121–130 of 254 posts
Absolutely. If the weather isn't nice, I will even walk around in the office.
How big is your office?
Walking, showering, sleeping, and riding a bike are great ways to debug code. It's very cool to go to sleep and wake up knowing what the solution to the problem is. The key for incubation for me is to make sure my brain can churn without distractions (that means no listening to podcasts, music, etc while performing said action).
Im not sure if Im being old and grumpy but why isnt this obvious?
If they made a shower you could walk in, every single problem facing humanity would be solved in three weeks.
I wonder how hard it would be to get an agent to send me a text message if it gets stuck on something.
Im not sure if Im being old and grumpy but why isnt this obvious?
With agents, you can set them to work on a task, and then head out for a walk while having a think about next steps. Come back, review the results, give it the next steps, and then head out for another walk. I wonder how hard it would be to get an agent to send me a text message if it gets stuck on something.
Not too hard, aka. I have a friend who did this. Rather than a text message, he uses IRC, but the effect should be the same. IRC is probably a little better.
Assuming you use Claude Code, the concept to look for is 'channels'. It's described as being for sending messages to Claude, but they work both ways. And I see one of the canned channels is iMessage.
I was a doubter until COVID. Then I built a habit of 30 to 60+ minutes of walking a day, ~1.5 to 5mi depending on length and pace. Geez , the amount of stuff I got done, problems I solved, and general boost to well-being I achieved was lost on me until a job pushed those walks out of the workday. My productivity wasn’t the same. Definitely going to block off a walk around the harbor during most workdays going forward…
It reminds me about this video where John Cleese talks about creativity. One of his points is that his work was better than some of his more talented peers simply because he set aside more time to let ideas mature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb5oIIPO62g
Land animals first evolved intelligence when we emerged from the cloudy, murky sea and developed the ability to see shapes (predators, prey) really far into the distance. This required the ability to understand the future and perform spatial reasoning. Not all aquatic species were exposed to such pressures (opportunities), since line of sight vision (especially traveling at speed) is limited.
We got really smart when we became endurance hunters and out-walked and out-ran our prey. Bipedal locomotion and sweating were clutch advantages for sure, but our brains became especially attuned to multi-tasking when walking and running. We could see our prey far into the distance and could plan hours in advance for how to exhaust and corner it. Especially as a group activity. This engaged spatial, temporal, collaborative, and complex reasoning.
We didn't evolve to think at a desk. We evolved to think because it greatly enhanced our hunting skills and survival fitness.
When you walk or run, you're directly engaging machinery that was fine tuned over hundreds of thousands of years.
I was a doubter until COVID. Then I built a habit of 30 to 60+ minutes of walking a day, ~1.5 to 5mi depending on length and pace. Geez , the amount of stuff I got done, problems I solved, and general boost to well-being I achieved was lost on me until a job pushed those walks out of the workday. My productivity wasn’t the same. Definitely going to block off a walk around the harbor during most workdays going forward…
I absolutely do think exercise can help with work, in general, just not immediately after for me. A walk after work is much better, to prepare for the next day.