4 ms·

The thinking path

175 points by footest 3y ago

every 3y ago
I find random walks to be too distracting. Instead I prefer to pace in a space, inside or out, that holds few or no surprises for me...
Nevermark 3y ago
I live in a wonderfully walkable tiny university town. I let my driver’s license expire a year ago and walk everywhere. My productivity went up noticeably. Interesting fact: 8 miles away is another walkable, extra hilly, tiny university town. So I tried something crazy. I bought out Tue & Thu 9am morning massage sessions from my favorite therapist, for two months in advance, in the OTHER college town. It’s a 3 hour walk. But now, twice a week, I get up at 5am, and put in 6 hours of walking, to get a massage. On top of my other walking. Productivity went through the roof. I do less, but what I do is so much better planned that progress is on fire. I am now thinking about how to keep this up through winter. The physical & mental health benefits are significant. I have lost weight, sleep better, clearer mind, more ideas, less anxiety …
- brutusborn 3y ago
  Do you listen to music or podcasts? I love long walks and a podcast but it doesn’t clear the mind quite like a plain walk just listening to the world.
  - Nevermark 3y ago
    I sometimes listen to music, but usually listen to the quiet. :)
- zekrioca 3y ago
  Why is that crazy?
  - naruhodo 3y ago
    When you feel pressure to get things done, committing 6 hours to just walking seems like a crazily inefficient use of time if all you want is exercise. Very interesting though.
    - bmacho 3y ago
      It fits the sharpening-the-ax idea, usually misattributed to Abraham Lincoln [0] : > If I had 8 hours to chop down a tree, I would spend 6 of those hours sharpening my axe. In this case you are the ax, that you should spend a considerable amount of time of your workhours to keep sharp. [0] : https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/03/29/sharp-axe/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/03/29/sharp-axe/
- DoreenMichele 3y ago
  If you keep it up, you might get faster and then maybe your long walk to get a massage becomes more sustainable, perhaps even in winter.
  - Nevermark 3y ago
    My 20 min mile went down to 16 min pretty quick!
mattjenner 3y ago
Dogs make great thinking companions and need you to think deeply three times a day!!
- SamPatt 3y ago
  This is a nice sentiment, but I've found that needing to pay attention to my dog while walking him does interrupt my thinking. Walking with him is good for us both, but walking alone is better for thinking.
inglor_cz 3y ago
I walk a lot. On average, 8 km (5 miles) a day for some two years by now (previously, I didn't have a Garmin watch to count the steps). IDK if it makes me more productive. Maybe. I certainly came upon some solutions (for programming) or clever formulations (for blog/newspaper articles) while walking. But there is an important exception: hot days. Walking on hot days fries my brain.
csours 3y ago
A humble suggestion: Load up contradictory thoughts or points of view, and think about them as you walk. Here's a starter pack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2a-DsX9Ezg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2a-DsX9Ezg I don't want to tell you what you should get out of this; it took me a long time to understand what 'dialectic' means. This may be intro level material to many people, but not everyone gets to go to a four year college, or gets raised in an open-minded community. ----- Reading someone else's philosophy is often a chore. Often people just want the best answer, or the truth. When I deploy a software system, can I say that it will work? Or can I say that it is working right now? I can't write software that will work a year from now. I have no idea what the world will look like in a year. Specifically, patches are applied and versions change. The best answer is almost always contingent on context. We can have shared evidence, but proof is internal to one mind. ------ How do you deal with the problems of running a blame free and learning organization? ------ 'Be Nice to Spiders' was my first introduction to counter-culture. When everyone else is afraid or uncomfortable or angry about something, you don't have to be.
- lisper 3y ago
  > I can't write software that will work a year from now. I have no idea what the world will look like in a year. Specifically, patches are applied and versions change. The key to solving this problem is adhering to published standards, which tend to be long-lived. I have code still in use that I wrote 30+ years ago. Of course, just adhering to standards is only half the battle. There's more to writing long-lived code than just that. But it is a skill that can be learned.
- jiehong 3y ago
  If you go to high school in France, this will more than ring a bell: it’s the expected essay format. Often named “dialectic plan”, or “thesis, antithesis, synthesis” [0] [0]: https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thesis,_antithesis,_synthesis https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thesis,_antithesis,_synthesi...
  - nick__m 3y ago
    Not only France, Québec to and I would not be surprised if that practice was common to the Francophonie. Thèse, antithèse, synthèse... 25 years later I still hate the highschool version of that format because it came with a minimal words count and I suck at taking something that can be said using 3 propositions and turning that into a 5 phrases paragraph.
nonrandomstring 3y ago
[flagged]
- lapcat 3y ago
  > Now I have to be careful because Dang gave me a chewing for talking about the podcast too much. Less than 24 hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37424978 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37424978 "Can you please stop using HN to promote your podcast? You're doing it way too much and users are complaining."
  - maksimur 3y ago
    I'll risk being buried by downvotes but who gives a damn if it's to stand up for someone. I think you're all being too harsh with him. His comment is insightful and he didn't link to his podcast as far as I can see. I'd rather do something if he kept saying stuff like his first paragraphs 2 or 3 more times. Give him the benefit of doubt at the very least.
FrustratedMonky 3y ago
In reading lately have come across a lot of famous names that made 'walking' a big part of their learning. It is good way to let brain wonder and have subconscious solve problems. Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Aristotle, Thoreau Also. Buried in the page farther down. One of the more scary takes on how we could have 'Killer AI'. Everyone seems to argue 'Killer AI' is still far in the future, because they associate it with the Terminator Movies and current Robot Tech is lagging AI. So why worry, we can still un-plug them. This video is how it will actually happen. AI can be incorporated into a lot of weapons. From the linked site https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU
thesuperbigfrog 3y ago
Walking is just one way to pull yourself out of the workplace and give yourself time and space to focus on the problem. Rich Hickey has a great talk "Hammock Driven Development" in which he describes the value of giving your mind time to think deeply about a problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc
- photochemsyn 3y ago
  True, see also the Leo Szilard two-hour-bathtub session approach. Although reports are that he also used the walking method: > "When Szilard told the story later he never mentioned his destination that morning. He may have had none; he often walked to think." https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/leo-szilard-a-traffic-light-and-a-slice-of-nuclear-history/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunctio...
- psychoslave 3y ago
  It’s not necessarily that much time. It’s not rare that I block hard on some issue for a significant time, and the moment I stand up and go to the kitchen making some dishes, the solution pops up.
- digging 3y ago
  True, but walking has additional physical-health benefits.
mjklin 3y ago
I agree with Darwin’s combination of rocks, thinking, and walking, they seem to go together. If you don’t have his circular path, you can put a handful of pebbles in your pocket. Then when you’re at a particularly stuck spot in your thinking, toss one away. Works wonders!
pickingdinner 3y ago
As an aside, anyone know what makes pages like these not wheel-scroll? Page shows 2 scrollbars.
rvrs 3y ago
I've become known amongst my friends for giving the same advice when it comes to most problems: "Uninstall Twitter and start going on walks." I don't think it's only useful for intellectual pursuits: we rarely get enough alone time nowadays. And when we do, we're bombarded with stimulation and noise. There's no good opportunity to be alone with ourselves. Walking in a safe, familiar place without my phone has become one of my most important and cherished daily rituals -- I see it as an emotional cleansing.
- kirse 3y ago
  I think it's a balance. For "emotional gardening" as I call it, disconnecting from tech / anti-social media and taking a walk is great. But if you still want to assess present reality and make good judgments about the future (or even just have some novel thing to talk about), these tools can still be great for absorbing information context. I like the Digital Wellbeing app on Android. Set a daily timer for app usage and then it gets blocked once you're over the timer.
  - JadeNB 3y ago
    > I think it's a balance. For "emotional gardening" as I call it, disconnecting from tech / anti-social media and taking a walk is great. But if you still want to assess present reality and make good judgments about the future (or even just have some novel thing to talk about), these tools can still be great for absorbing information context. I don't think Xitter is a good tool for assessing present reality and making good judgments about the future, either. (Actually, I took you to mean "directly obtain accurate information about the world and act on it," but maybe you meant "find out the worst of what people are currently doing and be prepared.")
    - bagful 3y ago
      Agree; at the root, I think it’s a misconception that being informed is better than being uninformed. We know too much about current events and we have far too little context for it; and our idea of being informed about the state of the world (which requires, I think, intake of context in vast excess to content) has been replaced with having an opinion about everything in it, or really, someone else’s opinion on it.
j7ake 3y ago
I found actively walking (even indoors) prevents me from opening a tab to an addictive website.
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
Every morning, I get up early (5AM), and take a 5K walk. It's always the same walk, and I usually play some mindless techno, while doing it. I use the time to "triage" the day's tasks. Sometimes, I even fix bugs, while thinking about a solution that had perplexed me, the night before.

175 points by footest 3y ago

I find random walks to be too distracting. Instead I prefer to pace in a space, inside or out, that holds few or no surprises for me...

Nevermark 3y ago

I live in a wonderfully walkable tiny university town. I let my driver’s license expire a year ago and walk everywhere. My productivity went up noticeably. Interesting fact: 8 miles away is another walkable, extra hilly, tiny university town. So I tried something crazy. I bought out Tue & Thu 9am morning massage sessions from my favorite therapist, for two months in advance, in the OTHER college town. It’s a 3 hour walk. But now, twice a week, I get up at 5am, and put in 6 hours of walking, to get a massage. On top of my other walking. Productivity went through the roof. I do less, but what I do is so much better planned that progress is on fire. I am now thinking about how to keep this up through winter. The physical & mental health benefits are significant. I have lost weight, sleep better, clearer mind, more ideas, less anxiety …

brutusborn 3y ago
Do you listen to music or podcasts? I love long walks and a podcast but it doesn’t clear the mind quite like a plain walk just listening to the world.
- Nevermark 3y ago
  I sometimes listen to music, but usually listen to the quiet. :)
zekrioca 3y ago
Why is that crazy?
- naruhodo 3y ago
  When you feel pressure to get things done, committing 6 hours to just walking seems like a crazily inefficient use of time if all you want is exercise. Very interesting though.
  - bmacho 3y ago
    It fits the sharpening-the-ax idea, usually misattributed to Abraham Lincoln [0] : > If I had 8 hours to chop down a tree, I would spend 6 of those hours sharpening my axe. In this case you are the ax, that you should spend a considerable amount of time of your workhours to keep sharp. [0] : https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/03/29/sharp-axe/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/03/29/sharp-axe/
DoreenMichele 3y ago
If you keep it up, you might get faster and then maybe your long walk to get a massage becomes more sustainable, perhaps even in winter.
- Nevermark 3y ago
  My 20 min mile went down to 16 min pretty quick!

mattjenner 3y ago

Dogs make great thinking companions and need you to think deeply three times a day!!

SamPatt 3y ago
This is a nice sentiment, but I've found that needing to pay attention to my dog while walking him does interrupt my thinking. Walking with him is good for us both, but walking alone is better for thinking.

inglor_cz 3y ago

I walk a lot. On average, 8 km (5 miles) a day for some two years by now (previously, I didn't have a Garmin watch to count the steps). IDK if it makes me more productive. Maybe. I certainly came upon some solutions (for programming) or clever formulations (for blog/newspaper articles) while walking. But there is an important exception: hot days. Walking on hot days fries my brain.

csours 3y ago

A humble suggestion: Load up contradictory thoughts or points of view, and think about them as you walk. Here's a starter pack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2a-DsX9Ezg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2a-DsX9Ezg I don't want to tell you what you should get out of this; it took me a long time to understand what 'dialectic' means. This may be intro level material to many people, but not everyone gets to go to a four year college, or gets raised in an open-minded community. ----- Reading someone else's philosophy is often a chore. Often people just want the best answer, or the truth. When I deploy a software system, can I say that it will work? Or can I say that it is working right now? I can't write software that will work a year from now. I have no idea what the world will look like in a year. Specifically, patches are applied and versions change. The best answer is almost always contingent on context. We can have shared evidence, but proof is internal to one mind. ------ How do you deal with the problems of running a blame free and learning organization? ------ 'Be Nice to Spiders' was my first introduction to counter-culture. When everyone else is afraid or uncomfortable or angry about something, you don't have to be.

lisper 3y ago
> I can't write software that will work a year from now. I have no idea what the world will look like in a year. Specifically, patches are applied and versions change. The key to solving this problem is adhering to published standards, which tend to be long-lived. I have code still in use that I wrote 30+ years ago. Of course, just adhering to standards is only half the battle. There's more to writing long-lived code than just that. But it is a skill that can be learned.
jiehong 3y ago
If you go to high school in France, this will more than ring a bell: it’s the expected essay format. Often named “dialectic plan”, or “thesis, antithesis, synthesis” [0] [0]: https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thesis,_antithesis,_synthesis https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thesis,_antithesis,_synthesi...
- nick__m 3y ago
  Not only France, Québec to and I would not be surprised if that practice was common to the Francophonie. Thèse, antithèse, synthèse... 25 years later I still hate the highschool version of that format because it came with a minimal words count and I suck at taking something that can be said using 3 propositions and turning that into a 5 phrases paragraph.

nonrandomstring 3y ago

[flagged]

lapcat 3y ago
> Now I have to be careful because Dang gave me a chewing for talking about the podcast too much. Less than 24 hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37424978 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37424978 "Can you please stop using HN to promote your podcast? You're doing it way too much and users are complaining."
- maksimur 3y ago
  I'll risk being buried by downvotes but who gives a damn if it's to stand up for someone. I think you're all being too harsh with him. His comment is insightful and he didn't link to his podcast as far as I can see. I'd rather do something if he kept saying stuff like his first paragraphs 2 or 3 more times. Give him the benefit of doubt at the very least.

FrustratedMonky 3y ago

In reading lately have come across a lot of famous names that made 'walking' a big part of their learning. It is good way to let brain wonder and have subconscious solve problems. Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Aristotle, Thoreau Also. Buried in the page farther down. One of the more scary takes on how we could have 'Killer AI'. Everyone seems to argue 'Killer AI' is still far in the future, because they associate it with the Terminator Movies and current Robot Tech is lagging AI. So why worry, we can still un-plug them. This video is how it will actually happen. AI can be incorporated into a lot of weapons. From the linked site https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU

thesuperbigfrog 3y ago

Walking is just one way to pull yourself out of the workplace and give yourself time and space to focus on the problem. Rich Hickey has a great talk "Hammock Driven Development" in which he describes the value of giving your mind time to think deeply about a problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc

photochemsyn 3y ago
True, see also the Leo Szilard two-hour-bathtub session approach. Although reports are that he also used the walking method: > "When Szilard told the story later he never mentioned his destination that morning. He may have had none; he often walked to think." https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/leo-szilard-a-traffic-light-and-a-slice-of-nuclear-history/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunctio...
psychoslave 3y ago
It’s not necessarily that much time. It’s not rare that I block hard on some issue for a significant time, and the moment I stand up and go to the kitchen making some dishes, the solution pops up.
digging 3y ago
True, but walking has additional physical-health benefits.

mjklin 3y ago

I agree with Darwin’s combination of rocks, thinking, and walking, they seem to go together. If you don’t have his circular path, you can put a handful of pebbles in your pocket. Then when you’re at a particularly stuck spot in your thinking, toss one away. Works wonders!

pickingdinner 3y ago

As an aside, anyone know what makes pages like these not wheel-scroll? Page shows 2 scrollbars.

rvrs 3y ago

I've become known amongst my friends for giving the same advice when it comes to most problems: "Uninstall Twitter and start going on walks." I don't think it's only useful for intellectual pursuits: we rarely get enough alone time nowadays. And when we do, we're bombarded with stimulation and noise. There's no good opportunity to be alone with ourselves. Walking in a safe, familiar place without my phone has become one of my most important and cherished daily rituals -- I see it as an emotional cleansing.

kirse 3y ago
I think it's a balance. For "emotional gardening" as I call it, disconnecting from tech / anti-social media and taking a walk is great. But if you still want to assess present reality and make good judgments about the future (or even just have some novel thing to talk about), these tools can still be great for absorbing information context. I like the Digital Wellbeing app on Android. Set a daily timer for app usage and then it gets blocked once you're over the timer.
- JadeNB 3y ago
  > I think it's a balance. For "emotional gardening" as I call it, disconnecting from tech / anti-social media and taking a walk is great. But if you still want to assess present reality and make good judgments about the future (or even just have some novel thing to talk about), these tools can still be great for absorbing information context. I don't think Xitter is a good tool for assessing present reality and making good judgments about the future, either. (Actually, I took you to mean "directly obtain accurate information about the world and act on it," but maybe you meant "find out the worst of what people are currently doing and be prepared.")
  - bagful 3y ago
    Agree; at the root, I think it’s a misconception that being informed is better than being uninformed. We know too much about current events and we have far too little context for it; and our idea of being informed about the state of the world (which requires, I think, intake of context in vast excess to content) has been replaced with having an opinion about everything in it, or really, someone else’s opinion on it.

j7ake 3y ago

I found actively walking (even indoors) prevents me from opening a tab to an addictive website.

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago

Every morning, I get up early (5AM), and take a 5K walk. It's always the same walk, and I usually play some mindless techno, while doing it. I use the time to "triage" the day's tasks. Sometimes, I even fix bugs, while thinking about a solution that had perplexed me, the night before.