Walking Fuels Ideas

Hi Everyone!

I hope to find you all well in this coming season.  As we step into September, many of us feel the energy of a new season—a time when routines restart, ideas spark, and momentum builds toward the close of the year. It’s a month full of possibilities, yet also a time when meetings, schedules, and “conference rooms” can quickly crowd out creativity. Especially as we think about fall solicitation season.  

That’s why I wanted to pause and share a powerful reminder from an article by Kevin Schulman, Founder of DonorVoice and DVCanvass, titled Your Conference Room Kills Ideas. It offers an unexpected yet simple takeaway: sometimes the best way to unlock creativity isn’t another meeting, but a walk.
 
Why Walking Works
As Schulman highlights, Nietzsche once said, “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.” And modern science backs him up. Researchers at Stanford tested this with a straightforward experiment. Participants completed a creativity test while assigned to one of four conditions—walking or sitting at two different points in time.
 
The results were striking: walking consistently fueled more novel responses and higher levels of creative output than sitting. In fact, as the chart shows, even transitioning from sitting to walking had a significant boost on participants’ creativity.
 
Schulman puts it simply: while conference rooms ofter smother ideas with buzzwords, post-its, and forced enthusiasm, walking is faster, cheaper, and better for ideation.
 
What This Means for Us
As we think about our work, our planning, and even our personal lives this fall, perhaps the best creativity tool isn’t another whiteboard or agenda—it’s a change of pace, a step outside, and fresh air. Walking creates space for ideas to breathe, solutions to emerge, and clarity to take shape.
 
So as September unfolds, let's give ourselves permission to step away from the table, lace up our shoes, and discover what new ideas are waiting for us on the path ahead.
 
Warmly,
Jamie