Walking meetings: when they work, when they don’t, and how to start

You've got six meetings today and none of them require a screen — just two people talking. But you take them all sitting down, in the same chair, because that's just how meetings happen. By 4 p.m. your back hurts and you can't remember a single decision from the 11 a.m. call.

The short answer: swap the meetings that don't need a table for meetings that happen on your feet, and protect them on your calendar exactly like you would any other commitment. Walking meetings aren't a productivity hack you bolt onto your day — they're a straightforward swap of the sitting default for a moving one, for the subset of meetings that can survive it.

What the research actually shows

The clearest evidence for walking's effect on thinking comes from Stanford researchers Marily Oppezzo and Daniel Schwartz, whose study is summarized by Stanford Report. Across four experiments with 176 college students and adults, creative output rose by an average of 60% while people walked — whether on a treadmill facing a blank wall or outdoors — compared with sitting. Walking helped 81% of participants generate more creative ideas. The catch: for problems with one correct answer, walkers actually did slightly worse than sitters. Walking is a tool for divergent thinking — brainstorming, working through an open problem, hashing out a strategy — not for the meeting where you need to nail down a single number.

The second piece of evidence is about mood and productivity, not just ideas. A CDC-published pilot study of white-collar workers in Miami tested walking meetings in real offices and found them feasible to run during normal work hours, with participants generally receptive to the format. The relationship with intensity was more nuanced than "more movement is always better": a moderate pickup in physical activity tracked with higher self-reported productivity, while a lighter increase tracked with lower productivity, and more vigorous activity was linked to worse mood. In plain terms — a brisk, comfortable pace beats both a stroll and a power-walk.

Corporate director Nilofer Merchant makes the personal case in her TED Talk "Got a meeting? Take a walk", where she describes replacing years of desk-bound one-on-ones with meetings held on foot after realizing how much of her day — and her health — was being spent sitting still. Her framing lines up with the research we've covered before on why sitting is the new smoking: the fix isn't a single big intervention, it's swapping small, recurring chunks of sitting for small, recurring chunks of movement.

When walking meetings work best

The research points to a specific sweet spot: one-on-ones, brainstorms, check-ins, and any conversation where the goal is talking and thinking rather than looking at a shared document. Two or three people work better than a crowd — it's hard to walk single-file and hold a group discussion. A route you already know, free of traffic and decision points, removes the friction of figuring out where to go instead of what to say.

When to skip them

Not every meeting should move. Anything that depends on a screen, a whiteboard, or a slide deck loses more than it gains — you can't review a spreadsheet while walking. Meetings that need detailed notes are also a poor fit: typing isn't possible on the move, and even voice memos are awkward mid-conversation, so plan to write things up immediately afterward instead. And confidential conversations belong behind a closed door, not on a public sidewalk, for the obvious reason that voices carry and screens aren't the only thing that can be overheard.

How to start one this week

You don't need any tool to try this — just a calendar and a willingness to look slightly unconventional for one meeting. Pick your next recurring one-on-one or a brainstorm with no slides attached. Tell the other person it'll be a walking meeting, agree on a 20–25-minute loop near the office (or, for remote calls, each person takes their own walk on the phone), and bring nothing but your phone for the time. If you want a lower-stakes trial run, start smaller: a 10-minute walk to grab coffee with a colleague counts, and so does taking one call a day on foot instead of at your desk.

(If you already use your calendar to protect focus time, the same logic extends to protecting movement — this is exactly what our extension, TinyTimeouts, automates: it finds the gaps in your Google Calendar or Outlook and books short breaks for you, the same way you'd book a walking meeting.)

Start with the meetings that are already just conversations — the ones where nobody would notice if you'd held them in a hallway. Move those outside first, see how they go, and only then decide whether to expand the experiment. The research says the upside is real, but only for the meetings actually suited to it — so match the format to the meeting, not the other way around.