My steps count toward nothing. My brain, unprompted, started finishing its own sentences again.
The first walks were tedious. I want to be honest about that part, because the version of this note where it is immediately blissful is not true and you would notice.
Then my head started talking. Half-finished thoughts, small plans, a sentence I had been avoiding for a fortnight that turned up whole somewhere around the third corner.
Nothing was learned. No steps were counted. Nobody told me anything. I came home with a mind that had been somewhere, and that was the entire benefit.
If you are worried about wasting the walk, consider what you are doing with it now. Most of us are trying to turn a walk into a classroom, a meeting or another subscription. The walk wants a person and a street, and that is all.
I still listen to podcasts, usually in the car. But if every walk is filled, you never find out what your own head does with an hour of nothing, and it does something rather good. Mine mostly plans dinner and rehearses conversations I will never have.
Walk for twenty minutes with no headphones and no route. Come back the way you came.