• by Gord Hotchkiss , Featured Contributor, March 10, 2026

In Aaron Sorkin’s acclaimed series “The West Wing,” there was a recurring plot device. When faced with a thorny problem, characters often went for a walk and talked it out with their colleagues. The camera would capture it all in a long tracking shot.

Sorkin, who penned most of these scenes, used them to highlight the frenetic pace of the White House. The characters exchanged rapid-fire, Sorkinesque dialogue while moving through spaces crammed with busy people buzzing in the background.

The technique was both expository and transitional. It would move the story from location to location, often introducing additional characters as they joined the walk, furthering the story line with new details. It was the physical embodiment of multitasking, adding urgency to the pace, of “There is so much to do and so little time to do it in.”

While Sorkin might not have intended it, there is also some solid neuroscience backing up the practice of walking and talking.

Also, you don’t even need to be walking with someone else to realize the cognitive benefits of a good stroll around the block.

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote “All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.” Nietzsche seemed to be on to something. To come up with something new, the brain must do two different types of thinking: divergent and convergent. Divergent thinking could be defined as “thinking outside of the box.” Convergent thinking would be gathering up all those divergent thoughts and stuffing them “back in the box” to analyze the best option. According to a 2014 study from Stanford University, walking gives a significantly positive boost to divergent thinking but is less effective with convergent thinking.

Walking appears to open the brain up to new ideas. There is a positive “mind-body” effect that comes from just being active while you’re thinking,  but walking also puts you in a different environment with varying stimuli. In the Stanford experiment, some participants walked outside and some just walked on a treadmill. Those that were outside realized the greatest creative boosts.

But what if you’re walking with someone else? That’s where the benefits of walking really kick into high gear for certain kinds of brain activities. First of all, both the walkers are benefiting from the creative boost that walking gives them. But walking also allows each one to connect with the other on both a physical and psychological level that operates at the subconscious level.

Another study (Cheng, Kato, Saunders, Tseng, 2020) found that walkers soon synchronize their walking, which creates a physical bond between them. Those who walked together each evaluated the other person more favorably after the walk than those who simply sat in the same room together. And, in case you’re wondering, the two didn’t even need to talk to each other. In the case of this study, both walkers were specifically instructed to stay silent during their walk.

That’s the “walk” part. But what about the “talk” part? As it turns out, walking brings its own benefits to that as well, and it’s not just the multitasking saving of time that Sorkin showed in “The West Wing.”

Think about where you’re looking when you walk. The person you’re walking with is beside you, but you’re looking ahead. You’re not looking them in the eye. For some types of communication, eye-to-eye might be the optimal mode, but for divergent thinking, this combination of being physically in step with the other person but also being free to let your eyes and mind wander a bit, enticed by what’s happening around you, turns out to be a very effective creative incubator. You’re not picking up any body language that may cause you to repress any creative thoughts for fear of rejection. Soon, you’ll start to riff off each other’s ideas, adding to the idea generation process.

There’s one more thing about walking with someone else.  If you do need to think for a while to process a new idea, those silences are a lot less awkward if you’re walking than if you’re across from each other at a boardroom table.