MargenWhen an idea gets stuck, don't squeeze it: take it out for a walk.
The Greeks knew it so well they founded a school on it: the Peripatetics, literally «those who walk about», discussed philosophy while strolling. Darwin dug a gravel path behind his house —his «thinking path»— and circled it every day, counting the laps with little stones. Many writers confess the same: the sentences that refuse to come at the desk turn up on their own on the pavement.
It is not superstition. Walking sets the body into a rhythm that occupies exactly the part of the mind that gets in the way: the one that watches, the one that judges, the one that types nervously. The rest is left free to wander — and wandering, whatever its bad press, is where new ideas come from.
That is why a walk without headphones is a technology of thought, perhaps the cheapest there is. Try it on your next problem: don't think it sitting down. Walk it.