Build a daily walk into the creative schedule

Walking — especially before or during creative blocks — is among the most common rituals documented by Currey.

Why it works

Physical movement increases cerebral blood flow and changes neurochemistry in ways associated with divergent thinking and insight. Walking removes the body from the immediate work environment, reducing attention-demanding stimuli and allowing incubation — the unconscious processing that often produces creative connections. Dickens, Darwin, Beethoven, and others depended on long daily walks; the frequency of this pattern across Currey’s subjects makes it the most replicable finding in the book.

How to do it

1. Build a 20–60 minute walk into your daily schedule, positioned either before your work block or after an impasse.
2. Leave the phone behind or use it only for audio — the goal is reduced visual stimulus, not a change of screen.
3. Keep a small notebook for ideas that arise during the walk; many creative people report that problems resolve themselves during this time.

Evidence

A Stanford study found that walking improved divergent thinking scores substantially compared to sitting, with effects persisting into a subsequent seated creative session. The biographical convergence in Currey is compelling as observational data. (observational)

Oppezzo & Schwartz tested divergent thinking tasks in lab settings; whether this translates to real creative output in professional domains is not directly studied.

Sources

• Oppezzo & Schwartz (2014), Give your ideas some legs — the positive effect of walking on creative thinking, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition

Common mistake

Treating the walk as low-priority and skipping it when busy — it tends to be most valuable precisely on the days when work feels hardest and is therefore most likely to be cut.