Burnout
The alphabet walk: how to distract yourself from anxious thoughts while walking
You went out for a walk to clear your head. Five minutes later you’re already arguing with your manager; ten minutes later you’re reliving a conversation from six months ago, and the park goes by unnoticed. Your body is walking, your head is working. The alphabet walk gives your brain one simple task for the whole route: come up with a word for every letter. A for apple, B for bus, C for carrot, and around again.
The name sounds almost romantic, but the idea is very practical. I give this exercise to people with burnout when anxious thoughts switch on by themselves and won’t let go. Walking keeps the body busy, the alphabet keeps attention busy. But the main part starts when you notice you’ve “drifted off” into your thoughts again and come back to the letter.
Contents
The short answer: what the alphabet walk does
How do you distract yourself from anxious thoughts on a walk?
Give your attention a simple task that keeps it occupied for the entire walk, such as finding a word for every letter of the alphabet. When you catch yourself in an anxious thought, you don’t argue with it or scold yourself; you just go back to the letter where you left off. That way, the walk stops being one more hour of replaying the same thoughts.
Why not just walk? Because with burnout, your head often lives a life of its own. Thoughts switch on by themselves: unfinished tasks, unpleasant conversations, “what if.” An ordinary walk doesn’t protect you from that. A podcast in your earbuds drowns out the thoughts, but it turns the walk into one more round of information intake, and your brain already has plenty of that. There’s more on this in the article on the multitasking myth.
The alphabet is a neutral middle ground here. It doesn’t require solving anything, doesn’t stir up emotions, and fits the rhythm of your steps well. You can use English, Estonian, Russian or any language you know. You can repeat words or come up with new ones each time; it doesn’t matter.
Why constant drifting is normal
The first walk is often disappointing. “I got to the letter G and realized I’d been thinking about the report for ten minutes. This exercise isn’t for me.” Actually, it is. The monotonous alphabet deliberately invites your attention to wander. The goal isn’t to ace the exercise, but to notice the moment you’ve drifted into your thoughts.
That moment is the core of the exercise. You catch yourself: “I was supposed to find a word for K, and I’m thinking about what happened six months ago.” You take your attention by the hand and bring it back to the letter. I call this braking practice: again and again, you stop an automatic thought and switch to the task you chose. It’s a working metaphor, like an exercise at the gym, not a description of a specific brain region.
You might drift off twenty or thirty times on one walk. Don’t scold yourself for it. Each return counts as one rep. In my experience, after a few weeks of regular walks, many people notice they catch themselves “drifting” sooner and get back to the task more easily. But that’s an observation from practice, not a promised result.
What's known about walking and looping thoughts
The alphabet walk is an exercise from my practice. There are no studies of this specific technique. But it has some recognizable neighbors in research.
The first neighbor is walking in nature. In a 2015 experiment, healthy city residents walked for an hour and a half either in a green area or along a busy road. After the nature walk, participants reported less replaying of negative thoughts about themselves; after the urban walk, they didn’t. The study is small and can’t be applied to everyone. But it supports a simple idea: where you walk matters too.
The second neighbor is attention exercises, where you notice that your mind has wandered and gently return to a chosen focus. Mindfulness meditation works this way, for example. In a meta-analysis of 47 studies, meditation programs moderately reduced anxiety and depression. It’s a different method, and its results can’t be transferred directly to the alphabet walk. The only thing they share is the principle: notice and come back.
How long to walk and where to find the time
Ideally, walk for two hours. I understand that at today’s pace, few people can afford that. An hour is excellent, and 15–20 minutes is good too. What matters isn’t duration but regularity: a short walk every other day does more good than one long walk a month.
You can often find the time inside an ordinary day. Park farther from work and walk the rest of the way. Get off the bus one stop early. Take a walk on your lunch break instead of scrolling your phone at your desk. Good weather and a pretty route help, but they’re not required.
One caution: don’t turn your walk into a fitness target. With burnout, movement helps when it doesn’t become one more test. If you want more of a workout, first read about when exercise helps with burnout and when it gets in the way.
How to take your first walk
If you need to get back to reality quickly without a walk, say in the middle of a workday, try the “close the pop-up windows” technique.
When walking isn't enough
The alphabet walk can help lighten your mental load a little, but it’s not a treatment for anxiety or burnout. See a psychologist or your family doctor if anxious thoughts last for weeks, interfere with sleep and work, and the exercises bring relief only while you’re walking. A doctor will assess your overall health and, if needed, discuss medication.
If leaving the house has become hard, you’ve lost interest in almost everything, or you’ve started having thoughts of death, don’t wait for a routine to help. Call 112 if you’re in immediate danger. To talk to someone, call the emotional support line at 116 123 (10:00–24:00). All contacts are collected on the emergency psychological care page.
Burnout test
Anxious thoughts that won’t let go even on a walk are a common sign of overload. The test helps you see what else lies behind the fatigue: sleep, responsibility, physical symptoms. It doesn’t give a diagnosis. Other first-aid techniques are collected on the burnout page.
Frequently asked questions
Can I listen to music while walking?
Better not for this exercise. Music or an audiobook takes up your attention, and you no longer notice when your thoughts wander. For ordinary walks, music isn’t off-limits; it’s just a different kind of rest.
What if the alphabet gets boring fast?
Boredom is normal here. You can switch languages, pick words from just one category, such as foods or cities, or go through the alphabet backward. The main thing is to keep the task simple.
Does a treadmill or a dog walk count?
Any calm walking works, as long as you don’t have to keep watching the road or other people. If your dog needs attention, it’s more of a dog walk than an alphabet walk. That’s good too, just different.
