Go for a walk, come back with the idea

In 2014, two Stanford researchers, Marily Oppezzo and Daniel Schwartz, measured something writers and philosophers had been practising for centuries without data: they asked people to come up with creative uses for everyday objects, first sitting down, then walking. Walking, their output of good ideas rose by around 60%.

The revealing part was in the small print. The effect held on a treadmill, facing a blank wall: it wasn't the scenery, it was the walking itself. And it lingered for a while afterwards: people who had just walked kept having better ideas than those who hadn't left their chair.

One nuance makes it genuinely useful: walking boosts divergent thinking — generating possibilities — but it doesn't help, and even hinders slightly, when you need to converge on a single correct answer.

Hence a simple rule for laying out your day: walk when you need to open things up (angles, titles, possible solutions, how to start that difficult message) and sit when it's time to close (choose, polish, decide). If a meeting is of the opening kind, suggest holding it on foot. Ideas, quite often, arrive at walking pace.