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The slow death of purposeless walking

bbc.co.uk

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Re: The slow death of purposeless walking

#41

Post by tonyedgecombe »

arjie wrote: post #7
trcollinson wrote: post #5

This article makes some fantastic points. I find it sad that we force ourselves to have outwardly facing purpose to almost everything we do. Even if purposeless walking has the internal reason of more thought and creativity, we can't do that because there seems to be an over arching need to have an outward requirement to all activity (complete a project, get more exercise, fulfil some need, etc). This was driven home…

Is this common in whatever country you're in? If this happened where I went to school, there'd be words at the PTA meeting. Your principal is some kind of control freak. It doesn't sound normal at all.

It sounds rather mild compared to what went on in my school.

Re: The slow death of purposeless walking

#43

Post by kephra »

quaffapint wrote: post #31
kephra wrote: post #28

imho, the best companion for a coder in home office is a dog. Try to explain your problem to your dog, if you are stuck. And if this does not help, walk the dog to free your mind, and relax. Most often the solution is obvious once I'm back home.

Completely agree - Plus when he wants to go out and play it forces you to take breaks and refresh yourself. Really helps keep you going and make it more enjoyable by the end of the day.

True. A dog is a good reminder that its time for a break. A dog forces you to take a walk 3 to 5 times a day, regardless if its sunny, raining or storm. This certainly has also a health benefit.

Re: The slow death of purposeless walking

#44

Post by modarts »

pwenzel wrote: post #16
jrochkind1 wrote: post #2

An odd bit of the history of walking I recently learned about: http://www.npr.org/2014/04/03/297327865/in-the-1870s-and-80s... > We may think of baseball as America's national pastime, but in the 1870s and 1880s there was another sports craze sweeping the nation: competitive walking. "Watching people walk was America's favorite spectator sport," Matthew Algeo says in his new book, Pedestrianism. http://en.wikipedia.o…

Amusing note from the NPR story: > Champagne was considered a stimulant. And a lot of trainers — these guys had trainers — advised their pedestrians to drink a lot of champagne during the race. They thought that this would give them some kind of advantage. The problem was a lot of these guys would drink it by the bottle. That definitely was not a stimulant to say the least.

And thus Bay to Breakers was born

Re: The slow death of purposeless walking

#46

Post by phea »

pessimizer wrote: post #29
CognitiveLens wrote: post #15

This is a strange article, because its content reads like anecdotal (European/Western) history combined with generic self-help advice. There is no evidence presented that people are "walking without purpose" less now than they used to - it seems to me that 17% of walks being "just to walk" is actually a fairly high percentage, but there's no point of comparison. Although people probably walk less now because we have…

17% seems like a really high percentage, actually. Also, without reading the linked study, I can't figure out whether it's 17% of all trips, or 17% of all walking trips that are "just to walk." If one out of five trips are for aimless relaxation, that sounds absurdly high. If you're comparing the average survey respondent to your average independently wealthy 19th century author, there's a few pretty obvious reasons…

The 17% figure also includes dog walking. For myself, the midnight walks with my dog have been very rewarding. Giving me time to think about things and reflect on the day. Although there are a good number of dog owners who see walking their dog as a chore, which is not the right attitude to have for being mindful.

Re: The slow death of purposeless walking

#48

Post by charlesthomas »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #32
charlesthomas wrote: post #21

I'm terrible at walking w/o a destination in mind. A while ago I made this crappy little web tool to give me a random destination to meander to: http://roust.sknkwrks.net/

How can you be bad at walking without a destination in mind? You just put one foot in front of another and every time you have to choose a new direction, pick whichever way looks more interesting (by whatever measure you classify interesting at that moment). Not meant to be hostile, genuinely curious.

Part of it is motivation. Why bother leaving, if I don't have a particular destination in mind? There are other things I could be doing that seem more important.

The other part is that I fall into patterns really easily. If I don't have a set destination in mind when I leave my apartment, I often just end up at the subway stop I take to get to work.

Re: The slow death of purposeless walking

#49

Post by stevesearer »

thenipper wrote: post #37
throwaway13qf85 wrote: post #23

I'm not going to claim that it improves my creativity or makes me a better person, but for the last few years I've generally taken at least a half hour out of the middle of my workday to walk (I'm lucky enough to work next to a park). It massively improves my mood, and I'd fight hard against giving it up. There was a tube (underground metro) strike in London the past few days, so I walked to work, leaving my apartmen…

I walk 45 minutes to and from work each day along a beautiful tree lined street. It is a great way to start the day and then to transition back into home life, sort of a metaphorical journey to leave my work problems at work.

My walk is around 20 minutes and the time spent organizing my thoughts for the workday on the way in or winding my brain down from work mode on the way is a great benefit.

Every so often my wife will pick me up directly from work and the conversation is usually terrible because my brain is still thinking of the problems I was solving a couple minutes beforehand.

Re: The slow death of purposeless walking

#50

Post by batoure »

themoonbus wrote: post #39

As some one who currently works from home, a "purposeless" walk is how I start and end my work day – I think of it as my "commute". Walking clears my head, gets me outside for a bit, and helps me separate my home life from my work life. For me, those walks might not be a necessity, but they are definitely not without purpose.

I do this exact same thing. I also take walks around the park by my house during conference calls that I don't have to speak on. I have found that it actually makes me more alert and thoughtful.
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