I love walking and there are many parks next to where I live. However I am never able to fully enjoy it or indulge in any longer thinking activities as most of the time I'll be interrupted by either elderly people asking me "to go back where I came from" or random ID checks by undercover police. This happened a lot (5x times) over the last year when I decide to go and walk in a park, once even during an online call with my team. I live in a medium sized city in Germany and come from North Africa / France and it might show a bit too much.
As a mitigation I once seriously considered changing how I look by for example dressing more like a dad or walking the neighbors dog as an alibi for being "normal". Maybe it would have interested the old ladies too, who knows.
For the time being I'll keep at walking on streets or inside the city as it's less strange to see foreigners there. Can't wait to have my private forest :')
Interesting post, when I worked in Vienna I had a guy who was from Nigeria on my team, his dad was a diplomat to the UN, I believe. One day he told me how long it took him to walk back and forth to work, but it didn’t make sense it took that long. He said because he was African the cops in certain districts stopped him every day to search him, claiming he was a drug dealer and basically just to harass him. So he took the extra time to avoid that district. What an eye opening conversation, to see that racism really does show it’s ugly little face everywhere, even in countries that aren’t really known for it. He was well dressed and worked in tech, mental gymnastics would be required to assume he was slanging drugs.
I would like to encourage you to make your experience (semi-)public in your local community. In times of campaigning, talk to people at campaign booths. Tell the members of the city/local council of different parties about it. Go to the mayor's public office hours.
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.
A friend of mine who is white also was checked by the police a lot (in Germany), simply because he had a certain jacket that was apparently associated with drug dealers or trouble makers (checks can include anal probes for hidden drugs, apparently).
So maybe dressing for the occasion could work. Sorry for your ordeal. You'd think police would know you after the umpteenth check.
That was heartbreaking to read. I’m sorry. It really surprised me when I read Germany. Shame on those people and the politicians who allow police to harass you. Shame on them!
Your problem is not that you are North African, but rather that you are living in an area controlled by a group of people who feel that this is a smart policy to have, which of course it is not.
Come to the USA-- for all of our problems, you can at least walk in a park without encountering police.
As a person who walked 8/15 hours for two months straight I can relate to most of the statements written by the author. I believe that listening to music or other recordings takes away from the experience and the mental gains that walking provides, and this is why I skip the headphones during my adventures.
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 mostly agree but I don't think avoiding to listen to stuff all the time is great either. I walked the pct for 5 months and listened to plenty of books and podcasts and they gave me many good ideas. I would often lose myself in the ideas and the podcasts would just ramble on in the background like white noise. My only regret is not noting not thoughts down.
Yet another great mind (also an infamous introvert) who used to take long walks to refresh his mind was Paul Dirac. From his 1963 interview [1] with Thomas Kuhn, he describes how a decisive Sunday walk made him see the analogy between commutators in quantum mechanics and Poisson brackets in classical mechanics:
> "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."
I agree 100% with this article - I do my best thinking when walking. It is the combination of light exercise that gets the blood moving (to the brain!), but not too strenuous that our minds must devote mental energy to the act of phsyical exercise, the oxygen from the fresh air, the feeling of _wandering_ and letting our minds wander.
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.
For a long time, the scholarly consensus was that you are born with a fixed number of neurons and then start losing them over your lifetime. Now there is good evidence of adult neurogenesis and it seems to be linked to endurance exercise, such as walking. These links can be a starting point for reading up on it:
I have found that I have my best (and worst) ideas by changing mental states. For example I’m usually sober so when I’m intoxicated I usually have garbage ideas, but every now and then I think of something truly incredible/useful that I would never have had insight into sober. The same applies to being sleep deprived, it leads me into a different mental headspace where I can think differently than normal (though I try to avoid being sleep deprived cause it’s miserable)
There is something about sleep deprivation that makes me so vividly visually creative, things and image flow in my mind like they otherwise never do. Unfortunately I haven't found a way to trigger this any other way, so my only real creative moments tend to happen in the middle of the night where they aren't much use to anyone.
Recently I had to wake up at 3am and drive for a couple of hour. Something I never do. I had the strangest and most interesting insights! It was very similar to what you describe, a different mental state.
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…
I have ADHD and without my medicine begin walking obsessively. In college, i would walk from one end of campus to the other over and over. When i lived in downtown Dallas i would walk from the West End to Deep Ellum (that's petty far on foot) and back over and over as well. It was good exercise i guess but took a lot of time/energy. Plus, on weekdays i would do it at night which is not the safest thing.
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.
For more / additional information, check out Alex Soojung-Kim Pang's book Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less. Like Jeremy DeSilva, the author of this Lithub article, Pang discusses Darwin and others who consistently walked to think.
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.
I don’t deny the link. I worked with a programmer/mathematician who would just start ambling about the office without any mission when deep in thought. I think that in his case the thinking actually drives the walking instead of vice versa.
>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?
My personal assumption was, that walking, always was hunting for us as a species.
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.
In addition to walking, I've noticed that walking in a fasted state (usually early in the morning) really gets the mind turning.
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.
This is why I am looking for a simple AR headset: so I can look at code while walking through the woods in my area. Just a simple translucent IDE is all I need.
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.
This is sad. Just enjoy walking through the woods, all the different colors and use that as time to reflect. You can still think about work and coding blocks you need to overcome, but spare yourself the IDE in front of your eyes. This is just symptomatic of how we are at an extreme with how we need to be productive, all of the time.
The application of VR/AR technology to creative office work is generally underrated (with too much emphasis on games/entertainment). SimulaVR is making a portable Linux VR headset which will have an "AR mode" (using cameras), scheduled for Kickstarter release early next year: www.simulavr.com
We have plans to eventually release a proper AR headset also, though not on first iteration.
I think this is quite the wrong way of looking at Walking. It is the relaxed, ruminative, mind-wandering state that the mind and body get into while Walking that is so essential for Creativity. By providing it with more attention grabbing stimulus you are actually distracting it.
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/
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.
I get up at 5-5:30AM, every day, and walk two miles. I put some effort into the walk. My usual speed is 16 minutes a mile. It used to be less than 15, but I’ve slowed a bit, as I’ve gotten older. Nothing spectacular, but it gets my heart rate up, and I usually break a bit of a sweat.
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.
I like walking and have walked around 2-5 miles a day for the last 7 or 8ish years. I also go without a phone and I go every day no matter what the weather is like in NY (hot summers and snowy winters).
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.
Coming from Asia, especially tropical countries, walking is not very common during lunch time as you can get sweaty and disgusting coming back to work.
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
Somewhat related, about 10 years ago I was in a tragic situation where someone I loved would be murdered but I couldn't speak out because of possible retaliation against my family.
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.
During various confinements over the past year, I really enjoyed "illegal" late night walks when the streets and parks were completely dead. I found it the perfect ambiance to memorize poetry. Write them out long-hand and then carry nothing but the piece of paper for reference as needed. I don't have the patience for that in any other context.
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.
> 19th-century naturalist’s version of backpacking around Europe during a gap year
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.
I was recently reading a book called Why we Swim where the author traces how the ape got back into the water. I think she rightly points out that Swimming is the best place to think because there is no way to be distracted by your phone or anything else for that matter.
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.
Although I never carry a phone to begin with, as a previous non-swimmer I have started swimming in open water this year ( obviously I learnt to swim as a child ).
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.
When I was younger I swam a little over a mile a day, five or sometimes six days a week. While there weren't that many distractions, I didn't find it as easy to daydream. I usually got bored. I would count the full laps, and because I was bored I would be thinking things like "12 more laps and I'm over 50%" or whatever, but I never had the free-roaming thinking that I associate with walking. Maybe because I only had so much time before I had to turn around yet again.
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.
[+] [-] ilovefood|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtnGoat|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Archelaos|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] notanzaiiswear|4 years ago|reply
So maybe dressing for the occasion could work. Sorry for your ordeal. You'd think police would know you after the umpteenth check.
[+] [-] switch007|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quadrifoliate|4 years ago|reply
Then I read about your experiences and count myself lucky. I can say nothing other than, I hope things get better over time.
[+] [-] mateuszf|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] galfarragem|4 years ago|reply
Unfortunately comments like mine (and yours) don't make things better. Possibly they make things worse.
[+] [-] marcusestes|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelgrafl|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cerebrum|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jjt-yn_t|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Uberphallus|4 years ago|reply
And by that I mean actual sports clothing, not the archetypical tight Adidas tracksuit that the average European troublemaker wears.
[+] [-] fridif|4 years ago|reply
Come to the USA-- for all of our problems, you can at least walk in a park without encountering police.
[+] [-] tomcooks|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] marttt|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DynamicStatic|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] b215826|4 years ago|reply
> "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...
[+] [-] romwell|4 years ago|reply
...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...
[+] [-] math-dev|4 years ago|reply
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 :)
[+] [-] pr_nik2|4 years ago|reply
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4425252/ https://www.npr.org/2011/02/04/133498136/growing-a-bigger-br...
[+] [-] nightsd01|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vvatermelone|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baxtr|4 years ago|reply
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…
[+] [-] chasd00|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] YossarianFrPrez|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] twobitshifter|4 years ago|reply
>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?
[+] [-] PicassoCTs|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] katzgrau|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] lordnacho|4 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] decodebytes|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] georgewsinger|4 years ago|reply
We have plans to eventually release a proper AR headset also, though not on first iteration.
[+] [-] rramadass|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fsiefken|4 years ago|reply
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/
[+] [-] Sevii|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mncharity|4 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] scns|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChrisMarshallNY|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] nickjj|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] robertwt7|4 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] Pandabob|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] throwaway803453|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] snakeboy|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] zabzonk|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] vivferrari|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] the-dude|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] godshatter|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Tomte|4 years ago|reply
Plenty of opportunity to get distracted.
[+] [-] dmos62|4 years ago|reply