Many people thought Steve Jobs was simply mad to have “walking meetings”. However there may have been method in his so called madness.
A recent Stamford University study has confirmed what many people already believed, that walking increases creativity. The study reported by Stamford has shown that personal creative output increased by up to 60% while walking as compared to sitting.
The recent study has shown that creative output was almost double that of people sitting down. However it was only thought that cognitive behaviour resulted from aerobic exercise, this research suggested that non aerobic exercise, namely walking, had almost the same effect. It did not matter whether the walking was done in fresh air i.e. outside or indoors for example on a treadmill, it was the exercise that mattered. Creative responses were equally high from either people walking on a treadmill facing a blank wall as they were walking outdoors.
Creativity it is reported is produced by the act of walking and not by the environment it was created in. It was the walking, you were simply more creative according to the tests performed when walking than what you were sitting. The tests were based on divergent thinking analysis. The tests were based on thinking of uses for particular items. The responses were considered creative if no one else in the tests thought of a similar use for a particular item. Overwhelmingly the subjects of the tests were more creative while walking (irrespective of where) than when they were sitting down (irrespective of where).