Why your best thinking happens outside
Five articles into a series about AI and leadership, and this week I'm talking about cycling.
Bear with me. Because this isn't a detour. It's the point.
The research is clear
The thread running through everything in this series is that AI is only as good as the thinking you bring to it. And the research I've been sitting with suggests that one of the most reliable ways to sharpen that thinking has nothing to do with technology.
Stanford researchers found that walking increases creative output by around 60% compared to sitting. Cycling goes further - producing stronger improvements in attention, decision-making, and working memory than walking. A 2012 nature immersion study found that four days disconnected from technology improved creative problem-solving by 50%.
The science points in one direction: if you want to think better, get outside and move.
A conversation that couldn't have happened in a meeting room
In the full article I share a story from a recent Breakaway ride - a coaching conversation with a senior leader that unlocked an insight she'd been unable to reach in any amount of meeting-room analysis. It's the clearest example I have of what movement in nature does to the quality of human thinking.
It's also, I think, the thing AI can't replicate. Not because AI isn't capable - it is. But because some connections require a human to hold two emotional realities simultaneously and recognise they're the same thing wearing different clothes.
The integrated leader
In a world where every leader has access to the same AI tools, the differentiator isn't the technology. It's the quality of thinking you bring to it.
The leader who uses AI on Monday morning and gets on a bike on Tuesday morning isn't contradicting themselves. They're practising the full spectrum of what modern leadership demands.
The full article is on LinkedIn. It's the most personal piece in the series.
And if you want the thinking behind the thinking, subscribe to Taggart's People on Substack.
When did you last give your best thinking the conditions it actually needs?
