What’s the one unexpected thing you should do more of in 2020?

I’ll give you a minute to think.

Almost ready?

Okay, scroll:

Walking

Now, you may be thinking, “walking? No way! I want to focus on reading more or eating better or being kind.” Well, you should focus on those things too. The world isn’t a zero-sum game. But also walk more. It will help you reach your goals.*

Stop What You’re Doing Right Now and Walk (But Please Keep Reading)

For most people, walking is not difficult. It costs next to nothing. Nearly everyone who walks does so at least once per day. You could do it right now if you wanted to.

Running (arguably a form of walking!) in Rock Creek Park

There’s No Such Thing As a Free Lunch Except in Walking

“There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” or so the saying goes. Except with walking. With walking, there is a free lunch. There’s no charge to see the world on your own two feet. There’s no price associated with letting your mind wander.

The Amplifier Effect** of Walking

In addition to being easy and free, walking has a plethora of benefits. Walking is good for your body, mind, and soul. Walking is good for the planet and for your heart. Walking lowers your cholesterol, reduces your joint pain, boosts your immune function, and improves your mood. Walking is incredibly safe compared to other means of transportation.*** Walking is good for your wallet. Walking makes you more creative, focused, and—in my opinion—empathetic towards others.

In short, walking has a series of amplifier effects on different parts of your life. What do I mean by an amplifier effect? Well, an amplifier effect is one type of knock-on effect. Knock-on effects comprise the secondary, indirect, or cumulative effects of something. Some other types of knock-on effects are:

the domino effect (chain of events)
the snowball effect (compounding chain of events)
the ripple effect (difficult to predict chain of events)
the butterfly effect (nearly impossible to predict chain of events).

The amplifier effect is similar to the domino effect, except that the chain of events is smaller. If it was on the list above, it would be at the top—the most basic form of knock-on effect. The amplifier effect occurs when doing one thing (the intermediary variable) increases some aspect of another thing (the outcome variable).

We can all think of activities that have amplifier effects. For example, forcing yourself to smile produces an amplifier effect: You are more likely to feel happy because of the intrinsic activation of your facial muscles responsible for smiling, but you’ll also make others happy, which in turn will make you happier. If you want to be happier, smiling at people is a simple way to amplify your own happiness. Sleeping has an amplifier effect on knowledge retention. You can’t sleep your way to better test scores alone, but it will certainly make your studying more effective. Reading is another example of the amplifier effect. Books are portals of discovery—through them, you can enter the lives and minds of people unlike yourself. In this way, curling up with a good book has an amplifier effect on your empathy for others.

Walking into Ideas (Aka: Why You Should Walk at Lunch)

“All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.” -Friedrich Nietzsche

It’s a lesser-known secret that a plethora of history’s great thinkers have also been great walkers.**** Nietzsche, Wordsworth, Thoreau, and Rousseau—just to name a few—all made walking the cornerstone of their intellectual schedules. The idea is startlingly simple: Working though a difficult problem? Go for a walk. The physical action of taking steps will help you wear away the tough edges of the problem you strive to crack. Not only that, but walking can be a way to see the world, and, by doing so, help you draw inspiration for future ideas.

If, like me, you are just out of college and beginning a career, consider walking as a process to generate insights. The business case for walking is simple: If you can, go for a walk. The cost is only your time. The upshot is increased focus, processing, and creativity. When you return to your workplace, you’ll be more effective and productive. You’ll also be happier and healthier. It’s a win-win.

Walking away Clutter (Aka: Why You Should Walk Before Dinner)

Simplistic though it may sound, walking refreshes. This is crucial. The ability to refresh oneself is more important than ever in 2020. The omnipresence of smartphones has led us to banish the increasingly rare and valuable moments of boredom from our lives, moments which would otherwise harbor the space for creative insight, personal reflection, and, perhaps most importantly, mental rest. We are willingly scattering our attention, dividing it 6-second bites, and scrolling it away. Restoring our ability to focus at peak intensity is such a cogent matter that there have been numerous scientific attempts to uncover mechanisms by which we can more effectively recover our attention.

One of the most interesting is called attention restoration theory, or ART, for short.***** ART asserts that people who spend time in nature or simply look at reproductions of nature concentrate better. According to ART, the natural environment is filled with medium-stimuli things, “soft fascinations” like trees stirring in the wind or bright yellow daffodils. These “soft fascinations” help cultivate “effortless attention,” allowing people to enter into a state of cognitive ease.

2020: The Year of Walking

2020 will be a year defined by how we cope with tribalism, the already-begun climate Armageddon, and our increasingly scattered attention. To this end, walking provides an easy answer: Put down your phone. Don’t take your car. Go for a walk instead. You’ll read fewer inflammatory headlines; emit less CO2; see more people, places, and things; process complex ideas; have new ones; and be refreshed.

While you walk, consider the ironic elegance that in 2020 one of the most effective ways to be better is to engage in the most ancient of human activities. Consider that bipedal locomotion, which literally distinguished us from our primate ancestors a million years ago, continues to play a fundamental part in the lives of billions of people every day—even if we don’t usually appreciate it.

Epilogue: Let’s Practice

Close your eyes. It’s midday. Your mind is swirling in headlines and half-read emails. You walk. Out the door and down the block. You are crossing the street. The honking of cars fades into the background. Waves lap against the bank of the river. You stop on the apex of the footbridge. It is a bright day. The sun feels warm on your face and forearms. Across the bridge, you walk under the shade of trees. It is colder here and provokes thinking. Fallen leaves curled and crunching underfoot set a rhythm to your walk. You are deep in the forest now. Time has passed. You do not know how long. Your thoughts have settled. Your mind is a dark cave. The cave has a door made of stone. You shiver. It is coldest just before light. Exhaling, you walk forward into the fog of your breath. The stone door cracks. Through the fissure a razor-blade of light diffuses in the cave. You can see the outline of shapes but not colors or depth. You keep walking. Each step strikes the stone door. Small rocks and dust fall onto the floor as you walk. The light through the fissure is the light before dawn. The cave is deep blue. You take one thousand more steps until the stone door crumbles. Light floods the cave revealing every crevice in perfect detail. You smile to yourself. The trail has brought you back to where you began. You step onto the footbridge. The water flowing beneath the bridge sparkles in the midday sun.

Footnotes:

*If, by chance, you are the leader of a major world power or the head of one of the 100 corporations responsible for 71% of all global c02 emissions, then may I suggest de-escalating tensions in the middle east or cutting global C02 emissions? Do more of those things in 2020 and then worry about walking. The rest of us will carry on.

**I coined the term “amplifier effect” because it summarizes nicely a valuable effect for which there previously was no term. If such a term exists and I am unaware of it, please bring it to my attention so that I may save face.

***By walking, you’ll be less likely to be the 1 in 103 Americans who will die in a car accident.

****One caveat: Many of these thinkers were white men who had some ties to Romanticism, or who wished for its revival. There are many great thinkers who are (tragically) less well-documented than those preserved in the (largely Western European) historical record, from which walking draws many of its famous practitioners.

*****One study by ART researchers found that walking through a garden was better than walking through the downtown of a city. Walking through a garden was also better than doing nothing at all. Interestingly, when the researchers re-ran the experiment in the winter, they found the same result, concluding that it wasn’t the “pleasantness” of the garden that restored attention (participants were actually very cold) but rather the balance of stimuli.