For much of my public health career, I’ve noticed something odd: I often solved work problems when I wasn’t officially “working.” Well actually, it is still happening to me now.
Sometimes it happens while mowing the grass. Sometimes it happens during a walk by myself. Sometimes it happened while fixing yet another irrigation problem at my house.
I also got into the habit of taking stakeholder meetings on the sidewalk. Instead of meeting in my office, I’d have a stakeholder meeting while walking around the Capitol complex. That loop took about a half hour. I found that we’d often solve problems faster on those walks than we did sitting across a table.
At the time, I just thought it worked for me. I didn’t know there was evidence behind it.
This week I ran across a 2014 study by Marily Oppezzo and Daniel Schwartz called “Give Your Ideas Some Legs: The Positive Effect of Walking on Creative Thinking.” It was in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.
The paper found that walking helped people come up with more creative ideas than sitting. In one part of the study, 81% of people were more creative while walking than while sitting. Across the experiments, walking increased creative output by about 60%.
You can read the article here: Give Your Ideas Some Legs: The Positive Effect of Walking on Creative Thinking.
The researchers even had people walking on a treadmill facing a blank wall. The benefit still showed up. They also assessed people outside, comparing walkers with people who moved through the same area in a wheelchair. Walking itself made the difference.
The study also found something useful for public health professionals… walking helps most when you’re trying to come up with ideas, not when you’re trying to pick the one right answer. Creativity.
Our work is full of problems that don’t have easy answers. How do we improve access to care? How do we build trust? How do we explain a complex policy in plain English? How do we collaborate with partners who don’t always see the issue the same way?
This doesn’t mean every meeting should become a hike. Arizona gets a vote in this matter, especially from June through September. But when the weather allows, walking meetings are an easy tool. No app. No consultant. No strategic retreat. Just shoes, a little time, and problem(s) to solve.
This week I learned that management by walking around isn’t just a leadership style that worked for me. It’s the best evidence-based best-management practice.
