“All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking”

My co-worker at the high technology company I once worked at was the software architect for a sophisticated manufacturing test system. He was highly skilled at both hardware and software design and was responsible for inventing and implementing many innovative test features that made our products a success in the marketplace.

I thought it strange that I would often see this brilliant engineer walking the corridors and halls of the company with his hands behind his back or stroking his chin – his mind so deep in thought that he did not even acknowledge the presence of those passing by.

I learned that it was his habit to get out of his office and walk whenever he was trying to work out solutions to complex problems or devise efficient algorithms to improve system performance characteristics. That memory of him flashed across my mind when I came across Nietzsche’s quote: “All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking“.

I can’t claim to be the author of any great thoughts, but I have found that walking has also helped me in ways that have benefited my body, mind, and spirit. I have tried to include a walk in my daily activities ever since I was a young man; and most of my major life decisions were made during my solitary walks – many of them illuminated only by the light of the moon in the nighttime sky.

I am not sure what it is about walking that lends itself to constructive thinking, but for me it is a combination of factors:

• It removes me from my environment and all the multi-tasking distractions preventing me from letting my mind wander. When you go outside, you interrupt what you are doing – and stopping what you are trying to achieve allows the subconsciousness to work on different ways to achieve it. The human species was designed to thrive outside, not at a desk or a couch.
• It boosts my mood and improves my circulation which seems to improve my creativity. As Henry David Thoreau once wrote; “Methinks the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow“.
• It moves me from focusing on myself and my problems to contemplating things that are bigger than myself and it makes me realize how small I am in comparison with the greater world. Admiring nature and the vastness of the universe prompts unrestrained thinking.

So next time you have a problem you can’t solve, an important decision you need to make, or are seeking consolation from life’s sorrows, all you really need do is go for a walk. Remember the wisdom of the famous naturalist and father of the National Parks, John Muir, who remarked; “I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in“.