Creativity Dies at the Desk
You’re better off finding your next great idea while going on a walk or playing golf.
By Gary Belsky
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For my entire professional life, I’ve worked in businesses that require creativity on demand, in which people are expected to think clearly, generate insight and produce work of all kinds more or less on cue.
Sometimes those expectations pan out, but often, they don’t. One reason why is that the places where we try hardest to think—in offices, in conference rooms, in front of screens—aren’t always where our best thinking happens. These environments can produce a kind of cognitive congestion: We’re always thinking, but not always well.
The ideas we value most, however, tend to emerge somewhere beyond the desk.
Science supports this claim. In a 2014 Stanford study, participants were significantly more creative while walking than while sitting—by an average of 60%. The explanation is straightforward and intuitive: Light physical activity occupies the body just enough to loosen the mind’s grip on whatever it’s trying too hard to solve. What follows isn’t distraction so much as a different kind of attention, one in which connections form more easily and problems quietly rearrange themselves.
I’m hardly the first person to recognize that a walk around the block can loosen cranial cobwebs. But I’ve been thinking about the optimal conditions for creativity lately while working on a book about the joys and benefits of playing golf alone, which I call a “onesome.”
For me, a solo round has a rhythm that’s difficult to replicate elsewhere. You walk. You stop. You focus, briefly and intensely, on a single task. Then you walk again. There’s no meeting agenda, no inbox, no expectation of constant responsiveness. Very little talking at all, in fact, since you’re out there on the course without partners. The mind is engaged, but not pressed.
What emerges in that space is rarely a lightning bolt of ingenuity, but rather something more practical and valuable: clarity. Problems that felt knotted begin to separate into manageable strands. Decisions that seemed urgent lose any false immediacy. And occasionally, an idea appears—sometimes fully formed and useful, sometimes not, but always unmistakably alive.
Of course, this phenomenon isn’t unique to golf. People report similar experiences while running, gardening or even showering. The common denominator isn’t the activity itself, but the nature of it: lightly structured, minimally interrupted and engaging enough to keep the mind from circling the same drain.
Modern work suppresses those conditions systematically. We have become adept at filling time—optimizing it, scheduling it, monetizing it—but less skilled at creating space within it. Even attempts at creativity in the professional world are often overengineered: brainstorming sessions with tight agendas, company offsites designed around workshops that leave little room for actual wandering.
None of this is an argument for abandoning desks or offices. Creativity can benefit from structural constraints and human collisions. But if we care about generating better ideas, we might reconsider where and how we expect some of them to appear.
In a culture that prizes visible productivity, it can feel indulgent to step away. But those are often the moments when thinking actually begins.
Mr. Belsky is the author of “Solo Golf: The Zen of Playing Alone and How It Can Transform Your Game.”