I love a meandering walk, but sometimes I need a little motivation to get up and go. Lately, I’ve been tempting myself outside by visiting a dove that’s nesting in my yard: Every morning, I check to see if her eggs have hatched. Once I’ve got my sneakers on and left the house, I tend to keep walking.
Rob Walker, author of “The Art of Noticing,” said that when he walks, he likes to impose a mission or build a framework around it to add a little novelty and engagement to an activity that is “literally pedestrian.”
“Otherwise, you can easily end up on your phone, or in your head where all you do is ruminate over the deadline that you’re missing or the smartass remark that someone made to you,” he said. “And there could be dragons walking around and you wouldn’t notice them.”
It’s worthwhile to do whatever it takes to stay on the path, because the benefits of regular walks are well-documented. Walking lowers the risk of many health problems including heart disease, anxiety and depression, and diabetes, said Stacy Imagbe, an assistant professor of kinesiology at Morehouse College.
And you don’t need to do 10,000 steps a day, either; even 4,000 daily steps have been shown to have benefits.
If you need some motivation, here are some of Walker’s more creative ways to take a walk.
Sound Stroll
Get outside and tune into the sounds around you, Walker said. “We’re so visually oriented that we miss a lot of things that are happening to our other senses,” he said.
Go beyond bird calls and tease out some of your area’s quirkier sounds, he added. In his neighborhood, which is in New Orleans near the Mississippi River, Walker said he hears the crowing of roosters, songs spilling out of car radios and “ship horns if it’s foggy.”
“If my neighborhood had an official sound, it would be the sound of the St. Claude Avenue Bridge,” he said. “There’s a honking sound when the drawbridge is about to go up or down.”
Calendar Challenge
Walker likes to give himself creative challenges. Over the next few months, he suggested, try taking pictures around your neighborhood as if you were shooting a dozen photos for a wall calendar.
You can snap shots of landmarks that have meaning for you, or find a theme, such as “intriguing mailboxes,” Walker said.
Walker told me he is drawn to “anything that’s weird,” so his “calendars” tend to feature objects like the bollards — vertical traffic barriers — in his neighborhood.
If you’re feeling especially inspired, you can use a printing service to assemble the photos into a 2026 calendar at the end of the year.
Counting Walk
Pick something that’s plentiful in your area and count it as you walk along, Walker said. You can total up dogs, tattoos, signs or plaques. “During football season, I count New Orleans Saints gear,” he said. When he was in Manhattan recently, he counted car honks.
Counting something besides steps is an easy way to be mindful of your surroundings “but it does take some concentration,” Walker said.
I’ve found that having a goal does keep me outside a little longer. On a recent afternoon, I told myself that I would walk until I spotted 20 baseball caps.
Color Circuit
Set out with the goal of focusing on one color during your stroll. If you decide on the color blue, for instance, pay attention to all the blue things that you see, Walker said.
That includes objects or areas you wouldn’t normally notice. “Surprise yourself by finding beautiful colors in an unbeautiful context,” Walker said. He’ll take close-up photographs of a painted wall in an alley, or of a car hood, he said, “just trying to see interesting color regardless of its context.”
He was so taken by a vivid blue portable toilet in his neighborhood that he snapped a few shots.
Walker inspired me to take a similar photo of a dark green patch that captivated me.
I emailed him the photo. “Lovely,” he wrote. “What is it?”
“The dumpster near my Walgreens,” I wrote back.
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Jancee Dunn, who writes the weekly Well newsletter for The Times, has covered health and science for more than 20 years.
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