Not Nart Blog (vacuum)

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Also I'm sorry for any mistakes I did, to think again yes I embarrassed myself jghjffyu

Open mentions but also

@dug-1233

@lilacartsmadsion

@zammy357

@etherealcookyhex

She once made the worst screeching noises in imaginable. the scary part? a raccoon actually responded once and she’ll probably never let anyone forget it.

@dug-1233

@lilacartsmadsion

@curiositythecryptid

@nyaskitten

@starsfic

@user-without-a-cool-acronym

@winterpower98

@emzi-148

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.

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.

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.

I really just have to summarize Thomas's entire life:

He was in a committed relationship with a male swan named Henry for 18-24 years before a female swan named Henrietta showed up and mated with Henry.

Thomas was initially jealous of the pair and attacked them, breaking 2 of the 5 eggs Henrietta had laid. However, once the remaining eggs hatched, Thomas warmed up to them and helped raise them.

Henry couldn't fly because of an injured wing, so Thomas taught the cygnets how to fly.

When they needed to reduce the goose population in the pond where Thomas and the swans lived, they dyed Thomas's feathers red so he wouldn't be separated from Henry.

Henry, Henrietta, and Thomas remained in their happy throuple for years and raised 68 cygnets before Henry died in 2009. After Henry's death, Henrietta found another swan and flew away, leaving Thomas alone.

Thomas finally met and mated with a female goose in 2011 and had his own babies. However, another goose named George stole them and raised them himself.

As Thomas grew elderly and blind, he was relocated to a wildlife center where he raised orphaned cygnets.

His caretaker at the center described him as "pretty high maintenance."

Thomas died in 2018 at the age of around 40. He had a funeral that included a small coffin and a procession that was led by a bagpiper. He was buried under the stone where Henry was buried, the two finally reunited in death.

okay. writers of tumblr. i’ve compiled a list of things i desperately wish someone had sat me down and said before i started writing, not that i would’ve listened, because i was 14 and powered entirely by hubris, iced coffee, and my wattpad era.

anyway. here we go:

1. stop rewriting chapter one. i know you think it’ll fix everything. it won’t. it’s a hydra. you cut one head off, two Google Docs appear.

2. your first draft is not a treaty with god. it can be messy. it can be unhinged. it can have 47 placeholders named “idk something happens.” it’s fine.

3. perfectionism is just fear wearing a blazer. write badly on purpose. humiliate your draft. it builds character (yours).

4. word count culture is a scam. you are allowed to write 200 words and call it a day. you are allowed to write 5k and then disappear into the void for three business weeks.

5. google docs autosave WILL betray you. download backups. then back up your backups. then sacrifice a pen to the writing gods idk.

6. description is not pretty synonyms. it’s specificity. the torn movie ticket in their pocket. the buzzing light in the hallway. the chipped nail polish on their thumb. write the thing not the aesthetics around the thing.

7. dialogue isn’t two Shakespeare ghosts monologuing at each other. interruptions. trailing off. people lying. people avoiding the truth. people saying “whatever man.” let it get messy.

8. you don’t need a whole map before you start. sometimes you just need one character with one problem and the stupidest idea imaginable.

9. reading your old writing will make you cringe but also cry a little because wow you cared so much. keep that version of you alive.

10. don’t wait to ‘be good.’ you get good by writing the stuff you think is embarrassing.

11. also: nine out of ten times, your “bad” idea is actually the one that goes feral and grows teeth and becomes your WIP.

12. hydrate. no further explanation.

ok that’s it because if i keep going i’ll start confessing things about the time i wrote a whole novel in 2017 that will never see daylight again.