How a Walk Provides You With a Constant Stream of New Ideas for Blog Posts and Books

This article is primarily about how much a walk can stimulate our creativity. But in the end, it will show what this insight really stands for.

For years I have read again and again how much walking can increase creativity. But it is only since I have been doing it myself that I know how powerful this tool is.

Today was another one of those days when I did not get out of bed well. I know that it doesn’t help to sit down at the laptop after breakfast and work on days like that. My head is then empty, and my will power is almost zero. So why should I force myself to sit in front of the computer and stare at the screen?

In the past, I simply did nothing. I used to tell myself that this day wasn’t meant for work and that I needed a break. Usually, I’d watch a series or a movie on Netflix, and I wouldn’t be productive the whole day.

But one day, I remembered the many articles and books I had read about creativity and overcoming lethargy. I remembered that I found many of the ideas described there plausible and logical. But I had never tried any of these tips until that day.

At that time, I was in a state where many readers of self-help literature are in. I only consumed the content instead of using it.

So I decided to try at least one of these tips and chose the one that seemed the easiest — I would take a walk and write down all the ideas for articles or books that came to my mind.

To be honest, I didn’t expect to gain earth-shattering insights just because I moved my legs. That didn’t happen, of course, but what happened was even better. I didn’t think about anything in particular and just looked around the area, and suddenly a thought popped up that gave me the idea for the next blog post. Today I don’t remember what kind of idea it was because it was a long time ago, but I still remember my walk from today. And about that, I want to tell you now.

Thirty minutes of walking and five ideas for new content

It was half-past eight in the morning when I got dressed for the walk. The temperature was just above freezing, and the sun had just risen.

I decided to come back with at least one idea for an article and an erotic short story. None of these ideas had to be so good that I would really use them later.

The restriction to two ideas in thirty minutes is to make sure that I don’t put me under subconscious pressure. It’s not about thinking hard for the whole thirty minutes and generating as many ideas as possible. The less intention you have, the freer your thoughts can flow.

For the same reason, I allow myself to be happy with ideas that I do not later convert into content. If I take several walks per week, I always have enough ideas at the end that can be implemented. The hike itself is there to collect the ideas. I sort and rate them later.

So I started and walked first through a nearby park. A new apartment block has been under construction for a few months now on the edge of this park. I stopped for a moment and watched the construction workers. I wondered how it could be that every day many different companies come together on this construction site, and every worker seems to know exactly what to do. How is it possible that a few dozen workers, who don’t know the big picture, work together so that there is a finished house in the end?

I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and opened the note app. I wrote down: “How does a construction site work?

With that, I had found the first idea for a blog post, and I had not been on the road for five minutes. I continued on my way.

Next, I came to a prominent main road. Cars drove by, people went into a supermarket, and a plane flew over me at high altitude. I was still thinking about the construction site, but now I suddenly asked myself how all this was connected around me. How does a society as complex as ours work? Why don’t some terrible disasters happen every minute? What does it take for people to find the goods they need in the supermarket, and what needs to be considered before an airplane is on its way to a particular destination at that exact moment?

The series of questions that emerged in my head was overwhelming. I realized the incredible complexity of our world by merely thinking from one point to the next, losing myself seconds later in a jumble of questions that seemed impossible to answer.

I took out my cell phone again and wrote: “How does our world work?

This was a question that is a million times more complex than the question of the construction site, and I will probably never write a book that answers this question. But I’m sure that there will be countless articles in the future when I think about aspects of this big question again and again.

I was on the road for a little more than a few minutes. For the next few minutes, I just kept walking with open eyes and ears through my neighborhood and didn’t discover anything special. But then I passed a bus stop and heard a short conversation between two young women. I only heard two sentences, but one woman was about to be a bridesmaid for one of her best friends.

I remembered that I was still looking for a plot for an erotic short story. So the first thing I thought of when I heard the word bride was the word wedding night. Now a wedding night is often a very erotic affair, but for the erotica market a bit too commonplace. But there was still the bridesmaid. I tried to connect the words wedding night and bridesmaid. Two women were already better than one, I thought. Maybe the bridesmaid and the newlyweds could enjoy themselves together on the wedding night.

But then what about the best man of the husband? Bam, I had my plot. I stopped again and wrote down: “Wedding night for four.”

I know, I know, that sounds awful. But erotic stories with more than two active protagonists sell better than stories about just one couple. I write in this genre what the market wants, not what I think is exciting.

Anyway, I was on the road for a little more than twenty minutes and had a concrete idea for an article and one for an erotic short story. So I had reached my minimum goal. Besides, there was this massive idea from which I can make many different articles in the future.

But on this walk, even more, happened. Directly after the bus stop comes the small café where my wife and I have bought our cake for a few weeks. The cake there costs almost twice as much as in the baking stores you find in the supermarkets in the area and still much more than in other cafés.

I asked myself why we buy this expensive cake. Of course, I knew the answer already, but my readers do not know it yet. I decided that I should write an article about why we buy our cake there and nowhere else. You will be able to read this article on my profile soon.

The last idea I finally had on this walk was when I unlocked the front door again. I was so pleased with the yield of my walk today that I thought I should tell you about it.

You are reading the result of this last flash of inspiration at this moment. It is now a quarter to eleven. I left for my walk two hours and fifteen minutes ago and am currently writing my article’s last words today. So I would say that the method has worked once again.

What you can really learn from this article

Of course, you can now start with daily walks and get the same great results as I did. You should, in fact, do that. But you can also get more out of this article than just that.

This method only started to work for me when I actually used it. I had been reading about it for years without ever trying it once to see if it really worked.

At the beginning of this article, I talked about how most people like to consume self-help content, but very few people act on it. I was such a person for many years.

The Creative Walk is just one example of how life-changing it can be to really follow the advice that you find useful, instead of just nodding quietly and thinking, “I should try that one day.

What experiment have you been putting off for far too long? Whatever it is, do it and find out what it can do for your life. Doing it is like wanting to do it — only better.

René Junge a published author writing on ILLUMINATION.

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