CH8: Feel Good Productivity

[P1] 𝘾𝙃𝘼𝙋𝙏𝙀𝙍 𝟴 : 𝙍𝙀𝘾𝙃𝘼𝙍𝙂𝙀 2020 was a hard year for the lexicographers at Oxford University Press. In addition to their main role – compiling the Oxford English Dictionary – every year they sit down to nominate their Word of the Year, new coinages that capture the essence of the last twelve months. For years, their nominations had made the news for capturing the global zeitgeist. 2008: credit crunch. 2013: selfie. 2015: But 2020 was harder than ever before. As Covid spread, a panoply of new terms erupted into the lexicon: ‘lockdown’, ‘social distancing’, ‘super-spreader’. In the end, the OED could not settle on just one word. ‘Given the phenomenal breadth of language change and development during 2020,’ they wrote, ‘Oxford Languages concluded that this is a year which cannot be neatly accommodated in one single word.’ To me, though, the true word of the year was nestled on page six of the OED’s report: ‘doomscrolling’. Like most people, I spent vast chunks of my rest time in 2020 mindlessly reloading social media. ‘I should be relaxing,’ I found myself thinking. ‘And yet instead, I seem to have ingested 2,500 tweets about the economic effects of lockdown on luxury candle makers in Vermont.’

[P2] Most of us have experienced the perils of doomscrolling. After a long day of work, you settle into your favourite spot on the couch, phone in hand, ready for a few minutes of relaxation. Yet, instead of the peaceful break you planned, you get sucked into an endless vortex of negativity, consuming one distressing story, tweet or video after another. The first victim: our mood. We think we’re resting, but it doesn’t feel like it at all. In the last chapter, we talked about the tendency to burn ourselves out through overexertion, bringing down our mood by doing too much and not taking enough breaks at work. The solution, we learned, was to conserve our energy more effectively. But we can also burn ourselves out in our time away from work. Doomscrolling, binge-watching TV shows, mindlessly checking emails or WhatsApp notifications – these are the ways we sabotage our feel-good emotions during our downtime. The resulting stresses contribute to what I call depletion burnout. It comes from not giving yourself enough time or space to truly rejuvenate.

[P4] 𝗥𝗘𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗥𝗚𝗘 𝗖𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗩𝗘𝗟𝗬 Have you ever become completely immersed in a creative task – writing a poem, learning a song, drawing a picture – and found that, by the time you’ve finished, you’ve completely forgotten your worries? According to a team of psychologists from San Francisco State and Illinois State universities, this is a scientifically verifiable phenomenon. They argue that creative activities are particularly likely to make us relax. And they have four characteristics that are especially helpful in making us feel good – ones that I like to remember using a simple acronym: CALM. First, creative activities unlock our sense of competence. We learned in Chapter 2 that when we feel like we’re gaining new skills, we get a boost of energy. Well, that’s particularly likely when you’re doing something creative. As you write that poem or craft that song, you experience a sense of improving at your craft. And so your competence grows. Second, creative activities play to our feelings of autonomy. This concept too was introduced in Chapter 2, where we learned that a sense of ownership over our work is highly energising. Similarly, when we engage in creative activities, we’re likely to feel the same sense of autonomy that helps us rejuvenate. For example, if you take up painting, you’ve got control over exactly what you’re painting and how you’re painting it.

[P6] 𝗘𝗫𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗜𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗧 𝟭: 𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗺 𝗛𝗼𝗯𝗯𝗶𝗲𝘀 Former US President George W. Bush, King Charles III of England and pop sensation Taylor Swift have more in common than you might think. There are the obvious similarities, of course. They’re all absurdly wealthy. They’re all the subject of wild conspiracy theories. They’re all prone to going on opulent tours around the world. But they also share something more unexpected: a love of painting. Bush paints military veterans; King Charles paints slightly twee Scottish landscapes; Swift paints all sorts – seascapes, flowers, foliage – usually in bold, atmospheric colours. Painting is, to my mind, the quintessential CALM activity. However inexperienced someone is when they begin painting, by sticking with it, they’ll continue to gain competence over time. They generally have autonomy over what they’re painting and how they’re painting it. It’s likely detached from their day-to-day work, and so hobbyist painters experience the feeling of liberation. And it’s generally a mellowing, relaxed activity. But what makes painting particularly important is that, for almost everyone, it will only ever be a hobby. It’s something you enjoy purely on its own terms, with no end point in sight, and no monetary benefit to be found. Hobbies are the first way we can integrate CALM activities into our lives. The defining characteristic of a hobby is that it’s low stakes; there’s simply no way to win or lose a hobby, nor to turn it into a business. Very few of us are likely to discover in adulthood that we’re professional-standard painters (especially not George W. Bush).

[P7] How can we maximise the potential of these creative hobbies? The trick is to ensure that they remain just that: distinct from your work, with no clear end point and no stress. To this end, it can be helpful to make sure that your hobby has clear boundaries. Establish specific times for your creative activity, and distinguish it from your work and daily responsibilities. Try dedicating a particular room or space to your hobby, turning off work notifications during your creative time, or setting a regular schedule for when you’ll engage in your chosen activity. Next, continually remind yourself that the hobby should be enjoyed for the process, rather than any kind of high-stakes goal. As you paint, play or build, remind yourself that this is an arena in which quality doesn’t matter. So allow yourself to make mistakes, experiment, and grow at your own pace. Your primary goal is not to become an expert or a master. It’s to enjoy and to recharge. Above all, resist the urge to turn your hobby into ‘work’. In 2017, George W. Bush published a collection of his paintings called Portraits of Courage. Critics were generally surprised by the quality of his handiwork, even if he did give some of his subjects somewhat misshapen features. But going public with your hobby in this way – trying to put it into the public eye, or even monetise it – is risky. It means you might no longer view your hobby as true recreation, and instead see it as another side hustle. If you want to properly recharge, you need to maintain areas of your life in which personal advancement doesn’t feature at all.

[P8] ⚗️ 𝗘𝗫𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗜𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗧 𝟮: 𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗺 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘀 Another way to recharge your energy creatively is by undertaking a specific project. Unlike an open-ended hobby, a project has a definite beginning and end. Projects can be particularly useful in building our sense of competence and autonomy as they give us a feeling of accomplishment when we reach our end goal. Before I started writing this book (and after I’d got over my junior doctor meltdown), learning about productivity was my creative project. For months, I’d get home from work, put on some music and read about the science of getting things done. I was developing competence because I was constantly learning about the latest psychological research. I had autonomy because I could do whatever I wanted during this time, and could explore the methods creatively on my own. I had liberty from my day job as a doctor, which was entirely different to the experience of being a night-time productivity expert. And at the time, the stakes felt low – so I’d feel relaxed and mellow while reading. (To be fair, when I signed this book deal the stakes were raised a little.)

[P9] A CALM project can be almost anything creative that has a clear end point. You could take up photography, setting yourself the goal of taking a photo every day for a year. You could learn to code, setting yourself the goal of creating a text-based role-playing game. You could develop the skill of quilting, setting yourself the goal of creating a gift for your mum’s next birthday. And if you want to further supercharge the effects of your CALM project, consider incorporating people into it. As we saw in Chapter 3, when we undertake a task with friends or as part of our wider community, we harness the energy that comes from human connection. We thrive in environments where we can learn from one another, exchange ideas, and celebrate our successes together. If your CALM project involves painting or drawing, you could join a local art class or Meetup group where you can share your progress. If you’re passionate about writing, you could become part of a writing group or attend workshops, where you can grow together as writers. Whatever your project, when you build a community around your project you harness the recharging power of people.

[P10] 𝗥𝗘𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗥𝗚𝗘 𝗡𝗔𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗔𝗟𝗟𝗬 In a quiet ward in a suburban Pennsylvania hospital, two groups of patients were recovering from gallbladder surgery. But they weren’t recovering at the same speed. One group had rooms with windows overlooking a serene grove of leafy trees. The other faced a cold, lifeless brick wall. Roger Ulrich, who was just embarking on his career as an assistant professor researching environmental aesthetics, was interested in what effect this difference had. To his surprise, he found that the patients whose windows faced the greenery were healing on average a whole day faster, requiring significantly less pain medication and experiencing fewer complications than their counterparts staring at the wall. So began Ulrich’s lifelong fascination with the impact of nature on the healing process. Just under a decade later, he would team up with colleagues at Uppsala University Hospital in Sweden to test the effects of nature on recovery more rigorously. His team focused on 160 heart surgery patients in the intensive care unit. The patients were randomly placed in one of six conditions: a room with a simulated ‘window view’ featuring a large nature photograph, depicting either an open tree-lined stream or a shadowy forest scene, one of two abstract paintings, a plain white panel, or a blank wall. So not much difference between the rooms, you might think. And yet the effects were striking. Patients who were assigned the tranquil water and tree scene experienced significantly less anxiety and required fewer doses of potent pain medication. Those who were exposed to the darker forest photograph, abstract art, or no images at all fared substantially worse. Over the next forty years, Ulrich’s research into the healing effects of nature would have a transformative effect on hospital architecture; it’s part of the reason gardens and green spaces are such a common feature of modern hospitals around the world. Nature, his research shows, helps us heal – with decades of research indicating that spending time in nature triggers a physiological response that lowers stress levels and rejuvenates our ability to concentrate.

[P11] ⚙️ 𝙉𝙖𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙚 𝙧𝙚𝙥𝙡𝙚𝙣𝙞𝙨𝙝𝙚𝙨 𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙘𝙤𝙜𝙣𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙫𝙚 𝙖𝙗𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙚𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙗𝙤𝙤𝙨𝙩𝙨 𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙚𝙣𝙚𝙧𝙜𝙮. So basking in the glory of the natural world is our second way to recharge properly. Nature replenishes our cognitive abilities and boosts our energy. Nature makes us feel good. We need a way to integrate it into our rest. ⚗️ 𝗘𝗫𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗜𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗧 𝟯: 𝗕𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻 𝗡𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 You might well be thinking, ‘Yes, Ali, we’d all like to spend more time with nature. Unfortunately, quite a lot of us live in sprawling concrete jungles or bland suburbia.’ Finding nature is easier said than done. But to me, this is why Ulrich’s research is so revolutionary. Remember, the participants in Ulrich’s study merely glanced at some photos of trees. The trees weren’t even there! And yet the effects were still significant. The science is clear: connecting to nature takes less time – and less effort – than you think. These connections can even take less than a minute. In one study, researchers gathered a group of 150 university students and put them through a test designed to measure their focus. Before and after the test, the participants took a 40-second ‘micro-break’ to view either a green roof or a concrete roof. Students who caught a glimpse of the green roof made significantly fewer errors and showed more consistent focus on the task at hand, compared to their peers who viewed the concrete roof. In fact, these connections need not even involve visual stimulation. One study published in 2018 had participants close their eyes and listen to natural soundscapes (bird song, the sounds of a rainforest, the sounds of seagulls, the sounds of summer rain). Even though they only listened to the soothing natural sounds for seven minutes, they reported feeling more energised in their work for hours afterwards. So taking energy from nature doesn’t necessarily mean plunging yourself into the great outdoors for a seven-hour hike. One obvious way is to consider integrating a green space into your home. Ideally that might mean creating a small garden, or acquiring some indoor plants. But if you have neither the time nor resources, never fear: simply putting a photo of the natural world on your bedside table will have a recharging effect. Or consider carving out time to listen to natural sounds. You need not actually immerse yourself in a rainforest to convince your subconscious that you’re in one. So why not spend five minutes at bedtime listening to rainforest sounds on your phone – just for long enough to relax you into sleep?

[P12] ⚗️ 𝗘𝗫𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗜𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗧 𝟰: 𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗮 𝗪𝗮𝗹𝗸 Another way to recharge is even simpler than downloading a nature sounds app: go for a walk. Figures ranging from Steve Jobs to Virginia Woolf have emphasised the importance of their daily wanderings in order to feel truly rested. The philosopher-poet Henry David Thoreau once said, ‘I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least – and it is commonly more than that – sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements.’ Again, however, this advice is at risk of inducing some eye rolls of epic proportions. Thoreau was able to spend four hours a day walking because his friend, the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, was kind enough to let him live rent-free in his big forest in Massachusetts for a large chunk of the 1840s. Not all of us are so lucky; four hours of wandering ‘absolutely free from all worldly engagements’ is not that easy to shoehorn into your day, between your job, family and friends. Some of us have to work for a living, Henry. I sometimes feel similar about the dictum that we should all walk 10,000 steps a day. This number – now embraced by the World Health Organization, the American Heart Foundation and various others – is so entrenched that devices like the Apple Watch and the Fitbit have adopted it. It’s almost as ubiquitous as the 5-a-day recommendation for fruits and vegetables. However – as with 5-a- day – the actual origin and scientific basis of this number are dubious. It’s like a modern-day equivalent of Thoreau’s ‘four hours or bust’. Some people will hit the 10,000 steps. Some won’t. But it’s not entirely clear why this has to be the objective in the first place. One study from 2011 shows that steps taken may not be the most important thing when it comes to harnessing the effects of a good walk. That year, a group of psychologists from Sweden and the Netherlands investigated the effect of walking on mental health. They recruited twenty university students to participate in a field experiment. The results showed, unsurprisingly, that walking made people feel better, less anxious and less time-pressured. But they also got the participants to take two forty-minute walks in different environments (a park versus a street) and different social contexts (alone versus with a friend). These researchers’ findings were unequivocal: participants felt more relaxed during park walks than street walks. And they felt more revitalised during park walks when alone – perhaps because this let them soak up the natural world better – but more revitalised during street walks when with a friend – probably because of the effect of people on our energy levels. If you’re looking for a simple and easy way to immediately feel rejuvenated, just try taking a walk – no time limit, no distance to reach, no place in particular to go. If you can, take your stroll through a park, or a forest, or just a particularly verdant street. If you want, bring a friend. It may not be the four hours that Thoreau recommended, but even a ten-minute stroll down the block during your break might be enough to change your day – and your life – for the better.

[P13] 𝗥𝗘𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗥𝗚𝗘 𝗠𝗜𝗡𝗗𝗟𝗘𝗦𝗦𝗟𝗬 So far in this chapter, our focus has been on what I call mindful recharging, such as finding new hobbies, buying a house plant, or taking a walk down a tree-lined boulevard. All of these approaches involve active engagement. They re-energise us because we’re investing energy into our rest, like plugging a phone into a charger. As you might have guessed, however, I’ve not always been the best at focusing on my active recharge activities. And in my defence, there’s something to be said for mindless recharging too. I’d define mindless recharging as any activity you find yourself doing when you’re not thinking too hard about relaxing. They might even be some of the activities you had in the first list you made earlier in this chapter. While these mindless activities tend not to be particularly good long-term strategies for recharging, they can be effective in small doses. In some cases, the most energising and productive thing you can do isn’t to focus intently on learning a new song on the guitar. It might well be to flop on the couch and binge-watch some reality TV. It’s all there in the wording. Mindful activities are great, but they’re mind-full. They require us to consciously direct our awareness towards specific things. That means that they need a certain input of energy to be effective. If you’ve got the energy, that’s great. But sometimes we’ll have days when we get home from work, or from an intense day with the in-laws, or from an afternoon filled with cascades of bad luck and feel so drained that forcing ourselves to paint a picture or go find a particularly leafy street to wander down might be no fun – and may actually be a recipe for injury. In those cases, guilt-free time to do nothing much might be just what we need. But here too, there’s a knack to doing nothing right.

[P14] ⚗️ 𝗘𝗫𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗜𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗧 𝟱: 𝗟𝗲𝘁 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗠𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗪𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿 ‘Since people only kill the spiders they see, humans are acting as an agent of natural selection, causing spiders to be selected for reclusion and intelligence. We are making spiders smarter ‘Based on how much you can bond with someone by hating the same thing, a dating app based on dislikes would probably be fairly successful.’ ‘The real gauge of friendship is how clean your house needs to be before they can come over.’ These reflections are all gleaned from one of my favourite pages on the internet, the Reddit forum r/Showerthoughts. It’s a space for people to post the most profound and weird thoughts that come to them during their daily ablutions. It’s unlikely that a particularly large proportion of Redditors posting on the page realise it, but they’re actually vindicating a famous neuroscientific theory. You’ve probably experienced it yourself. You step into the shower, stand under the hot water, the aromas of your shampoo and soap lulling you into a relaxed state. Suddenly, your eyes open – the solution to some problem you’ve been struggling with is miraculously clear! Maybe you figured out exactly what to say in that email to your boss. Maybe you remember where you’ve left your car keys. The ‘shower principle’ isn’t just a Redditor’s fantasy. When the brain relaxes sufficiently, creative solutions do appear. It’s all down to the power of a particular kind of mindless recharging: namely mind-wandering. According to recent neuroscientific research, even when we’re ‘doing nothing’, our brains are still active. In particular, there’s a region of the brain called the ‘default mode network’ (DMN) that governs the strange places our absent minds go to. The DMN helps us to recall memories, to daydream and to imagine the future. And it becomes more active the less engaged we are with mentally draining tasks. The problem with modern life is that we’re not very good at giving ourselves the time and space to activate our DMN. If anything, mind- wandering gets a bad reputation, often being equated with wasting time. Since we usually can’t remember what we were pondering in our daydreams, it’s difficult to imagine that anything beneficial could result from it. We imagine wrong. Doing nothing can be surprisingly productive. What would it look like to integrate time for ‘nothing’ into our lives? Well, the simplest way is to actively schedule moments of ‘nothingness’ into your week. Some nights, you don’t need to go for a walk or paint a picture. Some nights, you should simply let yourself zone out. Even put it in your calendar: one evening next week will be your evening of oblivion. Alternatively, you might decide that while you’re doing your weekly chores – washing the dishes, hanging up the laundry, or going to the grocery store – you’re not going to listen to anything on your headphones. It’s a counter-intuitive method for productivity enthusiasts, and one that I often have to force myself to partake in. And yet it works. It might feel unproductive. But sometimes, it’s just the time your brain needs to wander – and so solve problems with perspectives you didn’t realise you had.

[P15] ⚗️ 𝗘𝗫𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗜𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗧 𝟲:𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝗶𝘁𝗼𝗳𝗳 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗹𝗲 Even scheduling time for mind-wandering involves doing something. You’re still in productivity mode; it’s just that your productivity is going to be activated by doing as little as possible. Sometimes, even this is too much. Back when I was balancing my full-time job as a junior doctor with growing my business, I’d sometimes return home buzzing with energy, eager to dive into filming and editing videos. But other evenings, I was utterly exhausted from a gruelling day at the hospital, with every fibre of my being craving the comfort of the sofa and the mindless escape of Netflix. On these days, I’d flop onto the sofa. ‘I really need to film this video,’ I’d think. ‘I’ll get up in thirty minutes.’ But as the half-hour wore on, actually filming the video would seem less and less appealing. Sometimes, my flatmate Molly (also a doctor) would stage an intervention. ‘Ali, if you’re tired, why don’t you just write off the evening and rest?’ she would ask. Her words planted a seed in my mind. What if she was right? Why couldn’t I just write off the evening and truly relax? As I wrestled with this internal conflict, I stumbled upon a term that perfectly encapsulated my newfound perspective: the ‘Reitoff principle’. The Reitoff principle is the idea that we should grant ourselves permission to write off a day and intentionally step away from achieving anything. For many of us, the challenge of rest lies in the act of stepping back from the things we think we should be doing. We’re conditioned to value self-control, grit and persistence. We equate rest with laziness, weakness or failure. Embracing the Reitoff principle means recognising that – sometimes – it’s worth doing nothing at all. Not having deep shower thoughts. Not having a gentle walk. Nada. These days, I use the Reitoff principle to help me feel less guilty about taking time off. When I feel worn down, tired and struggle to find the energy to keep going, I tell myself that it’s ok to give up on the day so that I can do other things guilt-free, like playing video games and ordering takeaway. I tell myself that this short-term ‘unproductiveness’ gives me time to reset and recharge.

[P16] ⚙️ 𝘽𝙮 𝙙𝙤𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙡𝙚𝙨𝙨 𝙩𝙤𝙙𝙖𝙮, 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙘𝙖𝙣 𝙙𝙤 𝙢𝙤𝙧𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙢𝙖𝙩𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙨 𝙩𝙤 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙩𝙤𝙢𝙤𝙧𝙧𝙤𝙬. It also helps me realise that in reality I probably don’t actually want a Reitoff day every day. By allowing yourself to occasionally hit the pause button and step away from the constant pressure, you create space for growth and creativity. By doing less today, you can do more of what matters tomorrow.