Aristotle, Nietzsche or Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, who died in 2011, understood this well: ideas come more easily while walking. This empirical observation goes back more than 2,000 years, but scientists continue to dig into this question of the link between movement and cognitive circuits. In recent years, various works, in particular those of American researchers from Stanford, have shown that adults who think while walking have on average 60% more ideas than when sitting at their desk.
Just recently, German researchers at the University of Würzburg went even further. They have just shown that, more than walking, it is freedom of movement that promotes ideas. Already, moving while sitting at your desk can already boost creativity.
They tested the imagination and creativity of a group of students by asking them to find functions for several everyday objects. For example, when they were told “bath towel”, the students could say that not only is it used to dry off, but that it can also be used as a skirt, T-shirt, turban, tablecloth, etc. This Guilford test assesses divergent thinking, in other words the fact of finding several solutions to a problem.
During this experiment, there were four groups: students seated motionless in front of a screen, others seated but who were allowed to move, a third group roamed freely and a last had to walk following a straight line between two walls. Result: the most imaginative students are those who are allowed to move freely and look everywhere, whether they are sitting or standing.
This means that it is the freedom of movement – of body and eyes – that fuels the imagination.
Hours spent in video conferencing without moving are not ideal. Distrust when it lasts too long, say these Bavarian researchers. Long live the breaks, therefore, to move and look around. The best students are those who know how to keep their noses in the air. The student or the employee, too fixed and too wise in front of his screen, ends up becoming less creative.