Our legs and arms are pumps, as we all learned in high school, with valves in the blood vessels that facilitate that function.
Why Walking Helps Us Think (2014)
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Re: Why Walking Helps Us Think (2014)
#112". When we go for a walk, the heart pumps faster, circulating more blood and oxygen not just to the muscles but to all the organs—including the brain. Many experiments have shown that after or during exercise, even very mild exertion, people perform better on tests of memory and attention. Walking on a regular basis also promotes new connections between brain cells, staves off the usual withering of brain tissue that…
" The next line about walking being easy tells me you live in a flat area with no obstacles." But it is pretty easy once you get muscle built up and get used to the obstacles. I live in a mountainous area. I climb a fence daily and go over a bit of land with no concrete path - though admittedly everyday walking is on concrete most times. Going out into the countryside doesn't make it any more difficult.
"is pretty easy once you get muscle built up and get used to the obstacles."
There are hills, and then hills ~ https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3957949381/
Re: Why Walking Helps Us Think (2014)
#113"our brain must survey the surrounding environment, construct a mental map of the world, settle on a way forward" A colleague in my phd program went on the job market this year with research that is related to this, especially to the connection between writing and walking discussed in the final paragraph. In a nutshell, his theory and experimental evidence suggest that we use the same cognitive mechanisms to process…
There's the loci method for memorization: The method of loci (loci being Latin for "places") is a method of memory enhancement which uses visualizations with the use of spatial memory, familiar information about one's environment, to quickly and efficiently recall information. The method of loci is also known as the memory journey, memory palace, or mind palace technique. Many memory contest champions claim to use th…
An interesting example is: playing World of Warcraft and watching/listening to a youtube video at the same time on another monitor.
After months I've been able to recall exact details about the random video I watched by returning to the same place inside the gameworld.
Re: Why Walking Helps Us Think (2014)
#114Re: Why Walking Helps Us Think (2014)
#115My physician strongly recommended me to walk at least 10 000 steps every day. I prefer to walk fast and for a long distance, it gives me a really huge productivity boost. However I try not to think about work during my walks, it is more effective for me. When I get back to solving problems after a walk I get an enlightment almost all the time.
Random question here. How long does it take you to walk 10k steps? I've fallen out of the habit lately, but I was hitting the 10k target for a while. I have a sedentary desk job. So chores and playing with my kid got me up to about 3k. Then I'd walk for an hour during lunch to get another ~7k steps. Walking for an hour every day is fairly substantial commitment. I mean, it felt worth it. As you said, it's a huge prod…
In my case it takes about 2 hours. I am 85kg / 180cm (5.9 / 187).
Re: Why Walking Helps Us Think (2014)
#116This may be today's least original comment, but I've recently discovered the magic combination of podcast and treadmill. (I knew them both, separately, for a long time already.) In addition to helping make 30 minutes of sweating go by much faster, I find it almost always generates a bunch of ideas. Like a little brainstorming walk, if you will, but all-weather and easier to schedule. My current favorite podcast for t…
It also works with audiobooks. It's especially great if you can't find the time to read books the traditional way.
I actually got into audiobooks because of walking. I am preparing for 100km walk, so I walk a lot (and by a lot I mean 2-5 hours walks). And while walking in silence can be quite enjoyable and meditative by itself I felt that too much time was wasted. Audiobooks make a great companion.
Re: Why Walking Helps Us Think (2014)
#117So why does taking a shower help us think? Or driving a car on the highway to work? It has to be more then just getting blood moving?
Take a look at "learning how to learn" course at Coursera. They talk about focused and diffuse modes of thinking quite a lot. Shower or walks help you to get into the latter.
Edit: see this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14236433
Re: Why Walking Helps Us Think (2014)
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have Aphantasia, nice to see people suddenly becoming aware of this. I'm hoping to see a lot more research in this area in the next few years, but anecdotally I'll say spacial cognition and visual memory are different things, I have the former but not the latter. You don't need a minds eye to have a sense of where things are spatially but given that people with visual recall likely do this task visually, I'm not su…
I have visual recall but I often have a tangible sense of spacial memory. Like I'll feel an almost tingling or aura/presence of an important object in a given vector and magnitude. Maybe related? But I also get the same kind of extra-sensory feeling when I copy data (doubly so if I cut data) -- like my hand is charged with something extra until I "unload it" by pasting the data. This has saved me many times when I ge…
I share the exact same sensation of being "charged with data", that persists even if I get distracted and completely forget about the content of the clipboard. It's like a very tangible pinpoint for a planned activity.
Re: Why Walking Helps Us Think (2014)
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's quite interesting. Any reading material about that?
Some of it from internet research about flow, so hard to pinpoint specific material. Some of it from this very good youtube lecture: "the end of suffering and the default mode network" .
Very interesting lecture! Thanks!
Re: Why Walking Helps Us Think (2014)
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
The key to flow/meditativr-state is sussposed to be fitting the processing capability someone's brain has , to the task. That way all of your attention is given to a network called "task mode network" and no attention is left to the "default mode network " (which is resonsible for mental chatter and self in past/present) so the brain becomes quiet. So maybe there's a way to make chores more demanding of attention[1]…
I do that all the time. I think I did this from birth. Anything boring I twist it to make it "interesting". I achieved supposedly a 10x throughput increase in my last mission (stupid job though) by applying checking constraints so tight it was a choreography. This doesn't work all the time though. I believe there are limits to ones ability to influence it's mental state. Last year, very sick, I could sense the calmin…
You are experiencing Flow: https://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Perennial-...