It Is Solved by Walking

I’m in the home stretch.

As I write this, I have three weeks until my manuscript for The Stoic Systems Thinker is due for copyediting. After a year of writing, rewriting, and rewriting again, I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. The work is coming along well — I feel genuinely good about where the book stands. There are a few more updates I want to make, but the end is near.

I’m also learning just how much goes into a book beyond the writing itself. Even after my “pens down” date in mid-March, I won’t see its final form for another couple of months. There’s an entire production process that happens without me — copyediting, proofreading, printing. I also need to finalize the cover design, gather early endorsements, and begin launch marketing. It’s a system with far more moving parts than I ever appreciated as a reader.

But here’s what I’m most excited about: in a few months, I’ll have a published book for sale — something I couldn’t have imagined just one year ago. This is the biggest project I’ve ever taken on, and I am incredibly eager to share it.

More to come next month after I officially submit my manuscript.

Now, on to today’s essay — and it starts with a confession about where I do my best work on this book.

It’s not at my desk. It’s not in front of my computer with a cup of coffee. It’s on my daily walk.

Lately, as I’ve been deep in the editing process, I find myself stepping away from long sessions to sort through my work on foot. Sometimes I’m talking through a structural issue out loud, pacing through my neighborhood like a man arguing with himself. Other times, I’m not consciously thinking about the book at all — yet I return home twenty minutes later with a clarity I didn't have when I left.

This has me thinking about walking itself. And the more I reflect on it, the more I’m convinced that it might be the single highest-leverage habit available to any of us.

I know. That sounds like the kind of claim you’d see on a clickbait YouTube thumbnail. But despite the hyperbole, I don't think it’s much of an exaggeration. As I’ve gotten older and (hopefully) gained more perspective, I’ve come to believe that walking is the highest ROI activity a person can do.

There’s an old Latin phrase — solvitur ambulando — that translates to “it is solved by walking.” As I’ve thought about it, I think this might be one of the most practical pieces of wisdom ever captured.

One idea I explore in my book is that our lives are emergent properties of the things we do every day. I wrote about this back in 2024, introducing a framework for evaluating how I live: Body, Mind, Soul.

The idea is simple: a good life requires a healthy body, a sharp mind, and a nourished soul. I use this framework whenever I’m evaluating my own life. Ideally, the things I do throughout the day benefit at least one of the three. For example, solving hard problems at work is great for my mind. But what’s even better is finding ones that impact two or all three. Playing sports with my kids is great for my body and my soul. Walking is one of the rare activities that hits all three.

Let’s take a closer look.

Walking is inherently physical.

A few years ago, I read Peter Attia’s Outlive, a book about longevity that transformed how I think about my health. Attia shows that the steps we take in our 20s, 30s, and 40s significantly influence our quality of life in our later decades. Two of the biggest risk factors are sedentary lifestyles and excess weight.

When most of us think about exercise, we picture intense training — lifting heavy, running sprints, or pushing through a CrossFit class. These are valuable, and I incorporate some of them into my own routine. But they are also extremely taxing. Hard workouts exhaust us, spike our hunger, and demand recovery. This often neutralizes their caloric benefit or limits how frequently we can do them.

Walking doesn’t run into these problems. It's a low-impact form of exercise that burns a surprisingly high number of calories. At my weight and a brisk pace, I can burn about 400 calories in an hour. Could I burn more running? Of course. But I can’t run for an hour every day without my body breaking down. I can walk for an hour without needing a recovery day. That consistency is where the real value lives.

In my view, walking is the bare minimum everyone should include in a fitness plan. Ideally, it supplements a more comprehensive routine. But if you do nothing else, walking keeps your body moving and burning energy. That alone makes it valuable.

Walking doesn't require much cognitive energy.

It’s one of the earliest skills we learn in life, so deeply ingrained that we can do it without conscious thought. This frees the mind to work on other things as we take our steps.

I use my walks in a few different ways.

Sometimes, I learn. I subscribe to a set of podcasts that keep me engaged with the topics I care about — Stoicism, systems thinking, business, and current events. People around me are often surprised by how plugged in I am. It’s not because I scroll social media — I’ve removed that from my phone entirely. It’s because I've turned my walks into a learning system. I exercise while staying up to date with the world.

Sometimes I “read.” I started listening to audiobooks last year and have found them a wonderful companion on my walks. I can’t listen to nonfiction — any of these books must still be in physical form for me, reserved for my traditional at-home reading. But I’ve fully embraced audiobooks as a way to consume fiction. I’ve listened to wonderful stories from Stephen King, J.R.R. Tolkien, Andy Weir, and others over the last year.

Sometimes, I speak. I start a voice recording as I leave the house and walk through my neighborhood, dictating thoughts. Sometimes it’s a stream of consciousness, like verbal journaling. Other times, I’m working through the bones of an essay or a chapter. When I get home, I use AI to transcribe the audio and capture it as text I can build on later. It’s a way of extracting the ideas that exist as fragments in my brain and formalizing them into something tangible.

And sometimes — increasingly so during this final stretch of the book — I walk in complete silence. Have you ever been in the shower or driving when an idea suddenly materializes out of nowhere? Your brain doesn’t shut off when you stop feeding it stimuli. It continues processing in the background, making connections that your conscious mind couldn’t force. There’s a reason people tell you to “go take a walk” when you’re stuck on a problem. It works.

Friedrich Nietzsche understood this well when he said, “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.”

When I hit a wall in my writing or work, staring at my screen becomes unproductive. When I recognize this is happening, I’ve learned it’s best to go for a walk. A twenty-minute walk moves the problem from the forefront of my brain to the background. More often than not, I come back with a way forward.

Beyond the physical and mental benefits, walking does something harder to quantify but equally real. When we walk — especially outside, especially in nature — something shifts. Our mood improves. Our perspective widens. The noise quiets down.

Hippocrates — the ancient Greek physician the Hippocratic Oath is named for — put it plainly over two thousand years ago: “If you are in a bad mood, go for a walk. If you are still in a bad mood, go for another walk.”

Of all the habits I try to maintain, a morning walk is one of my non-negotiables. My day starts early. I head outside with my dog before the rest of my family wakes up. I see the world when it’s quiet. I breathe fresh air. I move through the neighborhood on a leisurely walk as it comes alive. By the time I return home, I feel alert, grounded, and ready to take on the day.

There’s science behind this — sunlight boosts Vitamin D, movement raises endorphin levels — but the feeling goes beyond chemistry. As humans, we’re designed to be outside and to move. Our ancestors walked everywhere. Getting outside and putting one foot in front of the other is, in a fundamental way, returning to what we were built for.

John Muir captured it perfectly: “In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks.”

What makes walking truly remarkable is that it isn’t just a physical activity, or a mental exercise, or a purposeful practice. It's all three at once.

This is what I explore more deeply in my book — the idea that our well-being isn't a collection of separate checklists to manage, but an interconnected system. Walking is one of those rare activities that feeds every dimension of that system simultaneously. It's a single lever that moves everything in a positive direction.

Soren Kierkegaard knew this when he wrote: “I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.”

Walking requires no gym membership, no special equipment, and no recovery day. It requires only time and intention. Everyone can add more steps to their day.

So here’s my invitation: find a way to build a simple walking habit into your routine. You might find that this one small habit shifts the way you think, the way you feel, and the way you move through the world.

Solvitur ambulando. It is solved by walking.

Now go for a walk.

All the best,
-Mike