Take your thoughts for a walk | Marily Oppezzo | TEDxStanford

If you really want to harness your creativity, get out of your chair, leave your office and take a walk, says Oppezzo, an educational psychologist at Stanford who studies the impact of movement and exercise on creative thinking. Research proves that thinking while walking has a measurable effect on our ability to come up with new ideas or to solve problems. In this short talk, Oppezzo tells us simple steps to take so that we can harness the power of walking to enhance creativity.
Marily Oppezzo is a behavioral and learning scientist who studies how people’s physical and mental environments can positively impact learning and health behaviors. Her background at the intersection of education, psychology, and health science puts her in a unique position to research health — specifically sedentary behavior, from an interdisciplinary perspective. Oppezzo earned a Masters in Nutritional Science, with thesis research at the Stanford General Clinical Research Center. She studied pathophysiology of disease progression at Palo Alto Veterans Affairs Hospital while earning her license as a Registered Dietitian and her doctorate in educational psychology at Stanford. Oppezzo is finishing her post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford’s Prevention Research Center in health behavior change and chronic disease prevention.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

Everyone loves new ideas.

What if I told you
that to increase your creative thinking,

you didn't have to drop
thousands of dollars

at Creativity Bootcamp,

you didn't have to grow
ironic facial hair,

(Laughter)

and you didn't have to luckily enough
find a unicorn in your genetic history

on ancestry.com.

So, creativity is actually not
an expensive secret only for an elite few,

nor is it a fortunate trait

that just a lucky handful of people
happen to be born with.

Actually, creativity is a choice,

and any one of us can make a choice
to be creative at any time.

There's a number of strategies
we can choose from to increase it.

Today, I'm just going
to tell you about one

that's really simple and really cheap:

take a walk.

So, you're like, "Wait a minute,
that's not new, that's not a new idea,

Steve Jobs invented walking!

(Laughter)

He was famous for walking meetings.

You're not coming up with anything new!"

Well, you're right!

So, a lot of great thinkers
throughout history

actually did enjoy walking
while thinking -

in fact, Aristotle.

Aristotle was famous in rumor
to be walking while he was teaching.

And his students were actually
called "peripatetics,"

which means "to wander about."

So, the concept that walking

will make you increase
your number of new ideas

is not a new idea.

However, we couldn't find any scientist

that scientifically proved this
with experiments.

This is Dan Schwartz, who's now
the Graduate School of Education Dean,

and I set out to empirically investigate
this idea that everybody already knew.

The creative process - you know this.

From the first idea to the final product

is a long process.

It's super iterative, lots of refinement,

blood, sweat, tears, and years.

We're not thinking
you're going to go out for a walk

and come back with the Sistine Chapel
in your left hand, right?

So what frame of the creative process
did we focus on?

Just this first part.

Just brainstorming,
coming up with a new idea.

We actually ran four studies

with a variety of people who were
either walking indoors or outdoors.

And all of these studies
found the same conclusion.

I'm only going to tell you
about one of them today.

So one of the tests we used
for creativity was "Alternate Uses."

And this test, you have four minutes,

and your job is to come up
with as many other ways

to use common everyday objects
as you can think of.

So, for example, what else
would you do with a key

other than to use it
for opening up a lock?

Clearly, you could use it
as a third eyeball for a giraffe, right?

Maybe. That's sort
of interesting, kind of new.

But is it creative?

People came up with
as many ideas as they could,

and we had to decide:
Is this creative or not?

The definition of creativity
that a lot of people go with

is appropriate novelty.

So, for something to be appropriate,
it has to be realistic.

Unfortunately, you can't use
a key as an eyeball.

But novel is the second thing,
is that nobody had to have said it.

So, for us, novelty had to be
appropriate first.

And then, for novelty,

nobody else in the entire population
that we surveyed could have said it.

So, you might think, "You could use a key
to scratch somebody's car!"

But if somebody else said that,
you didn't get credit for it,

neither of you did.

However, only one person said this:

"If you were dying,
and it were a murder mystery,

and you had to carve the name
of the murderer into the ground

with your dying words."

So, one person said this.

And it's a creative idea
because it's appropriate and it's novel.

So, you either did this test and came up
with ideas while you were seated

or while you were walking on a treadmill.

They did the test twice
with different objects.

Three groups.

The first group sat first
and then sat again for the second test.

The second group sat first

and then did the second test
while walking on a treadmill.

The third group -
and this is interesting -

they walked on a treadmill first
and then they sat.

The two groups that sat together
for the first test,

they looked pretty similar to each other,

and they averaged about
20 creative ideas per person.

The group that was walking
on the treadmill

did almost twice as well.

And they were just walking on a treadmill
in a windowless room.

Remember they took the test twice.

The people who sat twice
for that second test,

it didn't get any better,
practice didn't help.

But these same people who were sitting
and then went on a treadmill

got a boost from walking.

Here's the interesting thing.

The people who were walking
on the treadmill

still had a residue effect of the walking,

and they were still creative afterwards.

So the implication of this

is that you should go for a walk
before your next big meeting

and just start brainstorming right away.

We have five tips for you that will help
make this the best effect possible.

First, you want to pick a problem
or a topic to brainstorm.

This is not the shower effect -

not when you're in the shower

and suddenly a new idea pops out
of the shampoo bottle.

This is something you're thinking
about ahead of time,

and they're intentionally thinking

about brainstorming
a different perspective on the walk.

Secondly - I get asked this a lot -

is this okay while running?

Well, the answer for me
is that if I were running,

the only new idea I would have
would be to stop running.

(Laughter)

But if running for you
is a comfortable pace - good.

It turns out, whatever physical activity
is not taking a lot of attention.

So just walking at a comfortable pace

is a good choice.

Also, you want to come up
with as many ideas as you can.

So, one key of creativity
is to not lock on that first idea.

Keep going, keep coming up with new ones
until you pick one or two to pursue.

You might worry that you don't want
to write them down

because what if you will forget them?

The idea here is to speak them.

Everybody was speaking their new ideas.

So you can put your headphones on
and record through your phone

and then just pretend
you're having a creative conversation.

Because the act of writing
your idea down is already a filter.

"Is this good enough to write down?"
And then you write it down.

So just speak as many as you can;
record them and think about them later.

And finally, don't do this forever.

If you're on a walk
and that idea is not coming to you,

come back to it later at another time.

I think we're coming up
on a break right now.

So I have an idea!

Why don't you grab a leash
and take your thoughts for a walk?

Thank you.

(Applause)