
Why Walking Meetings Work - kawera
https://forge.medium.com/walking-meetings-will-change-the-way-you-work-dce8b61f9e04
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jedberg
Netflix's CEO loves to do walking meetings, and a lot of the other execs
follow his example. It's especially nice since the HQ is next to a lovely
creek trail.

The only downside is that someone has to take notes, which can be hard while
walking, unless you can remember everything.

~~~
gopalv
> The only downside is that someone has to take notes, which can be hard while
> walking, unless you can remember everything.

For some reason, walking meetings tend to work like a memory palace for me.

Though I walk down a pretty specific set of landmarks and write notes
afterwards, which is usually ordered by the walk trail landmarks & a follow-up
would usually not need a set of notes either.

There was a time when the smokers used to be the ones to do this as a matter
of habit - these days it is much healthier to do walk-talks.

~~~
dvtrn
I thought I’d heard the term “mind palace” before but couldn’t remember from
where (oh the irony). Google reminded me!

[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/secrets-
sherlock...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/secrets-sherlocks-
mind-palace-180949567/)

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ChuckMcM
I started walking as part of a weight management strategy, when my team
noticed I was doing these walks we started doing 1:1s on walks rather than in
the office. They were _much_ better.

I find it easier to think things through while I walk so I added a recorder
app to my phone so that I could verbally take notes while I was walking in
order to not forget things that I had thought about or thoughts that came to
me on the walk.

It has been a very productive change, not to mention it helps with managing me
weight so definitely a win.

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swiley
For some reason I was under the impression that recording meetings was
illegal.

~~~
ChuckMcM
FWIW I don't record meetings, I record notes when I am walking by myself. That
said California is a two party consent state so if I were to record a 1:1 I
would insure that I had the other person's ok to do so (recorded :-))

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pmiri
Saw a comment long ago mentioning that our early nomadic ancestors must have
spent much of their time wandering the landscape, probably for miles a day.
What neglect do we bring to our brains when we don't do even a fraction of
this?

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rurp
I have learned that going for a walk is best way for me to think through a
tricky problem. Something about the act of walking around almost immediately
kicks my brain into a different mode that can do wonders for my thought
process. It has to be a leisurely route though, meaning minimal dodging of
cars or interacting with people.

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seanhunter
My experience is that certain types of meetings work really great this way
whereas others do not. Collaborative 1:1 type meetings or "same side of the
table" meetings where you need creative thinking to work through some complex
issue really shine as walking meetings. Where there are concrete points you're
trying to get across or in general more "information sharing" type meetings
tend not to be so great in this format or at least they definitely need a
followup email to ensure everyone understands the takeaways and actions
expected.

I used to do many/most 1:1s as walks but I found that if you have a serious
piece of feedback to deliver etc it's often not as good on a walk and if you
always do a walk and then send an email saying "let's do it in the office
today" it sends a signal which makes people immediately defensive.

Separately I'm a very rigorous note-taker (using a paper book) and one of the
big benefits of walking meetings (from my pov) is that people are not sitting
with a laptop and are actually intellectually present at the meeting. I just
make sure to recap the actions/takeaways as the very last thing before we
wrap. Then it's easy for people to remember them and take them back to the
desk with them. You can also send a followup email to ensure you're in 100%
sync.

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adrianmonk
So, based on this and a recent news story (discussed here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22503438](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22503438)),
the rule seems to be:

* Need to do some convergent thinking? Caffeine.

* Need to do some divergent thinking? Walk.

Each of these helps with one type of thinking but not the other.

~~~
etrk
Real geniuses walk and drink their coffee at the same time.

~~~
adrianmonk
Being semi-serious for a moment, I'm genuinely unsure which strategy is best.
On the one hand, why not unlock all of your brain's potential? On the other
hand, would it make sense to consciously choose which type of thinking to
enable? Basically open only the door that leads to the path you want to take.

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jrumbut
The effect of walking on improved conversation is so strong for me I have, for
a long time, been wondering why it never caught on in the psychology
community.

I wonder how much more effective talk therapy could be if delivered while
walking, at the driving range, over table tennis, etc.

~~~
obelos
At least one psychologist practiced it:

“A schizophrenic out for a walk is a better model than a neurotic lying on the
analyst's couch.” —Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze

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Proziam
I pace when I'm thinking about work stuff. I find that being upright and
mobile keeps me more alert and focused than slouching in my chair, in front of
a distraction jukebox. Some people I work with like it (though, they joke that
I should buy a school with a racetrack to walk around...)

I would _love_ for walking meetings to become the norm. Though, I'm aware that
there's a lot of folks who are the exact opposite.

~~~
jlokier
That's exactly me!

I can easily walk in circles a few hundred times when thinking, sometimes
hours at a time if there's a particularly big thing to think about, and do it
with other people around if I forget not to.

I would love a workplace with long distances to walk around and to have
walking meetings.

In fact, what a great idea. I'll try to ask people for walking meetings in
future. (With sensitivity to the fact some people find walking hard, even
painful (back problems, knees, energy levels etc.), especially if it's for a
long time.)

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dejawu
I'm surprised no one's mentioned one of the greatest advantages of walking and
talking - spatial memory.

I used to go to a therapist who would hold walking sessions along a trail or
path in a park. The best thing about it, besides forcing me to get out of bed
and be in nature, was that I could remember exactly what we talked about and
when, based on landmarks along the trail (e.g. "we were discussing X when we
walked over this bridge). Similarly, I find that if I have a phone
conversation while driving, I can remember it much better because parts of the
conversation correlate to locations I passed as I was driving.

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laurex
This is one of the few downsides of remote work. It's not very effective to do
walks over Zoom.

~~~
jlokier
I find voice conversations over the phone pretty good while walking, using
wireless headphones so my hands are free.

I do this a lot and pretty much forget I'm walking, can do it for hours if a
call or series of calls needs it. As a result, it's probably my main exercise,
and I much prefer this over a phone conference or chat while stuck in a chair.

Video doesn't fare so well when walking, I agree.

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bryanrasmussen
I was just thinking that walking meetings really work in today's environment
because as you are walking you get the chance to get in contact with more
people that were not originally supposed to be in the meeting and give them
things, or get things from them.

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alisheikhmanesh
Great read, I like to record meetings on my phone(with permission) which
allows me to listen and take in as much as possible before going back and
reviewing what I missed on my phone.

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Traster
I have a friend whose boss likes to 'go for a walk' or 'catch up whilst we
head over to X'. Naturally she's wearing high heels and it's a fucking
nightmare for her.

~~~
NikolaNovak
I'm afraid I feel my level of sympathy would be 100% correlated with how
mandatory the heels are for your friend :-/

On aside, I'm also (genuinely, not snarkily) curious to understand the
"Naturally" part in front of "wearing high heels". Don't get me wrong - I
personally think they're a fabulously attractive if completely impractical
article of clothing, but it feels like in many places in the world they are
far from the norm/regular/Natural assumption.

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andybak
Absolute blessing if you have a tendency towards ADHD also.

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buboard
It's 2020 , time for management science to learn how to do science. No, it
isn't science to take a study of individuals solving problems and
extrapolating that "walking meetings work". It's bs.

~~~
GuiA
Management science fundamentally cannot be science. There’s nothing isolatable
or replicable in humans in the workplace (or outside for that matter).

The best you can do is apply statistical approaches to arbitrary abstractions,
and the main thing we learn when we do that is that return to the mean is the
only thing we can really be sure of?

~~~
buboard
> There’s nothing isolatable or replicable in humans in the workplace

That needs proof

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bluGill
While nothing might be too strong a statement, several studies have shown
things like changing the light level in an office increases productivity - it
doesn't matter what your started with or end up with. Given this how can you
study the optimal light level in an office?

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buboard
i think you already solved it, the optimal level is "fluctuating"

(btw thanks for the tip! i work at home and will use that)

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ghaff
What I assume is being referred to is the Hawthorne Effect:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect)

I admit that I was aware of the original interpretation but not the
novelty/disruption effect.

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tomashubelbauer
Walking meetings are not accessible. If you have blind, deaf or wheelchair-
bound colleagues, walking meetings are a wonderful way to exclude them from
participating equally in the workplace. That's of course unless you don't
already "solve" this issue by just not hiring such folks.

I really wish people would think about this. And not only in terms of their
current workplace demography, but also their prospective future employees.

~~~
pmiller2
The solution is obvious: you solve the issue by not having walking meetings
with people who can't effectively participate in them. Why is that so hard?

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Traster
Because it's not actually obvious who can effectively participate in them. Are
you checking your meeting participants for suitable footwear, asthma,
underlying allergies, chronic health conditions they'd rather not disclose to
colleagues...

~~~
pmiller2
Then, ask. Again, simple. Problem solved. Why do y'all want to make these
things so hard? It's not that difficult to say "are you okay with a walking
meeting?"

~~~
Traster
Okay, and is your direct report going to tell you no? Or are they going to
worry that they're going to miss out on the opportunity to actually influence
their boss because they don't participate in this week's fad?

~~~
pmiller2
Yes, they are. Otherwise, US law and social convention place the
responsibility for not giving a straight answer on the employee. At a certain
point, adults employed by a company need to take some responsibility for
themselves. Once you’ve asked if they’re okay participating in an activity,
and they say yes, that threshold is reached.

