The Creative Power of Aimless Strolls

Why not all Walks are Created Equal

“An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.”
— Henry David Thoreau

Productivity tools are an extremely popular topic. Everyone is looking for the next best life hack to get more productive and creative. But one of the simplest tools, one that is accessible to almost anyone at any time, is the modest act of going for a walk.

For me, going for a walk has become one of the most reliable tools to cut through distractions and creative blocks. I generally tend to have some of my clearest and most unexpected ideas on random strolls.

But I recently noticed that not all walks are created equal. The “random stroll” part is key here.

When I’m walking somewhere specifically to get from A to B, say my daily commute to work or back home, my mind is already narrowed down to whatever is happening at the destination. It thinks about problems associated with that place and tries to solve them and plan ahead. Just like the walk itself, the mind is set on a straight path from the current point to a well defined goal.

And in addition to the predefined path, this type of walk is usually also fast-paced, frequently even rushed. I don’t care about the walk itself, it’s only a means to getting me to my destination. The same is true for my thoughts. They don’t get time to meander in new directions. There are urgent problems to solve after all.

However, things start to change when the final goal is removed, when the directed walk becomes an aimless stroll.

These are the kinds of walks where I take my time, look at my surroundings, and maybe discover new and interesting places I had never noticed before, even if I have walked past this same spot countless times.

When there is no apparent purpose to the walk other than just the walk itself, when the only goal is to aimlessly amble around and eventually get back to where I started, the character of my thoughts also changes completely.

In fact, they take on a similar quality as the walk itself. They aimlessly stumble around, in many cases leading nowhere obviously useful, but occasionally also hitting on some unexpected insights and new connections. They are no longer rushed, but simply take the time to naturally unfold.

“The moment my legs begin to move my thoughts begin to flow.”
— Henry David Thoreau

I have previously written about the four stages of productivity — preparation, incubation, illumination, verification — popularized by Graham Wallas in “The Art of Thought”. Aimless walks are exactly the kind of activity that fosters two of these stages, incubation and eventual illumination.

As a writer, many of my best lines have come to me as sudden appearances in my mind while out on a walk. Insights of this kind tend to be fleeting, so I make sure I jot them down in an Evernote notebook. But I don’t mull over them for too long and put my phone away again immediately.

Illumination, the moment of sudden insight or discovery where our mind goes “Eureka!”, whether just a good line to write or some more profound idea, may or may not occur during the walk itself. But even without the obvious event of illumination we must not underestimate the less obvious but nonetheless real and important impact of incubation we get from “pointless” walks.

Like so many other forms of rest, we must not dismiss them as useless wastes of time.

Recently I was working on a project combining music and artificial intelligence. One day I spent an entire morning working without much progress. Completely demotivated and almost wanting to give up on the entire project, I decided to go for a long ambling walk. The walk itself was rather uneventful, I certainly didn’t have any sudden epiphanies or particularly memorable ideas.

But when I got back home an hour later and sat down to work again, ideas just effortlessly came to me and I almost immediately got into a flow state. It kind of felt like I went into a trance, and several hours later, without too much conscious effort, I had made tremendous progress and basically laid the foundation for large parts of the project. It’s almost as if the muses saw my dispirited face while I was out on my walk, decided to follow me home, and take over for a couple of hours.

Such is the power of aimless strolls.

Sure, not every walk will be quite this powerful and ultimately productive, but there are few downsides to trying. Worst case you’ll get a bit of exercise and come back more relaxed than when you left.

So get out there and take a stroll. Set no intention other than eventually returning to your starting point. You may be surprised by what you discover, both in the physical world around you, as well as in your mind.