Week 18, 2025 - Silent Walking
Another unusual newsletter, because I only want to write about one thing this week. The topic of “silent walking” came up in a Hungarian leadership community, and it gave me a good opportunity to share some related thoughts.
Some housekeeping before I jump into that: the new EM challenge I published on Thursday is about managing negativity during uncertain times - hope you find it useful.
I’m amazed that we’re in an era where you need a different term for the most simple act of walking, just to signify that you’re not distracting yourself with listening to music, podcasts, audiobooks, whatever. We bombard our brain with impulses, so afraid of boredom and unproductive moments, that this overload became the default, and we needed to come up with a new term to signify an activity without distractions. Crazy!
From The Power of through the Beauty and Health Benefits of silent walking, articles are popping up everywhere in praise of the simplest thing one can do, leaving the flat for a walk. I thought about this, and I found two ways how turning off distractions in a monotone activity helps me in the day-to-day.
Creativity
I hope you also experienced the feeling of coming up with the best ideas in the shower. You just let your mind wander, and BOOM, there comes a novel solution to a problem you're struggling with, a crazy business idea, or just a good topic for an article. There’s science behind this: creative breakthroughs are more likely to occur when people are engaged in routine tasks that don’t require much thought, allowing the mind to wander. This mind-wandering activates the default mode network (DMN) in the brain, which connects different regions and is more active during passive tasks. In short, the DMN helps in idea generation by drawing from past experiences and combining information in new ways.
I find that walking without distraction, just like being in the shower, allows my mind to wander freely and bring up surprisingly interesting ideas. (Tip: take an audio note-taking tool with you if you want to help remember your ideas. Since the latest iOS versions, I can just use the default Voice Memos app that does a decent job of transcription to a raw text that can be used as is, or fed into an LLM to turn them into organized summaries or outlines.)
Mindfulness
However, there’s a more foundational benefit of distraction-free time, mindfulness. This complements the creative walks I explained above, since during mindful meditations, I’m supposed to recognise when my focus starts to wander, and gently guide it back to my breathing, my footsteps, and the surroundings. This requires practice and discipline, but the benefits of long-term stress- and anxiety-reduction, attention span, and other areas are proven by numerous studies.
The world around us is working hard to ensure our brain never gets bored. Short videos, doomscrolling, notifications, multitasking: this over-stimulation in the long term is killing my focus and attention span, and in the long term can develop stress and anxiety. I found that practicing mindfulness in routine activities and going for walking meditations can improve my general well-being and ability to sustain focus.
Others in the community I mentioned above listed running or going to a sauna for similar destressing effects. A friend of mine has a camera to take for walks: the creativity sparked by limited distractions allows him to discover new perspectives.
I’m curious, have you tried “silent walking”? What else do you do to alleviate stress and let your brain rest a bit? Just hit reply to this email or comment below if you want to share.
That’s it for this week, embrace a mundane activity this weekend,
Péter