Does it matter where you walk?

In the study, walking indoors on a treadmill had a similar effect to walking outdoors.

Does walking help every kind of thinking?

The effect was on generating ideas. Focused, single-answer thinking did not benefit the same way.

Walking raised creative output by about 60% compared with sitting.

Even on a treadmill facing a blank wall.

Marily Oppezzo and Daniel Schwartz at Stanford tested people on creative tasks while sitting and while walking. Creative output rose by about 60% on average when they walked.

Steve Jobs held serious conversations on foot, Beethoven walked every afternoon with a pencil ready. The study measured idea generation, not decision quality.

Three divergent-thinking experiments with students, Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2014.