Today Iâm going to show you why you need to be doing daily walks.
Fitness trends go in and out of fashion. The regimes are difficult to keep up. Theyâre sometimes out of reach for peopleâs current fitness needs. Iâm going to show you how daily walks will impact your long term health for the better.
I bet that while youâre reading this youâre probably sitting down. And if youâre day has been like mine, youâve probably been sitting down the majority of the time.
Weâre humans, weâre built for movement, it doesnât benefit us to sit still for long periods of time. This will impact us negatively over time. We need to fix this.
The problem is when people talk about daily walks they put an arbitrary number on it. 2,000, 7,000 or 10,000 steps every day. The number of steps doesnât matter nearly as much as making it a part of your everyday routine.
30 minutes walking everyday is the most important thing you can do for your health, second only to sleeping well
In this article we will cover:
Most people will forever miss out on this basic but highly beneficial and impactful daily routine.
Letâs guarantee youâre not one of them.
Iâve found many studies proving the bodily benefits of walking. Both as a daily exercise and in general.
Studies and articles from Harvard Health Publishing, the National Institutes of Health and others (full list of links at the end of the article).
The literature on daily step count and walks is very clear and some of the biggest health benefits commonly cited are:
Thatâs just all-round better health.
On top of these there are other benefits such as:
Aristotle was a big believer in walking.
Not just Aristotle â Steve Jobs, Virginia Woolf, Nikola Tesla too.
If you walk less than 60 minutes per day, open this: pic.twitter.com/RsIFdxDQVa
â Tim Carden (@timjcarden)
April 24, 2024
If Iâve ever had a bad day, whatever the cause may be, Iâve never found a situation where going out for a walk hasnât at least improved my mood.
I might not necessarily feel 100% better but Iâve never felt worse or just as bad before leaving for a walk.
Famous philosopher Hippocrates was quoted
âWalking is a manâs best medicine.â â Hippocrates
And Dr Huberman talks about evidence behind this.
Iâve found that the biggest mental benefits I get from daily walks include:
If Iâm struggling with a problem, wrestling with a thought or an emotion, or just feeling off and I canât pin point what the problem is.
I always find that during a walk, if I let my mind follow itâs train of thought, let go of the reigns and just listen and observe my thoughts. I find that I tend to reason things out quite quickly.
If I let go of control of my thoughts I find thereâs a conversation to be had with myself.
It acts a bit like talking therapy where youâre able to observe what it is your thinking from an outside perspective and notice discrepancies, logic breakdowns or contradictions of thought.
I have this idea of world bubbles.
We all have different world bubbles in life where different things happen.
They tend to encompass certain locations, particular timings on certain days, actions or activities and so on.
The most common bubbles are
There are probably lots more. But what I tend to find is that if Iâm in these bubbles for too long with not enough variety I tend to see my mood slipping in some way.
I find that going on walks and mixing up my route gets me out of those bubbles and gives me space from them to explore both the world around me and my own mind.
We donât see enough green things in our everyday lives!
If you look around right now do you see anything naturally green?
The clichĂ© phrase of âtouch grassâ is a good one. Forest Bathing has been widely cited to be very beneficial in reducing stress and anxiety.
If your walk can take you to nature then thatâs a major bonus.
This comes back to clarity of thought a bit but having dedicated time in the day that takes you away from the digital noise, gives your brain time to breath.
Have a look at your phone settings and find the section that shows you your daily screen usage.
Take that and add it to the same on your work/personal laptop.
Take that and add it to however long you tend to watch TV for and then look at the total.
That is the amount of time your brain is heavily engaged with dopamine spikes, cognitive load and strain throughout the day.
Now have a think about how long do you spend in complete silence.
If youâve constantly got stimulus pouring in then thereâs no room for your mind to actually process that information fully let alone process your own thoughts.
This is why meditation is so powerful because it removes all the stimulus and focuses your attention.
Walks are a perfect time to get this quiet time. Let your thoughts and emotions expand.
Observe your true self through what your mind is intrinsically drawn to think about.
This section is more of a bonus but itâs worth highlighting.
Walking⊠is free!!! đ±
If you pay to go to the gym and rarely use it. Just cancel and start a habit of walking.
Quicker to get going, easier to stick to, time flexible, location flexible.
If you commute to work or school, can any parts of the trip be replaced by walking?
Money and time saved by not having another time in the day for a dedicated walk.
This, I feel is the big one.
Beyond all the various physical and mental benefits daily walks provide.
One of the most dramatic improvements Iâve seen in myself is how much more creative Iâve become.
Whenever Iâve had a mental block, run into a challenging problem at work I just canât figure out or struggling to generate content ideas. Getting up, moving around, going out for my walk always gets me through these barriers.
As you become more stationary and rigid so does your brain. When you get up and move the natural processes of the body engage the brain and warms it up so it can work better (also known as Neuroplasticity).
âAll truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.â â Friedrich Nietzsche
This quote is so undeniably true.
My best solutions, ideas, epiphanies, resolutions have all come to me during daily walks.
The idea of writing this newsletter came from a long walk.
Iâve never felt like a very creative person but through daily walks Iâve discovered my most authentic creativity.
Like any new habit or routine you want to build in your life I say the best things to do are:
For the first part, simply turn up.
Pick a consistent time in the day when youâll commit. Give it the priority it deserves like meal times and work/study time.
Have your shoes, coat whatever you need there and ready.
Then, go outside and walk down the road. Then, if you want, keep walking.
Once your first walk is done, reflect and show up the next day at the same time and gradually increase the number of steps or amount of time your walk takes.
Eventually youâll find it hard to not spend too much time out there.
I find that a good sweet spot is around 30-45 minutes.
Variety is the spice of life.
Find different routes to discover new places in areas you thought you knew but maybe never fully explored.
Pick short looping routes to start with so you can finish up earlier if time is limited.
I have set routes I like to walk which allow me to go into auto-pilot (with reasonable situational awareness for safety). This allows me to zone out more quickly and get into the flow state where my thoughts reach their highest potential.
Once youâve built consistency with getting the daily walks in then look to see how far or long youâre walking for.
Not to fixate on the step count, distance and/or time but simply to see how far you can actually go in even a short space of time.
Most of us carrying our phones will have something like Google Maps, Google Fit, Apple, Strava, Garmin or something tracking where we go and potentially recording step counts.
Theyâre free and good enough to get some insight on how this stacks up.
If youâre struggling to find consistency, motivation or arenât enjoying the process of walking then Iâve found the best way to improve all three of these areas is to gamify things.
Gamifying or Gamification is simply a strategy to implement systems and processes that make the activity more like a game.
As humans we love games of all kinds and there should be a strategy that appeals to you. Here are some of my best tips:
I really do hope you walk away from this (see what I did there? đ) and commit to having a daily walk.
Failing that, every other day.
Failing that, a weekly walk.
Whatever you choose to do I promise that it will only have positive impact in your life.
Thanks for reading.
Sign up to my weekly newsletter for software engineers/developers that want to grow. I share my past successes and failures so you can get a head of the rest.