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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.

Isn’t it genuinely interesting how Tears of the Kingdom is so narratively at odds with Breath of the Wild? (No? Just me?)

BotW doesn’t have tons to say, but I think you can easily read that it’s about:

How becoming blinded by tradition is bad for a society.

How the extreme pressure placed on Zelda and Link is to everyone’s detriment.

That King Rhoam’s failure was not respecting his daughter’s interests and hoping putting her in a role she didn’t fit would save his kingdom.

That the power to change your life comes from within, and from love, and not prayer without action.

The world will move on and heal from imperialism. It’s sad the kingdom fell, but look, the people can survive without it.

So then we’ve got the sequel being all:

We sure should continue Hyrule’s imperial hegemony. Ancient tradition is awesome.

Zelda should be the one to sacrifice herself again. Link shouldn’t even emote when he finds out.

Rauru’s might makes right. It’s good to swear fealty to an alien invader and fine for them to build a fortress on your border.

Power and authority are determined by having the best weapons (in this case magic rocks).

We absolutely cannot move on. Ganondorf in particular does not change his plan, whatever that even is, after 100,000 years to think about it.

BotW ends with Zelda immediately grabbing the Sheikah slate and discussing her pet interest. TotK ends with members of each surrounding nation swearing fealty to Zelda, mirroring Rauru’s own Hyrule, a Hyrule that, like Rhoam’s, fell due to pride long ago.

Hey there ❤️

If you been following my posts, you know that I've been struggling to keep bills paid and, recently, got another eviction notice. I will have to move once again next week because I ran out of any other options an now I only have a week left to leave.

I set a goal on ko-fi so I can find a place and not be unhoused again. I'm also lowering my prices temporarily until I reach the goal. If you can buy a commission or help me in any way, I promise to deliver my heart in your art. I will draw any OC's and any fandom you want.

Thanks for reading ❤️

There is no victory in skipping dinner, or lunch, or breakfast, or morning coffee, or dessert.

There is no victory in refusing heaters and air conditioners and fans and heated blankets.

There is no victory in denying yourself sleep, or showers, or movement, or water, or a comfortable bed, or taking the elevator vs. the stairs.

There is no victory in refusing pain meds and heating pads and ice packs and medical help.

There is no victory in punishing yourself needlessly, in telling yourself that this pain you feel is because you are bad to the core and deserve it.

There is no victory in choking back your laughter and your tears, to keep an imagined equilibrium of safety that is really just a dry, cracked, empty, endless emotional desert.

You are here. You are in this body, and this body is yours. You deserve good things. You are alive, and that is messy and loud, and messy and loud are okay.

Zant attacks. Zelda and her soldiers try to fight back, but it’s a magic and a power that far out matches Zelda’s and she has no choice but to surrender. And imagine that! For her whole life she was trained to fight for her kingdom, guided by wise mages and sorcerers to hone and train her abilities, skills and education, to be a perfect princess and queen and defend her kingdom from evils and past legends I’m sure she read about and studied in her kingdoms past. And then, just when they needed her most, Zelda immediately fails. Outmatched and unprepared. She was about to be crowned queen, but now, she may never see that day.

She’s put under house arrest in her own home. Alone in her giant, empty, hollow castle. The guards and servants terrified and running, everything now overrun by horrifying beasts and monsters she never could have imagined. She has no way of observing the outside world past the magic shield imprisoning her. Unable to see what was actually happening to her people and unsure if they were being slaughtered or not.

She had to have felt so helpless and terrified. Feeling the weight of her family’s ill choices and sins of her kingdom sinking solely onto her young shoulders. Isolated and having zero autonomy over the situation, doubting if she had made the right choice or not, trying to resist falling into despair and praying so fervently for a miracle to happen. And then Link and Midna arrive! A chance for hope! She has to help them, protect them and give them guidance if she can! She was always praised for her wisdom but now that’s feeling like a false pretense than a reality.

They leave her behind, though I’m sure she desperately wished she could have joined them. But she has to be responsible, it’s up to her to make up for her family’s past wrong doings. And now she has to wait. Again. With bated breath she waits, trying not to spiral into madness as I’m sure Zant tried all he could to torment her.

Link and Midna finally return but Midna is on deaths doorstep. What else can Zelda do but save her? Perhaps saving Midna was the only chance she saw of making an actual impact and helping where she could but also escaping her imprisonment. Perhaps it was a forbidden spell she used, transferring the Triforce, her life force, into Midna. It would be safer in their hands. Maybe she didn’t know if she’d ever be able to return back but she was willing to sacrifice herself if it meant saving her people.

And then somehow, Zelda comes back? Her memories are strange and vague, maybe her conscienceness was tied to Midna’s and saw pieces of what Midna saw. Maybe she was fully aware of Ganon using her as a puppet. Again, she had no autonomy or choice.

She watches her castle, her home explode! It’s destroyed, but Link, they’re both about to die and Zelda finally is able to help, reach into her arcane power and connect with the light spirits for aid! She rides on Epona behind Link, finally able to use her abilities and training to take down the Force that tried to threaten herself and her land! But once again she has to watch someone else take on the responsibility of defending her kingdom when it should have been her all along, facing certain death until Link finally wins! Somehow, they win… it seems a like a dream, it’s gone, it’s over… she will never be able to thank or award Link enough in a thousand lifetimes.

Midna is leaving. She has to. Grief is thick in the air, she feels like she’s intruding in such a sacred bond that she knows formed between Link and Midna. Midna calls her wise, though Zelda is doubtful. The mirror shatters, the connection between that world forever broken, gone forever… Zelda prays, at a loss for words… how do they move forward from this? This is only the beginning towards the step to freedom and rebuilding her broken kingdom. Her home is gone, but the people still love her. She has to depend on them now for a change, but now, Hopefully, she won’t have to be alone this time.

The other night I freed Vah Medoh and then explored Rito a bit more, with the objective of getting sunset refs ^_^