The Ambling Mind

Walking is truly great, but it's not uniquely magical.

Most of my best ideas have come on long drives. I believe that driving has a lot of the aspects of walking that lead to the ability to have ideas. The activities themselves (the need to avoid running into other cars while driving or tripping over something while walking) seem to involve just enough distraction to keep you from falling into a rut of repetitive thought, while still enabling a state of free thinking that you can take quite far into a subject.

As for the time I could spend walking daily: I meditate daily for half an hour in a Buddhist tradition. And the rest of the time I could spend on daily walks I spend instead on medium-intensity aerobic exercise, which does more purely medical good than walking does and also is more associated with delaying age-related cognitive decline. (I need to add more HIIT which would help even more.)

On the other hand, my wife and I are also planning a 2-hour hike for later today. Because walking is great. It's the weekend, and we can give ourselves that.

Walking changed my life. I was obese and physically undisciplined, and exercise was too daunting to even consider.

I began walking, and along with diet changes, I lost tons of weight. It acted as a gateway into a new fitness lifestyle.

But I never stopped taking walks for two reasons: 1) Walking is the ideal form of active recovery - on rest days, you can still walk, and 2) The mental benefits are profound.

I average about 12k steps a day and cannot imagine my life without walking.

If you don't take daily walks and are compelled by the article or anecdotes in this thread, commit to trying it for just one month.

I walk at least 4 miles a day. Looking back at my daily mood, diet, and health data, it seems missing a day can have negative knock on effects that can last a day or two, and longer if I miss several days. I sleep deeper, eat better, feel less stress and generally happier. I also get a lot of my work done in my head (software, of course), more so if I leave the earphones at home. Even the treadmill helps notability, although I think sunlight and the peace of outdoors is more effective. I don’t have the same data but my estimation is that strength training didn’t quite have the same effect other than physical health (for me). Now, if only I could get myself to do both… I don’t enjoy strength training and it’s been hard to keep doing it consistently.

Interesting to see this stated in a way I'd never been able to express. In college as I was going through some more difficult post-grad work, I'd occasionally encounter novel problems that could only really be solved by a flash of inspiration. My block was 1 kilometer in a round trip, and I found that I could typically get my answer within at least 3 loops around the block. It also helped me get into better shape.

I'm not taking health advice from a guy that died at 42!

Even better with a dog