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Taking a walk may lead to more creativity than sitting, study finds (2014)

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Re: Taking a walk may lead to more creativity than sitting, study finds (2014)

#241

Post by dietr1ch »

abustamam wrote: post #219
stego-tech wrote: post #42

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'm convinced that humans can't (or at least, shouldn't) actually work 8h a day. I'd argue that taking an hour to exercise or walk during the work day and working maybe 6 hours would make people more productive and happier than just working 8h. Unfortunately management thinks that lines of code written or token usage or seats in butts or {insert random quantitative metric} equals peak productivity.

I found that my best 5-6hrs a day are enough to do the work that I could do in 8hrs. With less time I'm also forced to prioritise, prune more heavily, and be creative, but at the same time, there's stuff that in the short term is always a bad idea to automate and some dumb grunt work can get it done, in which working for longer gets more done if you only care about the short term (like management loves to do).

Re: Taking a walk may lead to more creativity than sitting, study finds (2014)

#242

Post by DeathArrow »

I do get some good ideas when I am not intensely trying to think of how to solve a problem.

Not only walking, but taking a shower, running errands, relaxing in bed, practicing a hobby, allows me to think outside the box, come up with novel ideas and strange hypothesis that might work once tested.

I think the idea is putting yourself in a mental state that allows you to explore "off the rails".

Re: Taking a walk may lead to more creativity than sitting, study finds (2014)

#243

Post by mateioo7 »

wasting_time wrote: post #46

To add to the historical references, here's a quote from Nietzsche: all truly great thoughts are conceived by walking .

Add Constantin Noica to the list:

> When you can’t carry an idea forward, you have to climb a hill. You overcome an internal obstacle by creating an external one.

> If you want to achieve cultural excellence, you must live to be 70, and to live to be 70, you must learn to walk every day. Walking is askesis itself—the ultimate form of practice—and all sports are nothing more than a series of variations on the theme of walking. You are facing a long-distance race, not a sprint. You must therefore make your body an ally, and if man’s animality is his mobility, then you are obliged to respect your moving being

Re: Taking a walk may lead to more creativity than sitting, study finds (2014)

#244

Post by antiframe »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #212
exe34 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paper maps still work. What do you sacrifice in security in a dumb phone? A dumb phone is much cheaper. You can still call your friends.

Increasingly services want 2fa and other bullshit that only really plays nice with a modern smartphone. They don’t sell a lot of dumb phones fwiw. The network that your old one in the drawer ran on is shut down. The new “dumphones” are usually android phones designed for old people with poor eyesight and dexterity.

For 2FA, why would I want to use my phone? Certainly not SMS. YubiKey primarily, TOTP if necessary. Neither of which I need a phone for.

Re: Taking a walk may lead to more creativity than sitting, study finds (2014)

#245

Post by Cider9986 »

antiframe wrote: post #244
kjkjadksj wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Increasingly services want 2fa and other bullshit that only really plays nice with a modern smartphone. They don’t sell a lot of dumb phones fwiw. The network that your old one in the drawer ran on is shut down. The new “dumphones” are usually android phones designed for old people with poor eyesight and dexterity.

For 2FA, why would I want to use my phone? Certainly not SMS. YubiKey primarily, TOTP if necessary. Neither of which I need a phone for.

Most TOTP solutions are phone based, but you're right you can use them on any platform.

Some 2FA is app based, so that you'd need a phone for.

You wouldn't want to, but it's what 99% of people are herded into doing. TOTP is a lot more supported than hardware keys.

Re: Taking a walk may lead to more creativity than sitting, study finds (2014)

#246

Post by Nevermark »

QuercusMax wrote: post #237
Nevermark wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We might found out that not having our assumptions about topology gives them an advantage on us! They might be well adapted to twisty little passages too.

maybe someday we can put spiders in a VR harness, like we can do with mice now... https://www.nature.com/articles/s41592-024-02554-6 "Moculus"

I think a better way to go is have a little palace/dollhouse they live in, made of tiles with circular pocket-doors for portal creation, and where adjacent rooms can be moved around quickly, to create portal-like wormhole effects.

Perhaps with a few levels of large computer controlled, air-flow/transport surfaces.

Then we breed them for size and superintelligence.

Re: Taking a walk may lead to more creativity than sitting, study finds (2014)

#247

Post by r_lee »

arthurofbabylon wrote: post #225
abustamam wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm convinced that humans can't (or at least, shouldn't) actually work 8h a day. I'd argue that taking an hour to exercise or walk during the work day and working maybe 6 hours would make people more productive and happier than just working 8h. Unfortunately management thinks that lines of code written or token usage or seats in butts or {insert random quantitative metric} equals peak productivity.

Relatedly, I'm convinced that humans cannot achieve any form of peak performance in any domain (athletics, art, business, community organizing) without consistently going for walks. We're all aware of the programmer working at a problem for hours, going for a walk, sitting down, and then elegantly solving the problem in a few lines of thoughtful code (haven't we all experienced this?), and here is an example in anoth…

that all sounds great, but what if we just use AI to increase velocity and implement a 996 work schedule to squeeze everybody?

Re: Taking a walk may lead to more creativity than sitting, study finds (2014)

#248

Post by kjkjadksj »

bitmasher9 wrote: post #224
kjkjadksj wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever it is, clearly sitting 8+ hours in a chair is no healthy way to live. You don’t have to ask what our ancestors did. You can see it in our bodies. What does a healthy body take? Something on the order of 3-4 days a week of intense exercise. Seeing past 20 feet from time to time to avoid eye strain. Getting sufficient sleep. Time to relax to let stress blow off. Simple, obvious truths, but few of us actually l…

I’m more triggered by someone using a weak argument that is in support of something I also support. The amount of direct empirical evidence for the health benefits of walking is so huge that we shouldn’t relay on the evolutionary argument, which is often associated with scams and pseudo-science. Furthermore I’m saying that even if there was a very solid evolutionary argument for a specific human health behavior, it w…

The question you pose is of most relevance. 50k years ago matters when we are still the animals of 50k years ago forced to fit into this modern society. What are we? What are our adaptions? What are the requirements to make us fit? Same questions with the same answers today and 50k years ago. Culture evolved a whole lot faster than our bodies have. What does modern culture select for? A question to ponder.

Re: Taking a walk may lead to more creativity than sitting, study finds (2014)

#249

Post by t-3 »

abustamam wrote: post #240
catuscubitus wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I argue that taking a minute or two every hour or so to do a few reps of an exercise clears people's thinking, lends perspective, provides fresh ideas, is great for general mental health, and hence, makes people more productive and happier than sitting for 8 hours or more and going to a gym after. Small training sessions at work, throughout the day, are also great to build a strong team spirit and feel pumped all day…

I tend to agree. I had a gym trainer tell me that the best way for me to learn to do 100 pull-ups in a row (ie the Murph challenge) was to do a few pull-ups every hour or so (grease the groove) until I can do 100 in a day. Then just keep improving from there. So it's good for strength too!

I've seen similar for pushups - do twice as many pushups as your 1x goal, in whatever reps/set is comfortable, slowly shifting to more reps/fewer sets until you are doing 2 sets of 100 pushups or whatever your goal is.

Re: Taking a walk may lead to more creativity than sitting, study finds (2014)

#250

Post by juanani »

r_lee wrote: post #247
arthurofbabylon wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relatedly, I'm convinced that humans cannot achieve any form of peak performance in any domain (athletics, art, business, community organizing) without consistently going for walks. We're all aware of the programmer working at a problem for hours, going for a walk, sitting down, and then elegantly solving the problem in a few lines of thoughtful code (haven't we all experienced this?), and here is an example in anoth…

that all sounds great, but what if we just use AI to increase velocity and implement a 996 work schedule to squeeze everybody?

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