Walking meetings actually work. Here is the research

I run most of my one-on-ones on foot, and I get asked whether that is a preference or a strategy. It started as a preference. The research turned it into a strategy, with one clear limit: some meetings get better on foot, and some get worse.

The short version

• Walking raised creative output by about 60 percent in Stanford experiments, even on a treadmill.
• It made focused, single-answer thinking slightly worse. Walk the open questions, sit for the decisions.
• Side by side, people say more. Pick a loop that needs no navigation.

What the research says

The study everyone cites is from Stanford, and it deserves it. Across four experiments with 176 people, participants listed alternative uses for everyday objects, a standard test of idea generation, while sitting or walking. Walking produced about 60 percent more creative responses on average. It worked on a treadmill facing a blank wall, so the effect comes from the walking itself, though walking outdoors produced the most original analogies. The benefit lingered briefly after sitting back down.

The same study found the cost. On a test with one right answer, walkers did slightly worse than sitters. Walking opens the field. It does not narrow it.

People who think for a living already use this. Interviews with nine Norwegian academics who walk to think found they used walks for specific stages: getting unstuck, letting an argument settle, rehearsing a talk. They chose routes that needed no navigation, and several said the rhythm of walking did the work. They avoided walking for anything that needed reading or writing.

It scales to groups, up to a point. When KTH in Stockholm moved graduate seminars outdoors and on foot, students and teachers rated the walking seminars higher in quality and felt better afterwards than in the seated versions. Discussion improved. Staying on topic slipped a little. These were discussion seminars that needed no notes, which is the kind of meeting that walks well.

Side by side also changes what gets said. A 2024 review of walking interviews in organizational research found people open up differently walking together than face to face. Sensitive topics come up more easily. The setting prompts memories and examples that a room does not.

The habit holds up over weeks, with a caveat. In an eight-week UK trial, office workers who took two lunchtime walks a week on green routes reported better mental health at the end, while colleagues on built routes did not. Resting heart measures did not differ between the groups, and fewer than half the walkers kept to two walks a week. The walks in that study were social and unstructured.

Which meetings to walk

• Walk: brainstorming, one-on-ones, feedback conversations, anything where you want the other person to say more than they planned to.
• Sit: decisions that need a document open, anything with numbers, meetings of more than three people.
• Pick a loop you both know. Navigation competes with thinking. The academics were clear on this.
• Keep it to 30 to 45 minutes. Long enough for the second half, where the useful things tend to get said.
• Agree one question at the start. Then let the walk shape the rest.

If you don't walk

The 60 percent came from walking, and walking outdoors gave the most original ideas on top of that. If walking is out, the Stanford treadmill result suggests any steady, low-demand movement helps, and standing works for some people. For a seated meeting you want to open up, change the room and find a window with a view. The research on views is thinner than the research on walking, and it points the same way.

Questions people ask

Does it need to be outdoors?

No, for the creativity effect. The treadmill worked. Outdoors adds the mood and stress benefits covered elsewhere in these notes, and it produced the most original ideas in the Stanford data.

How do I take notes?

Voice memo at the end, or two minutes on a bench before you part. The Norwegian academics avoided walking for anything that needed reading or writing, and I have found the same.

What about people who cannot walk far?

The benefit appeared at a slow pace. Distance was never the variable. A short loop at whatever pace suits both of you is the whole method.

Two Humans in the Loop is a 30-minute guided walk at Hudson Yards designed for exactly two people and one conversation.

On the science: every study here is real. The underlined phrases link straight to the papers, and the full list is below. The summaries and takeaways are my own reading, simplified to be useful rather than complete.