Our mental health and mental clarity comes from the physical.
So many of us are trapped by the machines that are meant to liberate. It is easy to forget that we are animals. We need to move and our brains will thank us for doing so. Do we need to buy the latest greatest workout break through to realize healthy benefits? I say no. Open the door. Go outside. Walk.
Maybe you can spend your lunch hour clearing the fog in your mind…read more below…
No true panacea exists for the struggles and challenges of the modern working creative. But there’s one practice that comes close: walking.
Neuroscientist Andrew Tate writes in a post on Canva’s blog of the many benefits of taking long walks:
It will help make you more creative.
A 2014 study from Stanford University in the US has shown that people are much more creative when they are walking around as opposed to when they are sitting still. Marily Oppezzo and Daniel Schwartz… found that when people were walking, either on the treadmill or outdoors, they were 60% more creative than when sitting around.
It’s a great way to communicate.
Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg both like[d] first meetings with people to be on the move. This is because a walking conversation is so much more natural and distraction-free than most other types of meetings…. [I]t is likely that the increased blood flow helps you to come up with not only more creative ideas and solutions to problems, but also helps you express those ideas more fluently and helps you communicate with co-workers.
You will be following in the footsteps of giants.
Beethoven was an avid walker,… spending his afternoons wandering around Vienna. He always took a pencil and paper with him to write down anything that struck him…. Another of history’s walking enthusiasts was Charles Dickens. Whether in London or at his country house in Kent he always took long walks…. Dickens could rack up 30 miles a day. [H]e created some of his most remarkable and memorable characters when out walking.