Maria Popova wrote a book review on Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit.
Popova writes, “Solnit speaks to… considering the immense and endangered value of this vibrant in-betweenery of place and time.”
Solnit writes:
“The multiplication of technologies in the name of efficiency is actually eradicating free time by making it possible to maximize the time and place for production and minimize the unstructured travel time in between. New timesaving technologies make most workers more productive, not more free, in a world that seems to be accelerating around them. Too, the rhetoric of efficiency around these technologies suggests that what cannot be quantified cannot be valued — that that vast array of pleasures which fall into the category of doing nothing in particular, of woolgathering, cloud-gazing, wandering, window-shopping, are nothing but voids to be filled by something more definite, more productive, or faster paced.”
“As a member of the self-employed whose time saved by technology can be lavished on daydreams and meanders, I know these things have their uses, and use them — a truck, a computer, a modem — myself, but I fear their false urgency, their call to speed, their insistence that travel is less important than arrival. I like walking because it is slow, and I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour. If this is so, then modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought, or thoughtfulness.”
Peter McGraw also writes about walking and creativity in Schtick to Business:
“When you look at highly successful people, they have their daily habits working on their creative work. Then at some point, they release themselves from their work and go do other things.”
“Good release looks distinctly different from your grind. A different context, a noticeable change. So get out of the fluorescent lights and away from the rectangular tables. Get out into nature. Spend time with friends and family. Spend time in the sun. Take a fifteen-minute walk.”
McGraw also addresses what Popova called “in-betweenery of place and time,” which he refers to as liminal spaces. In anthropology, a liminal space means in-between, either physically (e.g. a doorway) or temporally (e.g. graduation, pregnancy, or some other transition).
“Entrepreneurial success often comes from an uncanny ability—which comedians have honed so well—to see the world differently. Once you see the gap between have and need, you can make courageous choices to make it happen.”
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