The walk home alone is where half your best ideas show up. Stop filling it with noise.

Ideas need a little empty processing time, and walking supplies it almost perfectly: your body is busy, your eyes have something to do, and your mind is free to wander into connections it would never make while concentrating. That window closes the second you put something in your ears. The walk still happens. The thinking does not.

Leave one walk a week unfilled and see what turns up. Keep something to capture it with, because good ideas arrive and leave fast. If full silence feels like too much, try it for just the first half of the route.