When I’m walking, the subconsciousness is able to come to the surface more and it allows me to make magical connections that in my conscious mind I could never make.*
(Pico Iyer)

It is not possible to experience a feeling of control unless one is willing to give up the safety of protective routines […] what people enjoy is not the sense of control but the sense of exercising control in difficult situations.**
(Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)

Taking a walk instead of being tied to your desk may just feel wrong to you. The reality is that your brain may need to take a walk in order to work:

I can only meditate when I am walking.  When I stop, I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs. ^

There is a letting go of convention when we leave the workplace for a walk, not knowing just what we’ll encounter and find ourselves thinking. Yet there is an artfulness and skill to this as expressed by Iain Sinclair’s revealing:

I have different walks for different questions or problems or ideas that I’m dealing with, a whole chain of maybe fifty different walks that I do for different things.^^

If you have something to do your way, as Frank Sinatra famously sings, then perhaps seeing this way as a path and introducing some walking into may bring just the benefit you need – and, if nothing else, you’ll find yourself smiling at all the sounds and sights.

*Pico Iyer, in his interview with Simon Schreyer: A Friend Afar;
**From Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow;
^Jean-Jacques Rousseau, quoted in Shane O’Mara’s In Praise of Walking;
^^Iain Sinclair, quoted in Geoff Nicholson’s The Lost Art of Walking.