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Take a walk. A desk is no place to think.

Some organizations understand this perfectly well: when they need to think big, they take a walk. This is what a couple of top managers at Syngenta did when they needed to crack a new strategic vision for their company after a series of mergers. They hiked in the Swiss Alps for a week and came up with the solution.

This confirms my personal belief: walking is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together. Walking allows us to be in our bodies and in the world, but leaves us free to think without being fully lost in our thoughts. The rhythm of walking generates a kind of rhythm of thinking and helps connect thoughts and clarify blurry ideas. Walking is much more than a practical way to travel between two locations.

I’ve turned to this wanderlust technique in a couple of creative workshops lately, asking participants to go for a short walk with a question in mind. Better than a coffee break, where one ingests bad calories and caffeine, a short walk with a topic in mind and a problem to solve can do wonders. It also has a positive effect on your energy level and helps tired participants relieve stress.

Exploring the world is one of the best ways of exploring the mind, and walking travels both terrains.
So let’s take a walk around the block, down the road, and up the hill—to refresh our mind, and irrigate our thoughts on a regular basis.

And it's free, too!