A new study has found that going for walks can lead to better creativity. Research suggests that freely flowing thoughts are more likely to occur when walking indoors or outdoors.

The research was recently published by the American Psychological Association.

Marily Oppezzo, PhD, of Santa Clara University, said in a statement, “Many people anecdotally claim they do their best thinking when walking.” She explains, “With this study, we finally may be taking a step or two toward discovering why.”

During their time at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education, Oppezzo and a colleague, Daniel L. Schwartz, PhD, studied a total of 176 people, primarily college students.

The researchers found that participants who walked rather than sitting or being pushed in a wheelchair continuously provided more creative responses on tests that are typically used to measure creative thinking, such as coming up with alternative uses for common objects and creating creative analogies to capture complex ideas.

However, the walkers tended to fall short when they were asked to come up with a single answer to help solve problems, which was not seen in the group that had been sitting.

The researchers focused on whether the act of walking could temporarily enhance certain types of thinking, such as free-flowing thoughts as opposed to focused concentration.

Schwartz said, “Asking someone to take a 30-minute run to improve creativity at work would be an unpopular prescription for many people.” Schwartz continued, “We wanted to see if a simple walk might lead to more free-flowing thoughts and more creativity.”

The students who were tested for creativity while walking came up with creative ideas 100 percent of the time in one experiment. Additionally, 95 percent, 88 percent, and 81 percent of the walker groups had more creative responses than those who were sitting in other experiments.