Morning Ritual

By Dan Pallotta

Every weekday morning, I take a three-and-a-half-mile walk around my neighbourhood… We’re wrong to think of walking only as a way to calm the mind, a source of exercise or as a leisurely luxury.

When it comes to work, walking can dramatically increase productivity. In a very real sense, walking can be work, and work can be done while walking. In fact, some of the most important work you may ever do can be done walking.

A 2013 study by cognitive psychologist Lorenza Colzato from Leiden University found that people who go for a walk or ride a bike four times a week are able to think more creatively than people who lead asedentary life.

The British Journal of Sports Medicine found that those benefits are independent of mood. Sunlight also boosts serotonin levels, which can improve your outlook. These findings are absolutely true for me.

The first mile of my walk is just a racket of competing voices of judgement and to-do lists. But after about two miles, no matter how low my mood may have been at the outset, the voices settle down.

Henry David Thoreau said famously, “Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.”… There are particular spots on my walks at which the ideas begin popping into my head, as if dropping from a magic tree on the side of the road there.

The ideas don’t come unless I’ve engaged with the issue at hand.

From “Take a Walk, Sure, but Don’t Call It a Break”