This can't be stressed enough.

With phones and the Internet today, most of us consume way more information than we have time to really process, organize, and reflect on. It's like we do a shopping spree every single day and never spend any time in our house unpacking any of the grocery bags. Our minds are a chaotic mess of piled up worries, news, unmade decisions, etc.

Walking (without audiobooks or other media) is the single best solution I've found to give my brain the idle time it needs to run a defrag and work through that backlog.

Also if walking alone, people should try calling friends and family. It's a great way to reconnect and stay connected with friends. Handsfree, heads up, it's good fun. I also feel much more chatty when on a walk.

Anyway, walking commutes are the best.

The Count of Monte Cristo is my current go to re-read.

that's a neat idea to allow us to be cognizant of life. And to keep other things simple to create mental and physical bandwidth for the main things.

Ah, this is such a good suggestion too! I've been doing that more lately too and it's really valuable.

You didn't check his profile, then? ;)

He's also been on the Corecursive podcast, about Crafting Interpreters: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/corecursive-coding-storie... which happened to be one of the most recent things I was listening to while out walking.

The content must flow.

I used to listen to music and stuff a lot while walking or even commuting but a few years ago I decided to give up on most idle listening, preferring to listen to music or podcasts with intent now: eg to enjoy some music, not just passively.

I used to walk a lot (I still walk a good bit but because I work from home I don’t walk to work each day anymore) and I found the quiet time to be the best time to come up with solutions to problems, to reflect on my life or day, to just wind down and switch off, to enjoy nature (when I walk to walk, as opposed to walking to reaching a destination, I typically walk along a river near my home). I think we are overstimulated far far too much and some quiet time and boredom is good for the brain and certainly it’s good for creativity.

> I agree completely.

> preferring to listen to music or podcasts with intent now: eg to enjoy some music, not just passively.

That's the opposite of what parent suggested.

Instead, when I listen to music, it’s usually by sitting down deliberately to exclusively listen to music. The music isn’t idle background noise but rather the point of that activity. I enjoy music a lot more now, I find.

In general I try to have silence where in the past I would have had audio playing in the background. So definitely while walking but also while working (since I’m working from home and don’t need to drown out office noises).

I'm more a mind wanderer, though for a season I tried to mentally prepare myself for the transition from being at a controlled work environment to walking into a house with two young kids at the end of the day.

I find this kinda pointless for myself. Most of the time I just revisit the same subjects over and over and come to the same conclusions no matter how I try to solve it. Once I’m done with the menial tasks - the “deeper” topics just make me upset to think about because they make me realize how hopelessly fucked I am. I’d rather not focus on that and instead do a bit of hedonism while I can.

It's a sort of personal retrospective slash backlog grooming session.

We need that idle time. When I go on long motorcycle trips, I return with a clear head and a much better idea of what I want to do next.

I’m genuinely asking, because I couldn’t tell from the context of your comment.

When things are going well, I don't get frustrated by free form thinking.

I try to double fork my commute, either explore some new path or do some groceries so the 45minutes are not just walk/train.

Right now I do bike - train - bike (but, surprisingly, trains are unreliable this month .. they're the one making me late :)

Just wanted to say thanks, ill seriously give this a try.

I enjoy listening to the animals / birds / insects, and tossing friendly hellos to the people walking by. (Actually, maybe that's why -- at the park where I walk, headphones would feel slightly antisocial)

However I did have a great time learning Chinese and Japanese via audio courses while taking long walks - without that time it's hard for me now to find the time to do the same.