Hey, it's Cindy 🌱 You commented WALK, so here is the whole thing: the exact thinking prompt, the ten follow-up questions, and how to save the loop so you can run it on any walk.
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the honest bit first
Why walking actually changes the output
This is not a vibes thing. Stanford researchers Marily Oppezzo and Daniel Schwartz ran four experiments with 176 people and found that walkers produced more creative responses than seated participants every time. Across the experiments, 100 percent, 95 percent, 88 percent and 81 percent of walkers gave more creative responses than they did sitting down (ScienceDaily summary, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2014).
One detail most people get wrong when they quote this study: the outdoors was not the active ingredient. People who walked on a treadmill facing a blank wall still beat people sitting outside. So a corridor, a car park loop or a lap of your block all count. Going outside is a bonus, moving is the mechanism.
The same study found walking helped open-ended idea generation and slightly hurt single-right-answer problem solving. So walk for "what should I build", not for "reconcile these numbers". Match the task to the mode.
the loop
The four-step loop
🚶 Walk with no destination. Twenty minutes is plenty. Leave the laptop, take your phone and headphones, and do not queue up a podcast. The silence is the point, because you are the one who has to fill it.
🎙️ Ramble into Claude. Open the Claude app, tap the microphone next to the message box, and talk. Do not organize it. Say the half-formed version, contradict yourself, go on tangents. Messy input is fine here because the next step is what cleans it up.
🧠 Paste the thinking prompt. When you are done talking, drop the prompt below underneath your transcript. Claude pulls out the real themes, sharpens how you say each idea, and names the thing underneath that you were circling.
❓ Run the ten questions. Then ask for the deeper set. This is where it stops being a tidy summary and starts pushing you toward the decision you have been avoiding.
setup from zero
Get dictation working on your phone
📥 Install Claude. Download the Claude app on iOS or Android and sign in. The free plan is enough for this whole loop, and dictation is available on every plan including Free, per Anthropic's dictation help page.
🎤 Find the microphone. Start a new chat and tap the microphone icon on the right of the input field. The first time, you pick your language. Eleven are supported, with English fully out of beta.
🗣️ Talk, then check the text. Your speech lands in the message box as editable text, so you can glance down and fix a mangled word before sending. Do not send yet if you are still mid-thought, keep adding.
📦 Send in chunks. Anthropic does not publish a maximum dictation length, so treat that as unknown rather than unlimited. Keep the app in the foreground and send every few minutes. Four medium messages beat one twenty-minute recording you lose to a phone call.
💬 Or use voice mode instead. If you would rather be interviewed than monologue, voice mode is a two-way spoken conversation and is available on all plans. Dictation is you talking at Claude, voice mode is Claude talking back and asking you things.
Which one to pick: dictation when you already know roughly what you want to say and need it captured, voice mode when you are stuck and want something to ask you questions until the idea shows up.
copy this
The thinking prompt
Send your ramble first, then paste this as the next message.
🧠 organize my brain
Everything above is me talking out loud on a walk, unedited, so it is repetitive and out of order. Do not summarize it and do not compliment it.
First, pull out the major themes that actually run through what I said, and tell me which ones I kept returning to without noticing. Second, for each theme, give me the most concise and effective way to say it, in my own words and my own register, not marketing language. Third, tell me the deeper thing underneath what I said: the belief, the fear or the ambition that is driving these ideas, even where I did not say it directly.
Then flag the contradictions. Where did I argue against myself, and what does each contradiction suggest I have not decided yet? Finish with the single most important idea in here and one sentence on why you picked it over the others.
then this
The ten questions
Paste this straight after Claude's first answer. These are the ones that get you closer to what you are actually building.
❓ the ten deeper questions
Now interview me. Ask me these ten questions one at a time, wait for my answer before moving to the next, and push back when an answer is vague or when I am obviously dodging. Use everything I said above as context so the questions are about my actual situation, not generic.
1. What am I really trying to build here, described in one sentence with no buzzwords?
2. Who exactly is this for, and what is happening in their week that makes them look for it?
3. What do I believe about this that most people in my space would disagree with?
4. What is the smallest version of this that would still be worth doing?
5. What am I assuming is true that I have never actually checked?
6. If this worked perfectly, what would my week look like twelve months from now?
7. What am I avoiding because it is boring or uncomfortable rather than because it is wrong?
8. What would I have to stop doing to give this a real chance?
9. Who has already done a version of this, and what would I do differently on purpose?
10. What is the one thing I could do this week that makes the rest of it easier or unnecessary?
At the end, write me a short summary of my answers and the three decisions I appear to have made during this conversation without saying them out loud.
Answer these out loud with dictation too. Typed answers come out tidy and defensive. Spoken answers come out honest, which is the whole reason this works.
make it repeatable
Save the loop so you never re-paste it
Doing this once is a nice afternoon. Doing it every week is what compounds. Two ways to keep it, depending on how you use Claude.
📁 The Project route (easiest). On claude.ai, create a Project called "walk thinking". Put both prompts and a short note about what you are working on into the project instructions. Every new chat inside it already knows the drill, so you open it, dictate, and it runs.
🧩 The skill route (works everywhere). Package it as a skill and it triggers itself whenever you paste a ramble, in any chat. Use the prompt below to have Claude write it for you.
➕ Install the skill. Claude hands you a folder with a SKILL.md inside. Zip it, then in the Claude app open Customize, then Skills, then Add, then Upload a skill. In Claude Code, drop the folder into ~/.claude/skills/. Custom skills work on every plan from Free up, and the full walkthrough is in Anthropic's create custom skills guide.
🔁 Tune it after two real walks. Tell Claude what it got wrong (too gentle, too corporate, missed the contradiction) and have it edit the SKILL.md. Two rounds and it sounds like a thinking partner instead of a summarizer.
🛠️ build the walk-think skill
Build me a reusable Claude skill called "walk-think" that runs my walking-ramble routine.
The description line should say to use it whenever I paste a long, messy, spoken-sounding transcript of my own thinking, or when I say "walk think". The instructions should tell you to never summarize and never compliment, to extract the recurring themes, to rewrite each idea in the tightest version of my own voice, to name the belief or fear underneath, and to flag every contradiction as an undecided question.
Then it should offer to run a ten-question interview, one question at a time, pushing back on vague answers. End the SKILL.md with a rule that you always finish by naming the single most important idea and the one action for this week. Ask me the three or four things you need to know about my work and my voice before you write it, then give me the finished SKILL.md and tell me how to zip it for upload.
get better output
Four things that change the quality
Start with the stuck part Open your ramble with the thing you have been avoiding thinking about. The first ninety seconds set what the whole transcript is about.
Say the numbers out loud Real prices, real hours, real follower counts. Claude cannot sharpen an idea you kept deliberately vague.
Do not self-edit The moment you start speaking in finished sentences you are performing, not thinking. Ums and restarts are fine, the prompt handles them.
Finish with one action Every session ends with a single thing you do this week. Otherwise you have a very well-organized list of ideas and nothing changes.