Josefdóttir

Mathematician, runner.

[Itzhak Perlman @PerlmanOfficial]

Itzhak Perlman with an impromptu performance of Brahms: Hungarian Dance No. 5! 🎻

[Ihtesham Ali @ihtesham2005]

A Stanford psychologist spent 4 years proving that the simple act of walking generates 60% more creative ideas than sitting, and the experiment she designed to kill every alternative explanation is one of the most decisive findings in modern psychology.

Her name is Marily Oppezzo.

She got the idea for the study while walking with her advisor at Stanford to discuss her thesis topic, and the paper she eventually published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2014 is sharp enough that it should have ended the seated meeting on the day it came out.

She ran 4 experiments on 176 people. Same person tested twice. Once sitting, once walking. The creativity tasks were the standard ones psychologists have used for decades to measure how good a brain is at generating novel useful ideas.

The result was almost too clean to publish.

81% of participants in the first experiment produced more creative ideas while walking than while sitting. In the second experiment, 88%. In the third, 100%. Every single person walked into a more creative version of themselves.

On average, people generated 60% more novel useful ideas the moment their legs started moving.

The skeptical question is the obvious one. Maybe it was the fresh air. Maybe it was the scenery passing by. Maybe it was the change of environment doing the work, not the walking itself.

Oppezzo killed every one of those explanations with one experimental decision.

She put people on a treadmill facing a blank wall. No scenery. No fresh air. No environmental change. Just legs moving in place while staring at white drywall. The 60% boost held.

Then she ran the experiment that closed the case completely. She took participants outside in two conditions. Half of them walked through a Stanford courtyard. The other half were pushed through the exact same courtyard in a wheelchair. Same outdoor stimulation. Same scenery passing at the same speed. The only difference was whether the legs were moving.

The walkers produced dramatically more novel high-quality ideas than the wheelchair group. The outdoors did almost nothing on its own. The walking did everything.

This is the part of the study that hit hardest when I read it the first time.

She also tested the opposite kind of thinking. Convergent thinking. The kind where there is one right answer and you have to narrow down to it.

Word puzzles where 3 words share a hidden fourth word that connects them. The seated participants did slightly better on these. Walkers got slightly worse.

Walking is not a general intelligence enhancer. It does one specific thing. It opens up the divergent search inside your brain. The part that generates options. The part that produces unexpected connections. The part that takes a problem and finds five ways into it instead of one.

When you need to converge on the single right answer, sit down. When you need to find the answer in the first place, get up.

The mechanism is now well understood. Walking selectively activates what neuroscientists call the default mode network, the system inside your brain that runs when you are not consciously focused on anything. The DMN is where mind-wandering happens. Where memories cross-reference each other. Where ideas that have been sitting in separate folders inside your head finally bump into each other.

When you sit at a desk and force yourself to concentrate, you suppress the DMN. When you walk at a natural pace, the executive part of your brain gets just busy enough handling the walking that the DMN comes online and starts doing the work that focus was blocking.

The most useful finding in the entire paper is the one almost nobody quotes.

The boost did not turn off the moment people stopped walking. Participants who walked first and then sat back down stayed elevated. Their next round of seated creativity work was still significantly better than people who had been sitting the whole time. The rest lingered for at least several minutes after the legs stopped moving.

You do not need to do creative work while walking. You need to walk before the creative work. The brain holds the state.

The history of this is the part that should haunt anyone who still does meetings in chairs.

Charles Darwin built a gravel loop behind his house in Kent called the Sandwalk and walked it 3 times a day for the rest of his life. The theory of evolution was developed one lap at a time on that path.

Nietzsche walked up to 10 hours a day during the years he wrote his most important books and openly said the work was conceived on his feet.

Beethoven composed for the morning and walked for 5 hours every afternoon with a pencil in his pocket for when something landed.

Kahneman said the best thinking of his Nobel Prize-winning career happened on leisurely walks with Amos Tversky. Steve Jobs refused to take important conversations sitting down. He held them on foot.

Every one of them was using the system Oppezzo would not measure until 2014. They just did not know what to call it.

The question worth sitting with is the one almost nobody asks.

Every meeting you have ever attended sitting around a table was a meeting held at a fraction of the brain power that was actually available to the people in the room. Every brainstorm that got stuck inside a conference room. Every problem you tried to solve at a desk and gave up on. Every idea you could not quite get to.

The intervention is the easiest one in modern science. No supplement. No app. No subscription. No training program. Just a pair of legs and 15 minutes.

The Stanford lab proved it. The philosophers knew it. The neuroscience explains it.

And almost everyone reading this is still trying to think their way out of problems sitting completely still.

[SomosMxMexico @SomosMxMexico]

🔴INFORMACIÓN IMPORTANTE🔴
En los últimos días ha habido denuncias de personas porque han sido afiliadas a partidos políticos vigentes (principalmente Morena) sin su consentimiento o sin haberse enterado.

Para verificar si estás afiliado/a a algún partido político con registro vigente (Somos México aún no es un partido político con registro vigente) puedes consultar en esta liga:
https://t.co/WSNAWNhn2w

Si te afiliaron a un partido político sin tu consentimiento, puedes presentar una queja ante el @INEMexico en sus oficinas centrales o en la junta distrital de tu localidad llenando este formato:
https://t.co/AqPsynTwxr

El INE ha impuesto multas millonarias a los partidos políticos que recurren a estas prácticas, pero pocas personas se dan cuenta de que han sido afiliadas indebidamente. La semana pasada los multó con más de 10 millones de pesos.

https://t.co/3EaoZYiNdM

Si te afiliaste antes del 27 de febrero a Somos México y quieres verificar tu afiliación, pon tus datos aquí:
https://t.co/gQLegQOfFo

En este momento las afiliaciones a través de la plataforma del INE no están disponibles para partidos de nueva creación, hasta que alcancen su registro, pero si así lo deseas puedes dejar aquí tus datos como simpatizante de Somos México y nosotros te contactaremos para el posterior proceso de afiliación formal:
https://t.co/FvrNmsx8Lg

Comparte esta información.

[Harvard Department of Mathematics @HarvardMath]

We are delighted to announce that Prof. Laura DeMarco was appointed the Hollis Professor of Mathematicks and Natural Philosophy, the second oldest named chair at Harvard and the oldest chair in science in all of the U.S.! #harvardmath https://t.co/esyQoKS8m3

[Josefdóttir @josefdottir]

@snezanalawrence It caught my attention that the article you have shared was written by Robert L. Devaney, who has also passed away a few weeks ago. I was blessed to have him as my PhD advisor, a great mathematician with a generous mind and a superb sense of humor. He’ll be greatly missed.

[Josefdóttir @josefdottir]

Yo ya ¿y tú? Venga 🙋🏻‍♀️

[NARIZ ROJA AC @NARIZROJAAC]

@DelfinEmigdio @chucho_cuerero

[Diego Bautista Páez @DBautistaPaez]

Hoy que se cobró el #SNII vale la pena leer sobre la promoción y permanencia de investigadoras en el Sistema
https://t.co/GRfgizVxc1

[Josefdóttir @josefdottir]

@RubenAMartinezA

[Josefdóttir @josefdottir]

….Sounds familiar

[Luis Garicano 🇪🇺🇺🇦 @lugaricano]

Son años ya de reducir el capital humano de los que toman decisiones, y se nota-ahora ya (Dana, apagón) de manera catastrófica. Eso sí, nadie tiene nunca la culpa y dimite . Y como muy bien dice Jesús, se les pone ahí no a pesar de que no sepan, sino precisamente porque no saben-eso asegura lealtad absoluta.

[Josefdóttir @josefdottir]

Venga, a cooperar

[NARIZ ROJA AC @NARIZROJAAC]

@macariomx @gsotomayorgva

[Josefdóttir @josefdottir]

@snezanalawrence Bach’s solo violin sonatas (with Itzhak Perlman). Two and a half hours of pure bliss for the brain and soul.

[Wu Tang is for the Children @WUTangKids]

Apparently it is once again time to bring back the lesson on tariffs from Ferris Bueller

[Renee @PettyLupone]

“My mother, who I lost this year, wasn’t welcome in department stores as a young woman, but for eight years she had the best view in America from her room at the White House.”

-Michelle Obama, Orator Extraordinaire

[Josefdóttir @josefdottir]

Más claro no se puede. A deleitarse por cuarenta minutos. https://t.co/LkAmjmZbBX

[Josefdóttir @josefdottir]

Nadie más, nunca jamás 🥹

[Roland-Garros @rolandgarros]

🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆

#RolandGarros @RafaelNadal

[Josefdóttir @josefdottir]

¡ÓRALE CABRÓN, RECOJA SUS CHIVAS Y A CHIN… A PODRIRSE EN SU BASURERO!

[¿Cuánto le falta a Sheinbaum? @cuantolefalta]

Le faltan 0 años, 0 meses, 0 días, 0 horas, 0 minutos, 0 segundos (o bien, 0 días). Ya pasó 100% del sexenio (2131 días). #cuantolefalta

¡YA ACABO!

[Josefdóttir @josefdottir]

Por fin, el país amaneció despejeado.

[Josefdóttir @josefdottir]

“There is yet another one
that follows me,
wherever I go,
and supports me”