Walking, showering, sleeping, and riding a bike are great ways to debug code.

It's very cool to go to sleep and wake up knowing what the solution to the problem is.

The key for incubation for me is to make sure my brain can churn without distractions (that means no listening to podcasts, music, etc while performing said action).

Days after I graduated high school in 2004, my parents moved me and my family out to a 15 acre property in the middle of nowhere. Mowing the lawn on a riding mower was an all-day affair. The time I spent on that mower with just my own thoughts were some of the most meditative and creative of my life.

Kant was so famous for taking a daily walk at precisely 3:30 p.m. that the residents of Königsberg could set their clocks by it.

Could have just asked me. I've taken advantage of that in the bulk of my life.

Dictation + Claude enable this to be an actual working modality now. Does anyone else find themselves working in this way. (In addition to decompression walks of course!)

https://www.inferterra.com/the-new-workspace-a-first-princip...

There is even a latin phrase for it: solvitur ambulando.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvitur_ambulando

In the field of hacking, a great way to make progress on a thorny programming puzzle is to be anywhere other than in front of an actual computer.

Some of the most complex problems I've ever solved were solved when I was mowing my own lawn with a push mower. Just in a trance. Many of the best life decisions I've ever made were when I was on a walk, thinking things through.

Unless you like me, like to walk fast so you go back home ungrier than never because:

1. people walking like turtle in front of you

2. people on phone not looking at where they go

3. both

Each morning, I take a 5K walk (about 3 miles).

It’s a good opportunity to “triage” the day ahead.

If I have a vexing bug, I often “fix” it, during my morning walk.

Steve Jobs transformed four industries.

One transformation, for example, required getting permission to sell songs for $1 each when the labels all wanted to price each song differently. That required getting alignment from various titans at the record companies.

The way he accomplished this was to take these leaders on walks in the hills behind apple hq. Read about it in the biography of Jobs by Walter Isaacson.

It's astounding how many work problems I've found the solution to in just. the 80 ft walk to the bathroom. If I ever managed people, I would absolutely mandate scheduled movement/calisthenics/walking breaks. Almost seems like a cheat code.

Hardest part is forcing yourself to leave the computer

Possibly related to "showerthoughts", in that removal of stimuli allows for latent realizations to surface.

My secret is out

Absolutely. If the weather isn't nice, I will even walk around in the office.

https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xlm-a0036577.pdf

I intuitively agree. Some of my good ideas come from sprint walking...and sitting on the toilet.

Absolutely agree. I circumnavigate Lake Merritt pretty much every day mostly because it puts my brain a good place to be productive. The exercise is helpful too.

Yeah, and shift your eyes around, it gets you out of your head and makes you more aware of your environment as you walk!