AI is dazzlingly fast. But some of your best ideas arrive at walking pace, about three miles an hour.

A Stanford study found that walking boosts creative idea generation by an average of 60 percent.

The same Stanford study found the boost lasts, even after you sit back down.

Beethoven, Woolf, Thoreau, and Darwin didn't walk instead of working. Walking was the work.

I'm writing this sentence at my desk. And I can already feel it starting. The fidgeting. The reflexive reach for my phone. The sudden, urgent conviction that this is the perfect moment to declutter my art supply collection or catch up (months late) on my spring cleaning.

My desk is where the creative work is supposed to happen. So why does my brain treat it like a grindstone?

If you've ever stared down a blinking cursor, willing a good idea to emerge in the time block you so carefully and responsibly inserted in your calendar, only to have one fall from the sky when you were walking the dog, you already know the secret.

Your best thinking rarely happens where you planned for it to. It happens when your body is moving.

Here's why that's worth noticing (and harnessing) right now.

Artificial intelligence is astonishingly fast. Ask it a question and the answer simply appears, fully formed, before you've finished your coffee, or even mid-first-sip. No waiting, no staring into space, no wandering off mid-thought.

And for a huge range of work, that speed is a genuine gift. I lean on it all the time, sometimes while I'm out walking and talking to it on my phone. But while it’s great for organizing activities or planning a project, or for tedium like writing a proposal, speed isn't the same as insight. Some of the best ideas can't be summoned on........

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