The Writer's Secret Weapon

"For someone who is not a professional swimmer, I spend an awful lot of time under water. I consider it an act of mobile meditation: Sensory input is muffled, so the chaos of the surface world eventually recedes. What's left is activity-familiar, comforting, and hypnotic, almost second nature. My brain, normally trying to create order out of chaos, is free to fumble for deeper meaning. This is especially useful as a writer: I believe I generate my best material while swimming."

"Sometimes, I found myself rushing from the pool to the locker room. With water puddling at my feet, I'd struggle with damp fingers to unlock my phone and tap out the lines that had appeared in my head while I was gliding through the lanes. I have notebooks splotched with water stains and running ink, testaments to this repeated effort to capture quicksilver."

Underwater swimming functions as a form of mobile meditation where muffled sensory input reduces surface-world chaos and leaves familiar, hypnotic activity that frees the brain to pursue deeper meaning. Many people generate strong creative material while swimming but find immediate transcription impractical, producing damp notebooks and hurried phone notes. Regular exertion and movement change brain chemistry by boosting dopamine, serotonin, and noradrenaline, improving attention and activating a distinct mode of learning. Movement facilitates new connections, enhancing creative cognition, originality, and idea fluency. Moving while reading, listening, or composing produces different learning dynamics than stationary activity.

Read at The Atlantic