital and died, and then they quickly left. I have law enforcement buddies that mentioned poisoning can be extremely difficult to detect and prove and no one in his country could tell me names of poisons that were useful to his doctors. His doctors could not explain why he was so sick, and the coroner mentioned some health problems he found that could have killed him but implied that this conclusion was not strong.
It's been a surprisingly enriching complement to my daily routine to recite them to myself later on my bike or with friends. I'd never appreciated the poetic form before Covid, and I'd seriously encourage other young folks to give it a shot, especially if your only poetic exposure was in high school.
I find it hard to imagine sailing around the somewhat quite unknown world on an 19thC sailing ship (rum, sodomy and the lash, not to mention scurvy, rats, cockroaches) was much like a millennial gap year.
While I am also in a landlocked city with little access to pools but it would be interesting to get the point of view of swimmers.
Plenty of opportunity to get distracted.
The 'just you and the elements' part is real, in the open water you can't just stop and get out, you have got to complete what you started. The 'completeness' of the exercise is different than biking or walking : every joint and muscle seems to be involved.
Back on land, the exhaustion is a different level than any other. Very deep breaths. When I get home, I am hungry as hell. Chronically under-weight, I seem to be gaining weight, very happy with that.
The end of summer is approaching and the water is getting colder, I am exploring the indoor pools in my vicinity.
I don't know where you are, but would wetsuit help to extend the time you can swim in the open waters? Obviously, I'm just assuming you're not doing that already... :)
If it is overcast, windy and not too warm, it takes a lot of mental strength to engage in the activity.
I am a bit disappointed by the entrace fee of the indoor pools : about € 5. These are municipal pools.
I don't recommend swimming that much a week, btw, because I eventually started losing stamina and had to stop completely because I got to where I couldn't do even a quarter mile. That was where I learned the power of resting.
- An experiment to look at the effects of walking on creative thinking done by Marilyn Oppezzo, a Stanford University psychologist and her Ph.D. advisor: A group of Stanford students were asked to list as many creative uses for common objects as they could. A Frisbee, for example, can be used as a dog toy, but it can also be used as a hat, a plate, a bird bath, or a small shovel. The more novel uses a student listed, the higher the creativity score. Half the students sat for an hour before they were given their test. The others walked on a treadmill. The results were staggering. Creativity scores improved by 60 percent after a walk.
- Michelle Voss, a University of Iowa psychology professor, studied the effects of walking on brain connectivity. She recruited 65 couch-potato volunteers aged 55 to 80 and imaged their brains in an MRI machine. For the next year, half of her volunteers took 40-minute walks three times a week. The other participants kept spending their days watching Golden Girls reruns and only participated in stretching exercises as a control. After a year, Voss put everyone back in the MRI machine and imaged their brains again. Not much had happened to the control group, but the walkers had significantly improved connectivity in regions of the brain understood to play an important role in our ability to think creatively.
- Jennifer Weuve of Boston University’s School of Public Health studied the relationship between walking and cognitive decline in 18,766 women aged 70 to 81. Her team asked them to name as many animals as they could in one minute. Those who walked regularly recalled more penguins, pandas, and pangolins than the women who were less mobile. Weuve then read a series of numbers and asked the women to repeat them in reverse order. Those who walked regularly performed the task much better than those who didn’t.
The author notes at the end that correlation does not equal causation. He says that perhaps the arrow of causality was pointing in the wrong direction. Maybe mentally active people were simply more likely to go for a walk. Researchers had to dive deeper.
[1] https://aaalab.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Oppez...
To take it further, recent studies suggest that exercise more strenuous than just walking makes you better at dealing with uncomfortable decisions and situations (as exercise forces you to power through discomfort).
https://www.thecut.com/2016/06/how-exercise-shapes-you-far-b...
What? Is there any evidence to support this statement?
I know I (personally, anecdotally) am a way calmer, more rational and reasonable decision maker after bouts of intense exercise. - Heavy lifting sessions, hard sports training, etc.
The Inverted U Hypothesis (aka Yerkes-Dodson law - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yerkes%E2%80%93Dodson_law) and https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/inverted-u.htm was the first to posit the relationship between Arousal and Performance. However there are lots of nuances to this. The important one is Cue Utilization Theory (https://www.elitetrack.com/blogs-details-7362/ and https://psychology.iresearchnet.com/sports-psychology/percep...) which is relevant for decision making.
Coming to Exercise Intensity and Decision Making you may find the following papers helpful for some empirical data.
* Influence of exercise intensity on the decision-making performance of experienced and inexperienced soccer players - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19454768/ and Fontana's thesis at https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/12206332.pdf
* Effect of Exercise Intensity Level on Choice Reaction Time - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.2466/11.03.CP.4.3
PS: I have linked to two relevant books in another post of mine in this thread which you may find useful.
Walking is generally a good and inspiring pastime and I am glad I live in a part of the planets where my environment is both walkable and safe.
I really miss late night walks, but unfortunately where I live now there aren’t so many great options. A few nature trails that close early as hell and are probably moderately unsafe at that time. There are some of paths in the residential area I live in now, but they’re relatively short unless I want to link up to a main road (cars zipping past you at whatever speed does not do well for thinking) and I’m not gonna risk getting harassed because I’m out walking too late.
I've fond memories of one site, a few cubicles and tables in one corner of a big otherwise-empty floor of a office park building. A floor wrapped with full-height windows looking out on trees. One could variously loop, without bothering anyone, alternating walking and desk work.
Usually I pace, sometimes I stroll, always outside.
I started walking pretty obsessively during the pandemic as a way to get exercise that I used to get by bicycle commuting. Normally I would listen to podcasts during this time.
However a few times when I went without anything in my ears I noticed that I was starting to do real work while walking, and coming up with great solutions to difficult problems.
Now I limit podcasts just as I would with TV, video games or any other passive consumption. Nothing against consumption per se—a lot of ideas are seeded from outside—but in terms of creative work there's huge value to being left alone with ones thought. Anything mentally engaging will disrupt that.
I do long distance cycling and always had an audiobook going. One day my battery died and I had an hour and a half of silence.
I found my thoughts were enjoyable. I now take some rides without any audio at all.
but then i spend most of the day working alone, so i have plenty of time to think. and for me the point of going for a walk and listen to a story is to stop thinking for some time and immerse myself into a different world.
Music seems to interfere much less but I'm mostly listening to instrumental. Also going to a new place takes focus so there's a big difference compared to going back.
Otherwise, i prefer running as it to me gives more bang for the buck. It's crucial if you have a sedentary job to elevate your blood-circulation to be able work productively through the day. Regular anaerobic exercise seems quite ideal for that.
https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Worry_Room?file=Worry_Room_Th...
I find it productive even if I don't have a specific problem in mind. I find something almost indulgent about letting my mind wander over whatever work/personal/curiosity topics pop up.
For example: I'm personally interested in archaeology & anthropology, and just finished this lecture series covering ancient mesoamerica: https://www.audible.com/pd/Maya-to-Aztec-Ancient-Mesoamerica...
48 lectures, ~23 hours. Loved it. Didn't spent a single minute the entire time thinking about anything even tangentially related to iptables, regular expressions, or why patch tuesday makes my eyelid twitch.
[0]: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xlm-a0036577.pdf
Stopping and pulling out pen and paper was too disruptive. My ideal would be a walking stick with a few chording buttons that would key off different tasks, like start recording, or the next vocal word with be a voice command.
I'm thinking something like a Zoom H1N field recorder might work for just recording all of my thoughts, but I'd really like it to be automatically transcribed, if not an interactive REPL environment.
* Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain.
* Body by Science: A Research Based Program to Get the Results You Want in 12 Minutes a Week.
Holy shit, so true, let me give you some internet points for being a good dog.
And that both ADHD and ASD have been linked to creative, deep thinking?
Charles Darwin, the #1 example in this article, has been long suspected to have had Asperger's (which we classify as ASD today)[1]; and had exhibited symptoms of ADHD (one makes the other more likely)[2].
That link is only a surprise to neurotypicals. The answer is in plain sight:
"On the link between great thinking and obsessive walking: it's ADHD/ASD!”
EDIT: the word obsessive alone should give a clue were to look.
While walking might make thinking easier for everyone, it might be outright necessary for people with conditions like ASD/ADHD.
Please consider this before hitting that downvote button.
Disclaimer: I'm a person with ASD, ADHD, and a PhD
[1]https://web.archive.org/web/20090221125332/http://www.telegr...
[2]https://www.masters-in-special-education.com/lists/5-histori...
I don't know if I have ADHD or not, but whenever I'm stuck at a coding problem or any sort of a creative problem (I do product design work as well), I have to walk. Otherwise I feel claustrophobic or about to have a panic attack. At the very least, I feel very agitated and have shortness of breath.
I'm coming to accept this about myself and after reading this article, I'll embrace walking as a mode for thinking and clearing my head more.
This gave me an overlap of 3 hours to exchange information with my colleagues, and 5 hours to actually work when the office emptied out.
If you are wondering whether you have ADHD or not, I made a website where symptoms are described from a first-person POV[1]. It's 200+ memes/comics I found on the Net, and a lot of text going in-depth about them.
If you relate to a lot of these, treatment can improve your life.
However, if you find that whatever makes your life easier - walking while thinking, fidgeting/doodling in meetings and phone calls, etc - just do it. It's your life. No need to play it on hard mode.
I love this sentiment. Thanks for this - I'm definitely going to use it going forward.
That the thinking I had when I started taking medication.
Do I need the meds? Irrelevant, and I already got through several decades of my life without them.
Do they make life easier? Absolutely.
Do I have a reason to keep making my life harder? Nope.
Another thought: all the resources and energy (including mental efforts) that are solvable by other, easily implementable means (from medication to changing the way you do things that works for you) — all that time and energy is stolen from your loved ones and people you care about.
Is the time spent doing Boring Difficult Task more valuable to you than time with your friends and family? Perhaps not. Then why choose to maximize the Boring Difficult time?
Fidget, walk, exercise, drink water, take breaks, take Monday off, hire a maid, order takeout, get therapy, get the right meds — it's your life, and you want to spend the most of it on things that matter.
And the time you spend trying hard to do things that are difficult for you is time and energy you can recover by taking the pain out of the process of doing them.
I'm utterly convinced that long walks in the woods is my secret sauce and that without it I'll degrade as an engineer massively.
On paper, my previous employer only valued impact, and employees were able to choose their own schedule.
But work from home was explicitly discouraged in very clear terms, and I have been pressured to increase the overlap in office time with my team "for my benefit". That coming from people responsible for my performance evaluation and making hiring decisions felt a lot like "...or else".
It is also for my benefit, I guess, that I got a seat between my manager and my team lead during an office move (open-floor layout). I didn't mind, because they are both excellent people, but it feels a bit weird in retrospect.
We are all remote until 2022 at the very least; I don't expect mandatory office presence 40 hr/week ever coming back.
At some point, the CEOs will have to come to terms with office space being a sunk cost; and either downside, or provide more space for people who do come into the office.
Having in-person discussions with many people at once is still a killer app for physical offices; latency issues inherently make videoconferencing clumsy. But two days a week should suffice for that, at best.
Is there scientific evidence supporting this link?
Pacing is a form of stimming. It's something that people with ASD might need to do to feel comfortable while thinking.
There are other forms of stimming that aren't as socially acceptable, but even this one is heavily restricted in a school setting.
A child that gets up to pace around the classroom to think better will be reprimanded; the option to take a walk outside is outright not available.
This is why raising awareness is important. It costs nothing to allow people who need to walk while thinking to do just that, yet the society disallows it.
Anyway, Nietzsche used to walk before writing like Darwin
Long time ago I read that walking or taking a shower make your thinking more effective because it somehow enables automation mode and allow to be more focused
They mention it quite a lot in the "Learning how to learn" coursera course. They call it the "diffuse mode", by opposition with the "focused mode".
The course was quite interesting and easy to digest.
> Jeremy DeSilva is an anthropologist at Dartmouth College. He is part of the research team that discovered and described two ancient members of the human family tree—Australopithecus sediba and Homo naledi.
Also, as others have aptly pointed out, people who are not wealthy are in fact the ones who will end up doing the most walking.
People who gravitate towards using the word privilege ... just yikes.
Women have been, for valid reasons and patriarchal overprotectiveness, been trained to feel vulnerable and exposed when walking outside. Always half-focused on who may be looking at them or tailing them, it takes away the mental freedom needed for perambulatory reflection.
Black men, brown men, immigrants, similarly, have over time faced a variety of hate crimes and false incarceration, that they must again often pay attention to their perceived "suspiciousness" factor, such as wandering around late at night with a hoodie on, or idly staring into a park where kids may be playing, lest they be mistaken for a latent criminal and get apprehended or worse.
So "walking has been the privilege of white men" is a bit of an extreme, but "justifiably walking thoughts free with impunity" is indeed the privilege of white men in the lands of white men.
Been trained?
“10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman”:
the statement is very broad and as such laughable. Basically it implies history is something that has existed in the last few hundred years in the Americas.
It's ridiculous enough it could easily fit in a satirical skit.
>"justifiably walking thoughts free with impunity" is indeed the privilege of white men in the lands of white men
- maybe lose the 'thoughts' there
yes, I can agree that was what was meant and it is correct, it was just phrased so badly that it should prompt guffaws of laughter instead of nods of agreement.
What are you including in said “insidious beast?” Any mention of a racial past is representative on an evil monster seeking to pervade all culture?
I think you’ve been watching too much hentai.
I don't mind mention of a racial past, as long as it is actually applicable. Want to talk about slavery in the Americas? Jim Crow and segregation? European colonialism? The Maori genocide on the Moriori people? Sure, we can talk about it. But Walking? Yes, walking apparently. An attempt to cram racism into every facet of life, even where it didn't exist and doesn't belong, is absolutely 100% and evil monster seeking to pervade all culture.
I don't watch hentai.
Dude... go walk around in Compton or Fuller Park and tell me you're able to ruminate like Darwin LOL.
You're trying to ELIMINATE race from every conversation because of your sensitivity. No one is "cramming" race anywhere.
I don't see it today. In fact, in my home city, I'd argue there's more areas where a black could walk freely than a white.
But that's just city life and demographics in a shitty US city. In the world, walking is not a racebound privilege.
I'm not calling your link untrue, just incomplete.
If you want to visit my hometown and give it a test, I'm more than happy to guide you.
But I also realize my experiences may have been rather different than those in other cities. It doesn't make either of us wrong.
"In particular, this study aimed to explore how the participants’ pre-existing levels of non-clinical depression, anxiety, persecutory feelings and personal resilience influence the in situ judgments they make about the contrasting urban environments."
Very poor reading comprehension from the posters in this thread.
"Forty-six student participants walked in groups through 2 urban neighbourhoods, separated by a park, in the North West of England, noting responses at pre-determined stops. Significant differences existed in participants’ sense of trust and threat between the 2 neighbourhoods along with differences in perceived resident wealth and sentiments expressed"
There's plenty of research on this: https://www.brookings.edu/research/walk-this-waythe-economic...
Seems like the posters in this thread are more concerned with being hypersensitive about "wokeness" than reality.
"Poor people walk more, ergo this article gets it wrong" is the ultimate confluence of idiocy and privilege.
The author of this should've taken a walk before writing this, you've got to trudge half way through to finally get to the point, which is apparently "someone who walks to think walked to think on why we walk to think"
It's easy to roll our eyes at statements like these but that just feels like adding on to the issue.