Walking as an Opportunity for Creativity
Walking is an activity where we perceive the environment with our feet on the ground, which creates unique opportunities for ideas and thoughts to grow and develop, especially compared to alternative mobility modes like the car. In driving, for example, the mind concentrates on the road and cannot afford to free up mental space for other cognitive functions. Cycling requires immersion in our environment, but the motion is much faster, prioritizing sight over other senses. The slower pace of walking enables engagement in all our senses in a well-balanced combination, compared to high-speed mobility modes. Walking creates an environment in which new ideas can form, allowing connections to be formed between bits of scattered knowledge. This experience is extended and deepened, supporting the mental activity of organizing knowledge into hierarchical structures.
The Creative Process
The creative process, as categorized by renowned psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, unfolds in four distinct phases: preparation, incubation, insight, and verification. Walking, a crucial component of the incubation phase, provides our minds with a much-needed break, allowing the unconscious to work on the problem at hand. This process is vital for the subsequent stage of insight, a key driver of creativity.
Synchronizing the body's rhythms with the rhythm of walking contributes to enhanced memory and creativity, creating a sense of “flow.” As described by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, flow is a state of complete absorption in an activity where time seems to fly, and self-awareness disappears. It includes two forms of effort: concentration on a difficult task and deliberate attention control. In a state of flow, maintaining focused attention requires no self-control, freeing the mind to focus on other concerns and allowing us to concentrate on other things in a way that other forms of transport cannot provide.
How walking provides an opportunity for creativity may be explained by the following neurological processes: physical aerobic activity enhances thought by increasing blood flow and neurotransmitter activity and decreasing stress hormones. In other words, walking creates a state of “flickering,” a neurological process of wandering between the mental state of episodic memory and spatial navigation. To create something new, we need to combine ideas in new ways. Walking creates immediate changes in blood pressure and oxygen intake that help spread activity across more distant brain regions, enabling the state of flickering that, in turn, allows the process of making associations necessary for creativity.
Try Walking Over Driving
One of our essential human capacities is the capacity to innovate, imagine, and gain insight and understanding. Walking is advantageous, compared to driving, because it creates time and space for exercising these capacities. Importantly, these capacities may be exercised even when walking is going from A to B. Even short walks may allow us to see things differently and generate new thoughts and ideas. Even if autonomous vehicles make driving obsolete one day, this will not be conducive to creativity. This type of travel will be sedentary, whereas creativity is better achieved in moderately-paced active motion.
What is your plan for walking for creativity? Even walking around the block might help you see things differently.
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