Neuroscience, the 10-minute rule & Steve Jobs.  

Apparently, it is 5 years to the day since the first confirmed diagnosis of Coronavirus in the UK.

Not an anniversary to celebrate.

But an article by Jessica Stillman in Inc., with contributions by Mithu Storoni, brought back a positive memory from that time.

After 3 months working long hours at home from mid-March 2020, I found myself completely “burned out”.

I had been getting no exercise, eating unhealthy food, spending 12 hours a day at a screen without moving, wrestling with gnarly problems, all the usual . .

So, I decided to get back on the train and go to our London office  . . . 

I had forgotten how much clearer my head was after the 20 minute walk each way, every day, from London’s Waterloo station to our office.

It could have been any walk. 

I found it much easier to think and solve problems, I was doing habitual exercise, I felt more positive and creative.

So, when I read that modern neuroscience suggests we follow the 10-minute rule, I had a flashback to 2020.

“If you haven’t solved a tough mental problem after 10 minutes of trying, stand up and go for a walk”.

It turns out that the legendary Steve Jobs liked to take long walks to have serious conversations with colleagues and advisors.

I’m not sure everyone would appreciate the “padding around barefoot” habits of Steve Jobs, but apparently his constant roaming wasn’t just about a love of physical exercise.

He had stumbled on something that neuroscience is now proving — walking makes your brain work a little bit better, helping you crack problems that stumped you while sitting.

Mithu Storoni, a University of Cambridge-trained neuroscientist and author of the book “Hyperefficient: Optimize Your Brain to Transform the Way You Work”, has some interesting observations;

• Brains aren’t like muscles. If you do a physical job more effort generally leads to more results.
• Creativity and problem solving need a more open, loose mental state where our mind can make novel connections and discover paths around obstacles. For routine busywork like ploughing through emails, heads-down focus may be best, but it’s not creative. 
• Movement changes how we think and nudges us into a better state for ideas. It also blocks us from thinking obsessively or “stressing” about any single idea.
• Taking a walk keeps our attention moving, because we need to stay alert to our surroundings, so we can’t really fix on any one thing, and our brain can drift into trying to solve problems from different avenues.
• Paying “light attention” is necessary when we physically move through the landscape, so we don’t crash into a streetlight or fall in a pothole. This encourages our mind to pay light attention to various thoughts and ideas passing through, too. And that, it turns out, is the ideal mental state for coming up with new ideas.

Famous thinkers, from Charles Darwin to Mark Zuckerberg, have been convinced that walking helped them be smarter and more innovative.

Both biographical and scientific evidence point to the fact that, if you’re stuck on a hard problem for more than 10 minutes, you should stop beating yourself up at your desk and get up and take a walk instead.

You can read the Inc. article “Steve Jobs Swore the 10-Minute Rule Made Him Smarter. Modern Neuroscience Is Discovering He Was Right” by Jessica Stillman here . . .   

Go on, take a walk, clear your head, and make better decisions!

Maybe “walking-driven decision making” is as important as “data-driven decision making”?

It’s all courtesy of neuroscience . . .

And 2025 is SO MUCH better than 2020!

Neuroscience, the 10-minute rule & Steve Jobs.  

Thanks for reading . . . .