Do this to get more creative ideas

Science says that by doing this we can boost our creativity and generate more ideas.

🚶Walk this way for creativity

Did you know you can boost your creativity by simply taking a walk?

A paper published in 2014 showed that walking can boost creativity, both while you're walking and shortly after.

Four experiments by Stanford researchers¹ showed that people who walked (whether indoors or outdoors) generated more original and context-appropriate ideas than those who remained seated.

This could be one of the easiest and healthiest ways to increase creativity.

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🔬 Experiments 🔬

These were the experiments conducted by the researchers:

🔬 Experiment #1

Participants in this experiment completed a creativity test twice: first while seated and then while walking on a treadmill.

To evaluate creativity, they took the Guilford’s Alternate Uses (GAU) test, where they had 4 minutes to brainstorm different uses for everyday items, like bricks or tires. For example, a 🧱 brick could serve as a step, a paperweight, a fitness tool, or even a doorstop.

📈 The results showed that 81% of participants were more creative while walking than sitting, with an average increase in creative output of about 60%.

Effects of walking and sitting on divergent and convergent thinking.

To see if walking boosts creativity specifically (not just cognition in general), researchers included another task - the Compound Remote-Association (CRA) test, which requires finding a common link between three words. For instance, the link for “cottage”, “Swiss”, and “cake” is “cheese.”

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🔬 Experiment #2

In the first experiment, participants completed the creativity tasks twice: once while seated and then again while walking.

Since walking always followed the seated test, it was unclear if the improved creativity was a direct result of walking, or simply because participants had practiced the task once already.

Experiment #2 was conducted to test whether practice had an impact.

📈 The results?

• People who walked did better than those who sat (88% increased their number of novel ideas when walking).

• Those who only sat did not improve across trials, showing that practice did not improve creativity.

• Walking also exhibited a residual effect on creativity. After people walked, their subsequent “seated” creativity was much higher than those who had not walked (compare the “Sit” conditions in Time 2 in the graph below).

Mean number of novel appropriate responses by time and condition.

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🔬 Experiment #3

In this experiment, participants walked outside instead of on a treadmill. Those who sat switched rooms between sessions to account for any effects of changing scenery.

📈 Results were consistent with previous experiments: walking continued to enhance creativity over time, indoors and outdoors alike, with the additional information that the effect of walking does not attenuate over time.

Mean appropriate novel responses by condition and time.

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🔬 Experiment #4

In the last experiment the researchers introduced two major changes: (i) a different measure for creativity², and (ii) separated walking from moving through an outdoor space.

Participants completed one of these four scenarios:

1. 🏠🚶 Indoor treadmill

2. 🏠🪑 Indoor sitting

3. 🌳🚶Outdoor walking

4. 🌳🦽Outdoor being pushed in a wheelchair

📈 The results? Consistent with earlier findings again.

• Walking, indoors or outdoors, significantly boosted creative thinking.

• Of those who walked, 95% generated at least one novel high-quality analogy compared with 50% of those who sat.

Mean number of high-quality and high-quality novel analogies by condition. Quality analogies refer to the full height of the bar, whereas novel refers to the subset that was unique to the sample

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🧠 How does this work?

While walking clearly has an effect, the exact reasons are still unknown, and future research will need to consider different possibilities.

• Is it walking per se, or could other forms of mild physical activity have similar positive effects (e.g. knitting 🧶)?

• Walking at a natural pace might increase creativity, but it’s unclear if a different pace or a more intense type of walking would have the same effect.

• Walking outdoors might slightly increase creativity due to varied scenery, but walking indoors is effective too, as long as there are no strong distractions.

• Physical activity can improve mood, which is often linked to creativity, though some research suggests that certain negative emotions can also improve artistic creativity.

• Walking could make it easier to access less obvious ideas by loosening mental filters that usually limit our thoughts.

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Wrapping up

Taking a walk can help us generate more creative ideas.

We already know physical activity is good for our health and that too much sitting is harmful. And this study gives us yet another reason to incorporate movement into our day.

So next time, consider turning a work meeting into a walking one - you’ll be healthier, and you might just generate some new ideas.

Win-win!

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See you all next Sunday 🗓️
Thanks,
Giacomo

1. Marily Oppezzo and Daniel L. Schwartz.

2. The new creativity task was Barron’s symbolic equivalence task, where people have to create analogies.