Walking and talking: how to keep a walking journal

A walking journal is simple: you go for a walk, talk through whatever is on your mind, and record it. It combines two things that each help you think, moving your body and saying your thoughts out loud, and it removes the hardest part of journaling, which is sitting down to do it.

If you've ever solved something on the way to the shops that you couldn't solve at your desk, you already know why this works. The research backs that feeling up, with some useful limits.

Why does walking help you think?

In a set of four experiments, Stanford researchers Marily Oppezzo and Daniel Schwartz (2014) compared people's creative thinking while sitting and while walking. Walking, whether outdoors or on a treadmill facing a blank wall, increased the number of creative, appropriate ideas people came up with. Depending on the experiment, between 81 and 100 percent of participants were more creative walking than sitting. The boost carried over for a while when people sat down afterwards.

There's an important catch. Walking helped divergent thinking, generating many possibilities, and did not help convergent thinking, finding the single right answer. On those problems, walkers did slightly worse.

That maps neatly onto how to use a walking journal: walk to explore, sit to decide.

Two other studies are worth knowing:

• Nature and rumination. In Bratman and colleagues (2015), 38 adults took a 90-minute walk either through grassland with trees or along a busy road. The nature walkers reported less rumination afterwards and showed reduced activity in a brain region linked to it. The urban walkers didn't.
• Awe walks. In Sturm and colleagues (2020), 60 older adults took a 15-minute walk once a week for eight weeks. Those asked to look for things that filled them with awe reported more joy and other prosocial emotions in daily life, and less distress, than a control walking group.

So the setting matters too. Green beats grey when you can manage it.

Why talk while you walk?

Talking to yourself at a desk can feel strange. Walking changes that. You're side by side with your thoughts rather than face to face, there's nothing to look at but the path, and the rhythm of your steps gives your sentences somewhere to go. It's the same reason hard conversations often go better in a car or on a walk than across a table.

Talking also does something writing doesn't. You can't pause to polish a sentence while you're crossing a road. You say the rough version, hear it, and say the next one. That slight pressure keeps the thinking moving. For more on the mechanics, see why talking out loud helps you think.

And in practical terms: nobody can journal on paper while walking.

How to start a walking journal

1. Pick a loop. A route you know well, ideally with some trees or water, so you don't have to navigate. Fifteen to thirty minutes round trip.
2. Start recording before you leave. Hit record at the door, put the phone in your pocket, and forget about it. If you have earbuds with a mic, use them; they pick up your voice and less wind.
3. Walk quietly for the first few minutes. Let your thoughts loosen up. You'll know when there's something to say.
4. Say the first thing, not the best thing. "I'm thinking about the meeting, I don't know why" is a fine opening.
5. Follow it wherever it goes. Walking is good for wandering. Let the entry wander too.
6. Before you get home, say one sentence of summary. "So, the main thing seems to be..." This is where you shift from exploring to deciding, and it's the part you'll want to find later.
7. Stop the recording at the door. Don't listen back right away. Let it settle.

If talking out loud in public is the sticking point, start on quieter paths or early in the morning. Feel awkward talking to yourself? has more on getting past it.

Prompts that suit walking

Walking prompts should be open. Save the narrow questions for later.

To get moving

• What's been on my mind since I woke up?
• What am I noticing right now: sounds, light, people, smells?
• What's the thing I'd most like to figure out on this walk?

To explore an idea

• What if the opposite of my plan were true?
• What are ten ways this could go? (Count them out loud.)
• Who would solve this differently, and how?
• What's the version of this idea that would embarrass me a little?

To loosen a knot

• What am I going around in circles about? Say the circle out loud.
• What's the story I'm telling myself about this? Is there another story?
• What would I tell a friend walking next to me?

To notice

• What around me is beautiful, strange or surprising today?
• What's changed on this route since the last time I walked it?
• What's bigger than my problem right now? Look up and describe it.

The last set borrows from the awe walk study: deliberately noticing something vast or unexpected, then saying it out loud.

A few practical notes

• Safety first. Keep your eyes up and the phone in your pocket. Pause at crossings. Talking can absorb you more than you expect.
• Wind and traffic. Earbud mics handle wind better than a phone in your hand. If a truck drowns out a sentence, just say it again.
• Privacy. Be thoughtful about what you say on a busy street. Save the most personal topics for quieter stretches.
• Weather. A hood, a scarf and a short loop are fine. A five-minute walk round the block still counts.
• Ideas on the go. If you're mainly trying to catch ideas before they disappear, short recordings work well. How to capture ideas before they vanish covers that use.

Walking journal, sitting review

Because walking helps you generate and not choose, pair it with a short review sitting down. Once a week, scan the transcripts of your walking entries and pull out the decisions, ideas and tasks. Walk to find the thoughts, sit to sort them.

How Monologue helps

Monologue is a voice journal for iPhone and Apple Watch, and it suits walking well. You can start a monologue from your wrist or watch face with no phone needed, and it arrives in your library on the iPhone. There's no time limit, and you can pause at a crossing and resume on the other side. Audio is saved in small pieces as you go, so a call or a dead battery mid-walk won't lose what you said. If you turn on location, each entry quietly notes the neighborhood and city you recorded in, and every monologue gets its own cover photograph, so a month of walks reads like a set of postcards. Download Monologue.