I find that too - much of my best thinking in the past has come to me during the walk to the office or back home again. I once took to carrying a dictation machine so I could capture these thoughts because I used to find that the process of arriving at the office, making a coffee, booting up and logging on used to distract me and I'd forget what I'd thought of while walking.

My theory about thinking and walking is that it gets the blood flowing round the brain more than just sitting at a desk does. I think that was the thinking behind having table tennis tables in offices as well, to get the blood moving around. There's also something about the action of walking that seems to let the mind wander off as well though...

I suspect it's a mental context switch more than anything physiological.

For example, I'm pretty bad at creative tasks when at a keyboard (this was also true in pre-internet times, so it's not a matter of distractions), but sit me down with a pencil and paper and the juices start to flow. It just creates a different state of mind.

For me, often just looking out of the window (we have a nice view on our office) helps a lot.

I combine both by walking near a blackboard.

I tried to replace pencil & paper with minimalist emacs buffer but .. paper is non linear, just like thought trails so it's a better fit for now.

There actually is something to the idea of getting blood flowing to the different parts of your brain -- there's also a study showing a correlation between the nostril you're currently breathing out of right now and which nervous system is dominant (you have two). There's a breathing meditation exercise where you try to alternate nostrils -- it's a bit trippy once all of that O2 starts hitting both sides of your head at once.

It's really unfortunate that, for many bosses, if you're sitting, staring at your screen you "must be working." To really increase productivity we need to give employees the flexibility to reach "true productivity". True productivity isn't sitting in a desk all day: it's achieving a good measure of quality work.

And some bosses, like mine unfortunately, are so uptight about it that if I stop and stare at a wall / ceiling / close my eyes for even 30 seconds trying to solve an issue, I get the ok get to work speech and 15 things added to my already too long list.

Dude, get another job. Seriously. I've been in this kind of environment before and there is nothing good about it. That kind of garbage creates stress that is going to shorten your life.

Back in the pre-smartphone days, I used to take some code printouts and a legal pad -- whatever I needed to reference while I was thinking, and space to write down my thoughts -- and go out to lunch solo at a sit-down restaurant. Going to a separate space where I didn't have either my IDE or any distractions like a web browser seemed to give me better space to think through a problem.

Lunch dragged on for a couple of hours sometimes, but I generally had a flexible enough schedule that it worked ok.

I've got the same habit with code, taking it offline with a pen in hand and stepping through it. Found it much more effective for working through logical issues in code because it strips all of the syntax checking, typing, temptation to execute out of the way and forces you to slowly evaluate the program flow.

With IDE's, Photoshop, Word, I think it's important to remember that they have activities and workload in themselves that isn't relevant to what you're trying to achieve. Separating this load out from the core task has some value.

This has made me wonder: a tablet app that took a codebase and let you sketch notes and reference anchors to other files in a transparent canvas layered over the code (a stylus would be required, though).

Something like mindmapping over a code printout that could be exported back to your IDE or text editor via a plugin, maybe.

hmm I am most creatively intelligent in a state between sleeping and waking. Everything just flows. But sadly, it only lasts not more than a minute. Then I am awake and wistful about the sudden drop in what feels like 10-15 IQ points.