Maria Popova is the brain behind The Marginalian1, an inspiring website chock full of insights into life and meaning, all written by one woman who reads and writes every waking moment.
I read and write from the minute I wake up to the moment I go to sleep at night and everything in between.
—Maria Popova
I’ve admired Maria’s productivity–she reportedly reads 12–15 books per week, tweets nearly every hour, and writes timely and timeless blog posts multiple times a day.
How does she accomplish so much with the same 24 hours per day that everyone is allotted? Where does she get the inspiration to make such deep connections between seemingly disparate pieces of writing?
Through movement.
Maria fits her reading in while on the elliptical at the gym2 and listens to audiobooks and podcasts while commuting on her bike. She says these moments—and those in the shower—are when thoughts are able to roam free and connect the dots.
I used to have these elaborate theories that maybe there was something about the movement of the body and the water that magically sparked a deeper consciousness. But I’ve really come to realize the obvious thing, which is that these are simply the most unburdened spaces in my life, the moments in which I have the greatest uninterrupted intimacy with my own mind, with my own experience.
—Maria Popova, On Being Podcast
She’s dismissive of her own hypothesis, but I think she is exactly right. Not only do those moments provide her brain with the opportunity to enter the default mode network, but movement does have an effect on cognition.
David Perrell relates a similar experience:
I remember walking into Starbucks and sitting there for ninety minutes and I wouldn’t get any writing done. I’d get so frustrated! Then I’d walk right out of the Starbucks, I would start walking, and boom, boom, boom, it was like a Poprocks® of intellectual epiphanies for me.
—Tropical MBA Podcast, Episode 598
In fact, Henry David Thoreau3 had a very similar observation:
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live! Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move my thoughts begin to flow as if I had given vent to the stream at the lower end and consequently new fountains flowed into it at the upper. A thousand rills which have their rise in the sources of thought burst forth and fertilize my brain.… Only while we are in action is the circulation perfect.
—Henry David Thoreau, Journal (August 19, 1851) (emphasis added)
These are not just observations by a bookworm and hermit. Research on the brain shows an association between movement and clarity of thought. Various forms of exercise produce a chemical in the brain called BDNF, or brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which developmental biologist John Medina calls “fertilizer for the brain.”
The human brain appears to have been designed to solve problems related to surviving in an outdoor setting, in unstable meteorological conditions, and to do so in near constant motion.
—Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Home, Work, and School, (emphasis added)
Is movement the key to better creativity, ideation, and productivity?
Movement alone isn’t a panacea. But it can offer a needed boost to our creative cognitive endeavors.
StarTalk Radio host Neil deGrasse Tyson and neuroscientist Heather Berlin, discussed the noticeable effects of exercise on the generation of thoughts:
When you go out for a walk or go do something physical, you’re shutting off a certain networking [of the brain]. You’re kind of not thinking, you’re letting your mind go, you’re letting it kind of be free and unconstrained. When you let your mind go, that’s when again, these novel associations between ideas can come and the inspiration and the thoughts.
Heather Berlin, PhD, Star Talk Radio
For more on the default mode network, watch this video by Barbara Oakley of the popular Learning How to Learn course.
-
née, Brainpickings ↩︎
-
How she manages to read–and take notes–on her Kindle or iPad during high-intensity intervals is beyond me. ↩︎
-
Maria Popova is an adoring fan of Thoreau, constantly reading his journals and referencing his writings on her blog ↩︎