There were times in my life (thesis writing) where I'd go and sit in the library all day to work and come home in the early evening. The psychological stress on me during that time was tremendous. Every evening, after coming home, I'd have a small dinner and then go for a one-hour walk, always the same route. At that time, I lived in a small town, and my route would take me down a dead-end street, across another one, and then on to the fields where there weren't any cars and hardly any people. Just a wide space with a bit of a view. This was usually just before sunset. Continuing on, I would eventually get back to a different part of the town I lived, I had to climb up some stairs and walk through a quiet neighborhood before getting back to my own street. All in all, it took around one hour to walk that way.

I believe that this process really helped me save my sanity during that time of extended mental stress. I could literally air our my brain, and also get some mild physical activity after sitting in the library all day. I tried really hard not to think about my thesis, but just to take in the scenery, the light, the wind. Sometimes it rained. It was really healthy.

In contrast, I remember a former co-worker telling me about a road trip they once did. I think it was in Arizona, but I might be wrong. Anyway, after driving for many hours, they decided to take a break and just to walk down the road for a few minutes before hitting the road again.

So they pulled over and started walking. Sure enough, in no time, they get stopped by the cops who inquire what the heck the are doing! They weren't walking on the road or in any otherwise dangerous fashion -- but apparently in that area, just being out and about on foot was enough of a reason to be considered suspicious. :-)

> But are people losing their love of the purposeless walk?

BBC Magazine strikes again.

No, they're not losing it, it's not "slowly dying". Did "people" at large ever have that? Having the time and energy to go aimlessly wandering was a luxurious privilege until very recently. If anything, the existence of "[a] number of recent books [that] have lauded the connection between walking - just for its own sake - and thinking" would suggest that walking is enjoying a renaissance - this time for the masses.

> Many now walk and text at the same time. There's been an increase in injuries to pedestrians in the US attributed to this. One study suggested texting even changed the manner in which people walked.

> It's not just texting. This is the era of the "smartphone map zombie" - people who only take occasional glances away from an electronic routefinder to avoid stepping in anything or being hit by a car.

This is pure Marie Antoinette. 200 years ago, peasants would only glance up from their plows to avoid hitting a rock in the field, or whatever, and surely the savants of the time deplored that as well.

Here's a thought: Most people walking around in the city aren't out on an Dickensque intellectually stimulating aimless wander, they're not out to tread a deep mental path in the words of Thoreau, they are in transit between two places, we could vulgarly call them "work" and "home", and the transit bit is an undesired period of downtime. You'll have to be an intellectual to problematise their choice of filling that period with something else than romantic observation of the very same surroundings they look at twice daily for years.

Walking is, I think, a combination of habit and culture.

Both sets of my grandparents, from opposite ends of the country, used to walk quite a lot without any real purpose for doing so. They did this well into their 80s, and so did their friends. It seemed just to be something they did, and always had done.

My parents, by contrast, almost never walk when they can drive, and will often drive to a park to let their dog off rather than walk her there and back. Many of my friends are the same. One goes so far as to drive five minutes, then deals with parking and paying for it, to get his lunch every day rather than simply walking for the same length of time -- he spends more time in traffic in his car than actually moving.

One colleague of mine at my last job was amazed that I walked from the train station to the office -- a walk of less than 10 minutes at a brisk pace; it didn't even occur to her to ask about how I'd covered the mile-and-a-half from my home to the train station at the other end. My total commute was about the same distance as hers, but it took me less time, cost me slightly less, and got me some exercise into the bargain.

Some evenings, my fiancée and I would go for a walk of a couple of miles just to get out of the house, or to enjoy warm weather, or just because.

Since leaving that job, I walk less overall. I also have a dog, now, the walking of whom replaced most of the purposeless walking I used to do in the evenings. Most of my walking, now, has 'purpose' because it's exercising the dog, or taking her out for toilet breaks.

I walk insane lengths as it clears the mind and fosters creativity. I talk into my phone during that; either to colleagues or to a recorder and then type it in at home (no, speech to text does not work; if someone wants to work with me to get that working, that would be great but for now, it does not even work a bit; only gibberish comes out; it seems to have something to do with my way of talking which I am trying to fix but I type faster than I talk anyway). Because I walk so much (through the mountains here) and my brain works better while walking, I really work on programming on the go. I want to be able to program while walking and besides discussing code with a colleague while there is internet (which is not everywhere in the mountains) I cannot code while walking which annoys me. I get ideas and want to try them right away. Now I have to sit down, get out my pandora and try it. I want to try it while walking. I believe I will find a way of doing that eventually but everything I tried (from primitive AR to Scratch like programming languages) doesn't really work well. The thing is ; I can text chat fine while walking so why not coding... I know why but I try to somehow resolve it anyway.

The purposelessness here is the time between I want/need to write code or talk; that's most of the walk.

Edit: one of the findings is that you basically should not need any scrolling/dragging within small distances; like scrolling to a part of code and dragging your cursor to make changes for instance. This includes dragging/dropping the Scratch visual code; it doesn't work while walking.

Wasn't this already posted on hackernews? I've already read it, and I was a little curious because that's a little what I started to do last year (my apartment and school started to feel like a prison cell).

I just walk in my city to explore, preferably greener, quiet areas without car traffic, but I always plan a zone I'll go to. I use offline openstreetmap (OSMAND) on my smartphone. I try to go to different places when I can, but it's difficult as green places are too remote. Public transport can boost me, but I usually take off from home and try to make a looped route.

To me it helps "loosening" my focus, so I can think a little more creatively. I just talk with myself. I don't have a time where I know I have to go home, I don't plan. Walking is a physical exercise (at least for me, I sleep better), which make the blood flow, so you're not as much anxious when you sit for too long.

I don't want to sound like a crazy hobo, but cubicles, houses, apartments and dense urban areas can feel like prisons. It's not just about the physical exercise, it's about being in the large outdoors and not controlling your behavior because there are civilized people around you. If all you do is work and gym, it won't feel very good.

Maybe all of this is in my head, and my unconscious just pretends it's good. But I know that I can't be creative at home.

Also try to watch that speech about creativity by the monty python head guy. He gave really good insights about how to put oneself in a position where you can be creative. You need large spaces, relative silence, freedom from behaving like you want, etc.

I tend to bite my nails, especially when I'm programming or deep in thought. Last year I decided to start walking whenever I reach that point where I am fidgeting and can't sit still. It's totally changed the way I work for the better. I walk between 10-20 miles per day, and can get a lot of work done on those walks. Highly recommended, especially for people living in places with good weather and beautiful scenery.

My version of "taking a walk" is swimming laps.

My finest work is accomplished in the pool, going back and forth. Been a swimmer all my life, and if I don't get at least a swim or two in each week, things start to turn to shit. It's my meditation, and despite being the most boring thing on earth for some people, it's one of my favorite things to do.

Many introverted mathematical minds would love it, but you gotta learn proper technique to be able to really get into a good careless rhythm. I highly recommend it.

It's a thinking man's sport.

I just can't function without a daily walk (~5-6km or 3-4 miles). If I don't take my walk, I can't wind down after a day of work and can't sleep properly. No purpose, no soundtrack, no smartphone - except when I want to write down some ideas that came to me during the walk.

I personally find it much easier to think deeply whilst doing some tedious repetitive task like ironing or cleaning the house as opposed to while walking. Living in a big city I find walking can be quite stressful and distracting - even in a park.

Back during my PhD quals, I used to just walk in a circle around my smallish apartment complex to blow off stress. Once I even met my roommate doing them same thing on one of my laps!

More often I'd walk around some trees around the university campus. When out for a stroll, I can take a different perspective on things and let my mind wander without being tempted to open a new tab and browse HackerNews or something. I think I've planned a lot of research just by walking around. Sitting in front of my computer, my mind is stuck in the mode of "Do something. Do something."

I like walking, biking is not for me, so I walk

And yes, you have a different perspective of the city when you do it. Because it's easier to realize how places connect

Yes, it won't take you as far as a bike, but it's doable

You can walk to work if possible, get on an earlier stop if going by public transport, or, I dunno, just walk around the block if you have to park at your work.

There's regularly articles in Norwegian newspapers about how weird the Norwegian culture of purposeless walking is to foreigners and tourists, so it's probably not dead in Norway at least.

I love walking, but this article really bothers me, so I'm going to get a little sarcastic. Am I the only one who finds this entire article incredibly ironic? The author is trying to defend "purposeless" walking, but which is actually very purposeful! The loss of 'purposeless' walking is seen by the author as a loss of Creative Thinking. We're so busy with other smaller tasks, we're not setting aside enough time (like we used too, in the good ol' days) to think up all our really valuable thoughts! It would be one thing if they highlighted the relaxation, health benefits, de-stressing, etc., of walking, but that is clearly not the point: rattling off a list of Great Minds, and their Great Achievements whom we would benefit from emulating. The point of the article clearly is not to get people to take more breaks or curb their their obsession with work. Really it's a sneaky backdoor lifehack sermon: you're not good enough or creative enough, and you should pencil in some mindful unstructured time into their schedule to boost your Really Important thinking output by 10-15%.

Two years ago, I moved from Northern VA to the Florida coast. My house is about 4 blocks from the beach. The wife and I have taken to going on longish walks along the beach after dinner (or even just around the neighborhood on occasion). I'm usually lost in thought, so not much conversation happens, but I enjoy the walks.

In NOVA, we lived in a fairly dense townhouse development with significant vehicle traffic and going for walks was just not very pleasant (and the weather certainly wasn't as nice - especially in the winter). We've both lost a decent amount of weight since we moved here :)

I absolutely loathe big cities, which I know is a severe handicap for a software developer, especially since I've found remote work isn't actually a real thing. I do have a rather mundane job here (fairly low stress, 40 hrs/week CRUD stuff), but I'm not moving (besides, I have my side projects to keep me challenged) :)

Walking helps me in solving programming issues.

When I find myself stuck and my mind starts to loop around, I need to force myself to take a purposeless walk, around my office's block or little more. During the walk I stop thinking about the problem for a while and then resume from a new angle. It normally works very well.

Every day, I walk from the ferry building in SF to 4th Street and back for work. I look at it as the time I can enjoy the city and never (or try to never) think of issues I am having. It relieves a lot of stress, as I look at the faces of pasaers by, and the buildings.

Prior to college, during college, and even now, my wife/wife-to-be and I took an hour walk in the evening (and sometimes morning). It's something I always use(d) to relieve stress.

The thing is, most people thought we were kind of weird. Back where we are from we literally used to walk next or through corn fields and the town was definitely not design for walking. We made it work, but I can see why walking is dying a slow death.

A few good reads on walking, purposeless or otherwise:

"A Philosophy of Walking" by Frédéric Gros

"Wanderlust" by Rebecca Soinit

"The Old Ways" by Robert Macfarlane (or really anything by him)

"Walking Home" by Simon Armitage

I have a 35 minute walking commute in Boston, through the public gardens, which can be very beautiful. While it's not aimless, it does seem to have offer of the benefits that I get from aimless walking, which I also do fairly often. A walking commute I see as my biggest job perk.

I'm always saddened to see so many people talking on their cell phones on my commute, especially in the public garden. It seems they either have no appreciation for walking or, worse, they're afraid to be alone with themselves.

My super power.

During the week I walk a loop in the morning (9.5miles) and when I have to commute to NY, it's a few miles downtown,a brief lunchtime wander around, and a swift walk back up in the evening to Penn.

Part of my walking is for health reasons, part is due to a need to move about, part is meditation. My mind wanders while out for a good walk, it's the most liberating feeling I experience.

My wife and I go for longer walks on the weekend, sometimes we chat, but often time we walk together in silence. It's a guilty pleasure.

I pace. I do laps around the lab, between buildings and to the nearby beach when my mind gets jammed.

Used to think watching the waves would settle my mind. Being at the beach just makes me want to go surf.

Ive have had quite a few software design problems solve themselves during my 15min commute to work in the morning as well. I never listen to talk radio (NPR) as a result.

I'd hazard a neurological mechanism for this: walking feeds information to path integration mechanism which helps us form a spatial map of what's around us. This same map is also considered a cognitive map which we can explore to find different solutions to the same intellectual problems, which we represent spatially.

Judging from the reactions here, doing something for no apparent reason has become quite a taboo. But why?

In German, there is a special verb for this, "flanieren". When I look it up, I get "to dander", which seems to be the root for "dandy".

also, purposeless bicycling.

need to be away from traffic, so you don't have to concentrate. a bike path - even better, a national/state park.

but to clarify, it helps to have a destination, even though it's not the "purpose".

I walk a lot, but often with Podcasts and I find that to be very relaxing. Of course, I walk a lot without podcasts as well and I honestly don't feel anything different.

I have to say though, I don't listen to entertainment podcasts but rather thoughtful ones like msdevshow, startalk radio, fullstack radio and the changelog among others.

I also have a dog, so walking at least 3 times a day is a must and I guess that changes things. But I used to walk everyday for at least 1 hour before my dog was born, now I just have company.

Sometimes I find a place to be very beautiful then I usually absorb the moment.

See also the concept of "Dérive"[1] or purposeless walking as defined by Guy Debord[2] and used by the Letterist and Situationist movements.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dérive [2]: http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/theory.html

> Having the time and energy to go aimlessly wandering was a luxurious privilege until very recently

You just made this up....

Firstly, you have never been around since the beginning of humans, and secondly, you haven't even read any history books if you think humans have always been extremely busy and that somehow they are not now.

The opposite is actually true. Humans have had a lot more free time in the past. It is easy to find this information out on the internet. Humans were estimated to only work about 3 hours per day in some time periods. In others they had months at a time off.

You are both centering your argument about whether or not people used to walk more or less than they do now. You are not presenting any more evidence than BBC did.

> Dickensque

The word you're looking for is https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Dickensian

I'm not sure it was even popular for the American well-off (upper middle-class). In Mad Men, I remember them making a point of the characters ridiculing a woman who said she liked to take walks (though she was abnormal in other ways, like being divorced).

(I know it's not top-grade historic research, but they tried to highlight what was known about the 60s, and this matches the environment that inspired Bradbury's story about it.)

One of my favourite pastimes is walking, I do it daily. I'm also mostly thinking while doing it.

I walk aimlessly from time to time, but I don't see that many people do it. There are far more people that do it in other countries, and I assume that was the case in the United States earlier.

In Ireland, strolling through cemeteries was a common weekend pastime in the pre-war era. I remember as a kid in the 80s you'd see old people and asian people strolling around after dinner. Now my block is pretty much a ghost town at 6:30PM.

You have described my situation to a tee. It doesn't work in the city. It must be in nature, and I must be alone. Except rather than the nitty gritty implementation details, I limit my mental explorations during perambulations to the higher level abstractions of architectural matters. I even wrote a toy "mobile web dicta phone" that uses the media recording api because I wanted a single click, distraction free way to make "notes to self".

For any one in this situation, I think any "code while walking" solution should be voice activated, as it may be important to have eyes and hands free over the terrain. Straight voice-to-code would be cumbersome. Something like a voice-to-UML might be better. But I think what we really need is to first define a visual logic language itself that can be easily translated into high level code. Thanks for sharing, and keep exploring. There are definitely others who would be interested ;)

> I want to be able to program while walking...

That's why Google glasses got me excited, as it's a step towards that direction. I don't see this being too viable until I can control the computer with my thoughts, though, so we need the microchip in the brain (or something similar) still too.

But then I could work outside, walk while working, not be tethered to a desk or table all day. Can't wait for that time, hopefully it's not much more than a decade away.

That's very interesting. Please keep me in the loop when you make progress into that direction. Maybe something into the direction of augmented reality?

Sounds like learning VI or ed might be helpful for that, since they are designed to be mouse free. It may not be the exact thing you need, but they offer a lot from the keyboard.

Almost exactly my experience, and with programming as well. I solved a bunch of problems while hiking in the mountains. Except that I don't miss coding because they are more architectural problems than pure coding.

Once of the reasons I want massively more dense residential areas in cities is because I want city living but shorter distances to large parkland.

I live in a relatively green area, but still my street alone (~660 houses)"wastes" around 40,000 m^2 of space compared to new high rises on the way near our local station. I'd love to see far more of the residential areas compressed like that, if only it meant a reasonable portion of additional land was turned into parks (and here's the problem - in practice this is of course additional housing, not replacing equivalent amount of less dense units). We do have a "country park" just 20 minutes walk away, so we're not in a bad spot, but it could be so much better.

If I was given Sim City like powers over London, I'd raze large parts of it outside of the centre, and replace it with super-dense hubs around the main rail hubs outside of the centre, connect them with a high speed orbital railway plus spokes out to the smaller cities further out, and free up ~half the current area of London for park lands. You could fit 30m+ people in London and still make it feel spacious and green compared to the scattered, busy suburban nightmares that covers large part of the outer reaches of London today.

Yes it was: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7679506

Even if not for distance and just a few hours, getting out of the city setting and flooding your perception with nature, trees, natural sounds, quiet, fresh air, etc, can feel like a week of vacation. I think people travel around half the world to get away from their daily routine and see other stuff, but often a walk in the woods can already lift you up quite a bit.

I keep nail clippers in my desk exactly for this reason.

I hate the feeling of rough bitten nails which became an unproductive distraction in itself.

Now, I clip instead. My nail grooming has become on point.

I have the same problem. If I'm learning something or programming or anything mentally straining I start biting nails.

I have no feeling some problem is out of my reach but still the nail biting happens.

Ever since I've started standing instead of sitting, walking around has decreased my nail biting.

I can see walking 10-20 miles a day being detrimental to your health long term. Knees, feet, hips, somethings gonna give.

Good cushioned footwear and insoles is a must to limit the damage at that range.