We walk for a variety of reasons: transportation, exploration, contemplation. Over the past decade there has been a lot of attention paid to walking as a form of exercise, and the idea that one needed to complete 10,000 steps a day to get a worthwhile health benefit; Reddit’s walking forums are full of anxious posts about people’s ability to fit in 10,000 steps every day, or challenging others to top their step total.

The origin of 10,000 steps lies not in science but in a 1965 marketing initiative by the Japanese company Yamasa to promote a pedometer they called the Manpo–Kei, the 10,000 step meter. The Japanese kanji character for 10,000 looks a bit like a human figure walking and that’s why they chose that number for the pedometer, and that’s how we arrived at 10,000 steps.

This isn’t to say there’s not a health benefit in walking 10,000 steps a day (or 8000 or 5000) – of course walking is better for our health than sitting at a desk or lying on the sofa – but for me the health benefits of walking are a bonus, not the primary reason to do it.