🧠 Think better in 10 minutes

You sit down to work on something that needs real thinking. A problem to solve, a decision to make, something that needs a fresh angle. You stare at the screen. You open a new tab. You read the same paragraph twice. Nothing comes.

The instinct is to push harder. Keep sitting. Force it.

That instinct is wrong…

In 2014, Stanford researchers Marily Oppezzo and Daniel Schwartz published a study showing that walking boosts divergent thinking, the kind of thinking involved in generating ideas and finding new angles.

81% of participants produced more creative output while walking than while sitting. Creative output went up by around 60% on average.

And it didn't require going outside. Walking on a treadmill in a blank room produced nearly the same result. It's the movement doing the work, not the scenery.

The boost also persists after you sit back down. People who walked before a creative task still outperformed people who sat for both halves of the session.

Walking works because creative thinking actually benefits from your prefrontal cortex loosening its grip. Walking gives your brain just enough to do that it stops clenching around the problem and lets associations flow more freely.

When you hit a block tomorrow

before you open another tab, go for 10 minutes. Walk. Don't listen to anything. If an idea comes, voice note it. Come back and sit down.

That's it. Free, immediate, no equipment.

If you want to stack this properly with a morning routine that sets your brain up before work starts, that's what the free 5-step morning routine covers.

I wrote this one because I kept treating being stuck as a reason to sit harder. Hopefully it saves you a wasted hour this week. See you next Sunday.

—Ernest P.
Founder, Enhancing Brain