Reduce Workplace Pain And Become More Productive | Dr Euan Lawson

Dr Euan Lawson is a General Practitioner and author of The Healthy Writer. Lots of us sit at desks for a significant proportion of our lives, but a typical work station is severely unhealthy for body and mind. Expect to learn how to optimise your work station to reduce physical strain, fight RSI, improve sleep, turbo charge productivity and benefit your mood. This one is an absolute belter packed with amazing advice from Dr Lawson, get your pen & paper out! Follow Dr Lawson online: http://www.blokeology.io/ Buy The Healthy Writer: https://amzn.to/2LHkf1U - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/modern-wisdom/id1347973549 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0XrOqvxlqQI6bmdYHuIVnr?si=iUpczE97SJqe1kNdYBipnw Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - I want to hear from you!! Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  Hello, hello, hello. This week is an absolute belter. This genuinely could be the best podcast that I've done so far. Really, really happy with it. Dr Euan Lawson is my guest. He is the author of The Healthy Writer, also a general practitioner of medicine in the UK, and the host of the Blokology podcast. Check that out on iTunes, Stitcher, all those good places. And today we are talking about what it's like working at a desk. So very, very high proportion of people will spend at least a significant period of their week sat down, working at a desk, looking at a screen.

• 0:41Chris Williamson?

  What we try to go through today is with the help of Dr Lawson's expertise, is to break down exactly what is good and bad practice when it comes to designing your workstation. So we're talking from seating posture, height of screen, cranial angle, looking down, angle for your wrists, what you can do about reducing RSI, what you can do about reducing stress on your eyes, improving your sleep, your work rhythms, how you can use some productivity tools and some productivity hacks to batch together your work into windows so that you're always accountable to yourself and so that you can improve your productivity.

• 1:25Chris Williamson?

  We go into journaling, we go into the health effects of sitting, of being sedentary. This really is absolutely jam packed and I'm incredibly happy with it. Also, I have to say, the long awaited Love Island podcast is now available and it will be a YouTube exclusive for the foreseeable future. So if you wanted to hear what it's really like living on Love Island with me, Johnny and Youssef, you have to go online. Head to YouTube and search Modern Wisdom Podcast. It'll come up. The response has been fantastic. We've broken through, I think, 3K views maybe already. Really, really happy with it. I've had loads of messages about it.

• 2:09Chris Williamson?

  So make sure that you head online. If you love the podcast on audio, every episode will be made available on YouTube as well now. And I'm going to be uploading video files for all of the old ones, including all subsequent episodes as well. Make sure that you head there, press subscribe and please support the channel. But now it's time for Dr Euan Lawson. Enjoy, make some notes and hopefully you will wake up tomorrow with a fresh set of eyes before you go to work.

• 2:55Chris Williamson?

  Dr Euan Lawson, welcome to Modern Wisdom.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Hello Chris.

• 2:59Chris Williamson?

  How are you?

• 3:00Speaker 01

  Very well, thank you and yourself.

• 3:01Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, very good, thank you. So I put a post out on my Instagram earlier today and I said, do you work at a desk? Do you suffer with any physical ailments or repetitive strain injury, neck pain, back pain, tight hips? And my inbox absolutely exploded. I think I could have announced that I was getting married or having a child and would have probably got less of a response.

• 3:28Chris Williamson?

  And yeah, the, the problem of working at a desk and sitting, looking at a computer seems to be so widespread. And it was, it was a real, a real shock to me, just how many people are, for want of a better term, kind of suffering in silence, dealing with it as a by-product of, well, this is work and the same way as going down the coal mine, you know, however many years ago would have been, oh, well, you know, this is just, it's just a, um, an issue that comes along with the particular chosen industry that I'm in. Why do you think that the use of desk work is so widespread, but the optimization of

• 4:11Chris Williamson?

  it and the making of it to be a healthy environment doesn't seem to be?

• 4:16Speaker 01

  And I guess the whole kind of, I think you're right. It's a bit of a modern plague, isn't it? That people are absolutely just getting increasingly aware of the, the pain it's putting them through. I guess the problems with ergonomics and things have been known for a long time, but I wonder if it's just a case of us, you know, it's a bit, there's a bit of catching up to do, you're in that sort of phase where it's become the social norm to look at a computer all the time. And if you think about it, it's only, you know, it's only 10, 20 years ago, we didn't have little screens to look at. The iPhone was only invented, iPad only appeared, you know, a decade ago, whatever it was, it's a really short period of time, isn't it?

• 4:51Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  And so that, that the health related consequences of doing, looking at screens all the time, looking at computers. That screen time has just gone through the roof in the last few years and I don't think the healthy kind of approaches to it have quite caught up yet perhaps.

• 5:05Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, no, I think that's, I think that's definitely, definitely an issue that you've got the industry being ahead of the research to a degree, or at least the distribution of it and people's understanding. So hopefully today we can start to mitigate some of those problems. People may, people may be waking up tomorrow with a fresh set of eyes as they go into work. So can you, can you give us a little bit of background to yourself please? For the listeners who don't know who you are.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  So I'm a, I'm a doctor, I'm a GP, so a general practitioner. And for those of them, those of people not based in the kind of UK or Australia, New Zealand, other places, the GP is just a kind of like a specialist in family medicine. So it's cradle to the grave stuff. We see people before they get to hospital, from children to adults to kind of palliative care, end of life stuff as well. So very much kind of the full spectrum of health problems. And we also spend a lot of time looking after people and there's prevent, there's a certain element of preventative health and managing people, helping people with lifestyle things like obesity or other smoking, other related factors like that. I have, I was in the army a few years ago, I've always had an interest in being physically

• 6:15Speaker 01

  healthy, of course. But like everybody, I've had my own set of, you know, wrestling with these kind of problems. Spending too much time sitting at a desk or trying to lose a little bit of weight, trying to be active in a world that is determined to get us to eat more all the time.

• 6:29Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  And that's one of my big moans about the modern world is how it's constantly, certainly in the Western world where society is pretty much trying to ram food down our throats.

• 6:38Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  99% of the time, wrestling with all that, trying to keep fit, trying to kind of maintain family life, not trying to get burned out, trying to stay fit and well. So that's my own personal interest. And my, it obviously aligns with my personal, my professional life as well as a, as a doctor.

• 6:55Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 6:56Speaker 01

  And I, I was involved in writing a book last year with Joanna Penn, a kind of well-known creative entrepreneur, non-fiction fiction writer, and my book called The Healthy Writer, where we And it was very much written for writers and for that group of people, but I think probably a lot of the stuff in there is applicable to anyone who finds themselves parked in front of a computer for their working life.

• 7:16Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  They're not getting active enough and they just want to do something about it.

• 7:20Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I agree. I think that's, I wouldn't like to guess the, um, the percentage of people, but a, a large majority of almost everyone will spend over 15, 20 hours a week at sort of towards the bottom end. And then you're talking, if you work in a call centre or if you're a knowledge worker of pretty much any kind, it's that 37 and a half hours a week is probably 37 hours sat, sat at a screen.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's insane. And I mean, the, I mean, there's the actual physical effect of just being sat there, but it's just the fact you're not moving as well, that kind of, and it falls into, it's, it's now become slightly a cliche that sitting is the new smoking. And they, it is kind of, a lot of people have heard that in the last few years, but I think that kind of lack of movement, that's, and you know, the sedentary life, that's, that's massively toxic, I think.

• 8:12Chris Williamson?

  Just, just how destructive is it?

• 8:14Speaker 01

  Um, I think it's certainly been, some of the evidence around this is hard to pick out, actually. That, I guess that's my other interest, that I'm really, I'm really keen on actually delving into the evidence and not just kind of putting out, uh, you know, a kind of vague opinion.

• 8:29Chris Williamson?

  Anecdotal.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:31Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  I, I, I recognise the importance of anecdotes as well, that, you know, in certain extent, everybody that comes in to see you as a patient, as, and, you know, they're an individual. And evident, there's problems with applying evidence to individuals. That's, that's the challenge of being a doctor. Um, it, it's hard to put a number on it because sometimes the relationship between sitting and poor health isn't completely demonstrable. It's not completely easy to show. And it's a little bit contradictory in places. So I would, you would struggle to quantify it. I think what it's easier to show is that people who are physically active enjoy, uh, longer life, better quality of life, um, and a whole lot of other kind of measurements that go with that in terms of their risk of this cardiovascular disease, diabetes, they're all massively improved by being active.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  And it's harder to prove that just sitting as an activity is actually bad for you.

• 9:21Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  But I think it's the general, it's the general sort of the whole picture of how sedentary you are that's really important.

• 9:26Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, for sure. I think certainly for myself, I, um, I could probably hold my hands up and say that I know I train very hard. When I do and go and do physical activity, but I also know that I'm very sedentary at other points as well.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:44Chris Williamson?

  And I think I've probably kidded myself into believing for quite a while that, well, it's fine. I'm, I'm looking after my activity levels across the day. Therefore, if I spend three hours at a period in between toilet breaks, sitting at my desk and not moving and staring at a screen, that's fine because the physical effects will be mitigated by me binning myself in a, a two hour CrossFit session or whatever it might be.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:10Chris Williamson?

  Is, is that the wrong way to look at it?

• 10:13Speaker 01

  No, no, I actually there is, I looked into this a little bit for the book as well. And there's something that, you know, that you fall into that sort of slight category of weekend warrior, though I recognize it's not always just at the weekends. And there is, there is some evidence that if you do your exercise batched up, say at the weekend, in that classic weekend warrior kind of approach, that does seem to, that does seem to be helpful. So you can mitigate some of the harms of your rest of your week being relatively inactive.

• 10:37Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  Um, I think some of the difficulty is you mentioned coal miners at the start. Actually, the difficulty with that is coal miners were incredibly physically active. They didn't do any, they didn't do any sitting down.

• 10:49Chris Williamson?

  I mean, at least that was, that was one, one bonus to take away from it, I suppose.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they were incredibly good at dying young for various reasons. And but if you look at senior executives, like you, your average CEO, they spent their whole life sitting down. But their sort of societal level that they operate at, they're incredibly likely to have good health outcomes as well. So that's why this sort of research around sitting and longevity gets a little bit tricky in places because you've got to take into account all the other stuff like smoking and drinking and exercise generally.

• 11:19Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  I think if you look at a bit of one, I've certainly saw one academic paper which looked at all the evidence and it certainly suggested that sitting down and being inactive actually caused deaths. And so I think it's reasonable to say sitting is killing people.

• 11:31Chris Williamson?

  Wow.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  That kind of, it's always, as Ben Goldacre would say, it's always, I think you'll find it's a little bit more complicated.

• 11:38Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  There's always complications around the edges, but being active and tackling the sitting is clearly a massive priority for most people.

• 11:45Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, definitely. So let's say with this, with this Instagram post that I fired out earlier on.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:51Chris Williamson?

  I got a whole host of, of common ailments and there was an awful lot of crossover. It was probably fairly representative sample as well. It was about 120 messages. So I've got, I've got a good, a good sample size to work from. I wanted to speak to yourself first off and try and get any common mistakes which people make when designing a workstation. And on the backside of that, what are the most optimal fixes for them?

• 12:24Speaker 01

  Okay. So I'm, I'm not ever seen any evidence on what the mistakes people make, but what I would say is that the big, the initial mistake is most people don't make any effort to design their workstation at all.

• 12:35Chris Williamson?

  Is there a seat? Is there a table? Is there a laptop?

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Is there anybody else sat there? No, this'll do.

• 12:41Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  That is probably the approach and hot desking, that's certainly going to be the approach that a lot of people have.

• 12:46Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Well, that's all you can do. Yeah.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. You've just got to turn up and plonk your butt down and, you know, and if you get a spare seat in the library, if you're a student, then you're happy. And it's often the way it goes. So I'm not sure about specific mistakes people make. The kind of things that, the first thing I would perhaps talk about is laptops and notebooks.

• 13:05Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  And I would say that they are kind of like the, they are, they are, they are toxic equivalent ergonomically. They are pretty horrific and they, they, they, they put you in all the wrong position completely. And using a laptop and just typing on it without any kind of effort to change it, the position that you're in could, will for a lot of people be a source of a great deal of problems.

• 13:27Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  So the first thing they do is they, they. Put your wrists at all the wrong angles and the ideal position for your wrists is the not resting on anything. And probably at about sort of parallel to the floor and ninety degrees to your body. So. The only way you can fix that normally is by adjusting the height of your keyboard. Now. If you're designing a workstation, then you can arrange for your desk to be at exactly the right height.

• 13:49Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Um. So that you can make that work for your relative reasonably easy. The best way to fix it with a laptop is not to use the keyboard on the laptop is to get an external keyboard.

• 13:58Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  And then because they're just not, you know, you've got the mouse sat in front of you. It's awkward. It tends to your wrists to end up contorted in the wrong position. So an external keyboard is usually a really good investment. Um. The next thing after that is that you're probably always looking down at it if it's a laptop unless you're. Unless you're very small in stature, you're going to, you're always going to be craning down at your laptop. And so raising your laptop up, so your eye, so your neck's in a neutral position is the best way. And that does mean it needs to come up quite a bit.

• 14:29Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, the, the screen of a laptop is naturally very low.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:34Chris Williamson?

  Am I right in thinking that having that cranial angle being more towards the floor will apply more stress to?

• 14:40Speaker 01

  I, I mean, I think that's the general thought and I kind of, I'm not an expert in ergonomics in that regard, but I certainly know that good ergonomic practices. To have your neck in a reasonably neutral position because that, which is generally just sort of looking straight ahead, eyes slightly down possibly.

• 14:53Chris Williamson?

  So eyes, eyes level with the top of the screen, right?

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, that works well. If your eyes are level with the top edge, then actually you're, you're just looking very slightly down at the screen itself. Um. That's, that's usually a good way to do it. Um. And that just stops your neck muscles having to work as hard when they're, when you're in a normal position. So that's highly likely to relieve a lot of, um, problems and discomfort. And you've got to remember even things like your tension headaches, if your neck's in the wrong position and you're under a bit of stress. Then a lot of headaches that certainly we see as a, as a GP, a lot of headaches are tension headaches. And that's all related to muscle tension in the back of the neck and.

• 15:29Chris Williamson?

  Where do, um, where, where do tension headaches manifest?

• 15:32Speaker 01

  Well, they usually, the classic description is that they're a band, sometimes around the front of the head, sometimes around the back of the head.

• 15:39Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  And they tend to be very, they tend to be much more constant, not easily relieved by medication as a general rule.

• 15:46Chris Williamson?

  I'm looking at two points that I've got in my notes from messages I received earlier on, headaches across brow and lower slash back of skull.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Okay, so that, you know, that is almost, yeah, so there you go. And we didn't rehearse that at all.

• 15:59Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  That's exactly a classic description of a tension headache.

• 16:04Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  And you have to remember that there are most, you kind of, you only got to have a briefest glance at the anatomy of the head and neck to see that there are muscles that, you know, they interlock all the way up around your forehead, the side of your head, all those muscles interlock. And if you have the muscles in your neck are under tension, there's often a knock-on effect that those muscles across the front of your head and your forehead are under tension and you end up getting headaches.

• 16:26Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  So actually getting your screen position right can often deal with chronic headaches and kind of tension headaches, which is incredibly useful.

• 16:34Chris Williamson?

  So I suppose if you've gone Bluetooth keyboard and let's say that you are working at a notebook, that allows, that allows you then to, you could get anything, you could get a stack of books, you could get some, you could get a proper stand, I suppose, that you can put your, put your laptop on, but freeing yourself up with keyboard and mouse from being attached to the notebook also enables you to get the screen up in the air as well. So you kill two birds with one stone.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. They're the two big things. If you get an external keyboard and raise up your laptop, and you're right, you can buy notebook risers and all that and spend money on it. I don't have one of those. I use, I use, when I'm in my office, I just use three or four weighty medical textbooks. Go underneath my laptop and that just does the job very nicely. I have an old keyboard from an ancient iMac that I have plugged in with a USB connection and a dead cheap mouse. And there you go, I use my MacBook with those and that's, you know, and it's much more comfortable.

• 17:31Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I think, I mean, for anyone who's listening, I know that you can get, if you, if you are a workflow nerd, as some of us are, and you like, you like your gestures and stuff, your multi-touch tools, Apple do a partner trackpad, which is exactly the same as you would get on your laptop, on a MacBook Pro or something similar, and it gives you the opportunity to do all the same. You can get a, you can actually get an expanded version of the Apple keyboard as well, which has got the one to nine numpad on the right-hand side of it as well. So you can actually end up with a better functionality keyboard by taking it off and down. But, you know, to hear that you use something that's maybe not from, quite from this century, and

• 18:16Chris Williamson?

  you're still, you're still, you're still saying that it's, it's a viable alternative, preferable alternative. That's, that's reassuring. Someone's got some line around somewhere.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, to be fair, I think it was about 2003, that iMac. So yeah, it wasn't, it wasn't quite last century, but it's, it's pretty damn close. There is, that's a good point, because I do actually find that, that what I struggle with slightly when I use that is that I'm a lot, I'm used to using the gestures on the touchpad. So I do find that a bit awkward. But what I've tried very hard to do, and I've been doing this for the last few months, is I'm trying to learn the keyboard shortcuts. So I don't use the mouse at all, because I actually think that's a much better way to go anyway. So you don't go to the mouse and have to start, and it just, you know, in terms of workflow, it's more efficient just to use the keyboard shortcuts anyway. So I'm working hard to learn them.

• 19:02Chris Williamson?

  So there's one of the co-hosts, when we do our normal shows, Youssef, who'll be listening, will be creaming in his pants right now as he hears you talk about, as he hears you talk about keyboard shortcuts. Have you used Alfred before?

• 19:16Speaker 01

  Well, no, I know of Alfred, but I never have used Alfred, actually. No, you're gonna sell it to me.

• 19:20Chris Williamson?

  Oh, I mean, it is just an absolute game changer. Life hacks 104 fully, fully explains how far down the Alfred rabbit hole myself and Youssef have tumbled. But yeah, you are right. One of the, one of the main, Jujimufu, who is a bodybuilder and tricker, but also big into periodization for work and training. He, he talks an awful lot about never using the mouse. He's got, everything is set up to swipe, to move between apps. And you're totally correct, that the less that you can use the mouse, if you're looking at really dialing in to be as efficient as possible with your workflow, getting off the mouse is, is great.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  And a lot of people do get a bit of kind of, you talk about discomfort and I'm sure a couple of people have probably mentioned repetitive strain injury. I think you mentioned it at the start there. Using the mouse is often a source of enormous discomfort for some people who get RSI. And I guess it must, I don't know why exactly. I guess it's any repetitive movement, particularly when you hold some, you hold your arm. You can get RSI anywhere in the body, technically. But I guess most people get it in their, they get it in their hands, wrists, forearms.

• 20:28Chris Williamson?

  So fine, fine motor movement with little bits of control and sort of small stabilisations and stuff like that. I guess if you're doing that seven or eight hours a day.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's exactly it. And that's the kind of, so a lot of people then suddenly, you know, it becomes really uncomfortable and distressing to keep on doing that. And that's exactly the kind of thing that can trigger off a bit of RSI in some people.

• 20:47Chris Williamson?

  You, you seem to have a pretty good understanding of RSI. And am I right in thinking RSI actually has two, two distinct types to it?

• 20:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:56Chris Williamson?

  Can you, can you elaborate on that for me?

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. Basically, I'm not sure I have a good understanding of it. In that, I'm not sure anybody has a good understanding of it. It's the only thing I would say.

• 21:05Chris Williamson?

  If anyone, if anyone does, we're relying on you here.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the first thing I say is there's two types. RSI type one is easy. And they're the ones where people do have a good understanding of it. And it's usually got a very distinct diagnosis. And the classic example is carpal tunnel syndrome. And lots of people have heard of that. It's where the kind of the nerve that goes through your wrist, the median nerve, there's a little sort of tunnel or space in the wrist there. And for various reasons, it can happen. Things like pregnancy, it can happen for all sorts of reasons. That gets a little bit pressurized, that nerve, and you get symptoms that then go into your hand. And so there's a very, with things like carpal tunnel syndrome or certain tino sinebitises, where it's where you get an inflammation in the tendons going to your thumb or other

• 21:49Speaker 01

  things. There's a very, there's usually a very clear treatment. And, you know, there may be injections, there may be carpal tunnel syndrome, you can even go on to have operations and releases. They're the ones that are relatively easy to manage. And as a GP, we don't feel too stressed by them because the patient feels better because we can give them a diagnosis.

• 22:09Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  And offer a management plan. That's in comparison to RSI type two, which is a whole world of pain.

• 22:17Chris Williamson?

  Oh, no.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  In several respects, because it's really nebulous and it's difficult to, there's not a single cause. It just usually is when people get numbness and discomfort and aches, maybe pins and needles. And it isn't really obviously reproducible. It kind of maybe varies a little. But it doesn't fit into any of the nice distinct patterns of these other kind of disorders like carpal tunnel syndrome.

• 22:43Chris Williamson?

  But can it be due to a repetitive action which could be causing RSI one? Does that make sense? So it's.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 22:55Chris Williamson?

  You could be, you could be suffering with both essentially.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think in many cases, it probably is due to some kind of repetitive, you know, various ongoing stress or tension.

• 23:05Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  That is the case. So you definitely could, yeah, you could definitely have them coexisting in some shape or form. The problem, because it's not a sort of a definite way of managing it, it makes it harder to offer a definitive solution like a steroid injection or a surgical operation that you can do in carpal tunnel.

• 23:24Chris Williamson?

  I understand.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  It's a bit frustrating for patients and it's certainly a bit frustrating and for doctors as well. Because, you know, we're in the business of trying to help people.

• 23:35Chris Williamson?

  You can't, you can't work out what's, what's wrong or how to fix it.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  No, and the difficulty is, and this is where I said, I think there's been some tension between patients and doctors in this is that you usually have to stop what you're doing. I mean.

• 23:48Chris Williamson?

  Everything.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  That's the thing. It depends how the doctor phrases it, of course.

• 23:52Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Because that generally goes down incredibly badly. If you're generally, you're either working or if it was writers, no, no writer wants to stop writing. Or it might be something like work related and people can't stop doing it. But I think that my general advice is it's not really so much about stopping what you're doing, but you really have got to change up the way you do things.

• 24:11Chris Williamson?

  Cool.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  In order to, to get it to resolve itself.

• 24:14Chris Williamson?

  I understand.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  If you're working at a keyboard, you know, you're, you're flying a desk in the day, you've probably got to alter how you do.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  You certainly got towards your workplace, but I think some of the answers are a little bit more holistic and a bit more widespread as well.

• 24:29Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  And certainly Joanna in the book, the healthy writer, goes through this, that actually, I think she tried a whole lot of, well, she got RSI very badly and she's a really good kind of case report in this regard, that actually she tried all the different mouses, the keyboards, all of that, and it didn't make any difference. And what in the end fixed her was a whole body approach.

• 24:50Chris Williamson?

  And yoga, right?

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, yoga, and it totally fixed her. And I think that's the thing, if you get your core strength improved, you start to get you improve your posture generally, you know, it might address tension issues as well from stress and anxiety, actually then that might be the solution.

• 25:06Chris Williamson?

  I think it feels like you're reading my notes off my screen at the moment, but I swear to the listeners that you're not. I'd split up optimizing your workstation into two categories, one of which was solutions when you're there, and another was solutions when you're not.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:21Chris Williamson?

  And I think, as you say there, it needs to be married with the two. If, even if you optimize your workstation, but when you go home, that you're sedentary at home and you're not, like you say, you're not building up any core stabilization, you're not getting your heart rate up, you're not getting any fresh air, all of these sort of things are going to lead to a problem on either side and they both need to be looked after, right?

• 25:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. And I suspect it's far, far more important than actually the workplace staff, all that stuff. And you get so many other benefits as well. But you can sort of imagine why a consultation with a doctor might go badly because you turn up complaining you're pain in your wrist and your doctor tells you to get out and do a bit more walking or exercise or take up yoga.

• 26:04Chris Williamson?

  How's that help? Yeah, exactly.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, they really could. But actually, I really do think it is. So you've got to have those conversations very carefully, not to upset, to make people understand. But I, I think actually it's a massive part of it. And going right back to what you said at the start, I suspect this is the kind of thing that, you know, 10 years, 20 years in the future. The workplaces will do automatically that actually there'll be regular breaks, there'll be opportunities to stretch, to walk, get away from the screen. And rather than sitting in a call centre eight hours straight, whatever it is, actually, there will be requirements to kind of to build in proper breaks.

• 26:37Chris Williamson?

  So we've we've touched on it there. I'm going to I'm going to unload the the meta analysis that my very, very well conducted Instagram research came out. And then we're going to try and design how someone could have a good working practice when they're sat at a desk. So tight hips, back pain, both upper and lower, neck pain, the headache across their brow and the lower back of the skull, difficulty in opening up the chest from being in that anterior folded forward shoulder tilt.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:11Chris Williamson?

  And a pain or weakness in between the shoulder blades, which presumably is from the same from not sitting with that open chest position. If you were to try and design someone's working day. So we've got their keyboard down off the computer, potentially an external mouse as well. We've managed to lift the cranial angle up by raising the height of the display. What are we going to do next with regards to a seating posture? What about working rhythms, work, rest and stuff like that during work? What can be done to assist in mitigating these problems?

• 27:48Speaker 01

  I mean, I think there's some basic stuff around seating posture you can do, which is just, I mean, we're obviously talking seating at the moment, rather than standing or anything else more exotic, because that's simply not an option for most people.

• 27:59Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  It's just simple stuff that actually, I mean, I guess you're getting your feet on the ground is a massive thing. When you're sitting down and getting you're getting yourself in a nice neutral position, rather than your legs being stretched out and then that kind of changes the position of your lower back and flattens out that kind of normal curve that you have in your spine, is actually sitting on your actual sit bones, getting your feet up flat on the ground.

• 28:22Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  And then trying to, and obviously some of that then is about being aware of your posture. As you mentioned there about the kind of not opening up the chest, dropping your shoulders, making sure that they're nice and relaxed. I think just spending a few minutes every, we could talk about the rhythm of this, but actually trying to build awareness, whether it's every 20, 25 minutes, running through a little self check about what is my posture like at the moment and trying to. And trying to adjust it as you go is the kind of thing that if you do regularly can start to become automatic and you actually improve, improve your general posture.

• 28:59Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  And I think in terms of rhythm, that that sort of breaks is critical more than anything. Taking a break is absolutely essential. And my, my, my personal approach to this is when I'm in a big block of writing or sitting at the computer is, I tend to use the sort of Pomodoro method anyway, because I find that quite effective. But it works really well with taking breaks. So 25 minutes of work, set a timer on my watch, it buzzes. And then I get up and I take five minutes off. And during that five minutes, I'll almost, I will make sure I get up and I'll walk around, have a bit of a, you know, and just get myself away from the screen as well.

• 29:38Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  To help with my eyes, which we can also mention.

• 29:41Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  To, to help with that. And I find that that really makes a huge difference. The key for me about the taking breaks is, and the thing I would mention to people, and it's fit, is that you've got to get away from the screen if you can.

• 29:53Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  You know, taking a break does not mean pushing the chair back, you know.

• 29:59Chris Williamson?

  Moving further away from the screen or closer to the screen or looking at your, looking at your phone, looking at a different screen.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, looking at your phone and checking, you know, checking Instagram and Facebook.

• 30:09Chris Williamson?

  That's not a break.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  Staring at another screen while you're kind of slumping in your, slumping your chair. That's really, that's not an effective break.

• 30:16Chris Williamson?

  I'll take a break from my newly refined posture to slouch in my seat, put my, my head at a 90 degree angle to the floor and sneak a quick look at my phone instead.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 30:27Chris Williamson?

  That's, that's not what we're prescribing here.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think, you know, most people listening would think, well, of course I wouldn't do that. But I mean, I've done it myself.

• 30:34Chris Williamson?

  You might do, yeah. I think, I think you probably will.

• 30:37Speaker 01

  So actually taking, taking, taking a break is something most people know, but actually it's putting it into action as well, isn't it? Like all these things and actually doing it properly. So you give yourself a gen, an actual genuine chance of improving. I, I find if I do it, I can sustain much longer working periods at 25 minutes, five minutes. I can do three or four hours of solid work in the morning and actually don't feel completely ruined by it.

• 31:01Chris Williamson?

  I agree. I think there's, um. It's a short term sacrifice of work, obviously by taking the five minute break. But the total volume that you get, the total effective time under the curve of work done by the end of the day will always be higher. It's interesting that you mentioned the Pomodoro technique, which I am currently reading the illustrated guide to the Pomodoro technique in a desperate attempt to try and make my work, my work life a little bit more optimal. But Be Focused Pro, for anyone who's listening, is an app for Mac, which is very, very light. And it does exactly that. It allows you to work on one task at a time. You set a timer for 25 minutes and then once it's up, it goes to a five minute break and

• 31:43Chris Williamson?

  tells you, right, now go away for five minutes and then come back. And I think, I think that, so during those five minutes, what are people doing? Walk to the water cooler, check the toilet, sort of, you know, look, look out the window?

• 31:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's, there's, yeah, I mean, there's a, there's a certain thing in terms of eye strain about looking out the window. There's a kind of a bit of advice, which is the 202020 technique for eye strain, which is every 20 minutes, take a break and look out the window, sort of focus on something 20 feet away for 20 seconds. I think if you're taking a natural break every five minutes and just, you know, changing the focal length where your eyes, eyes are concentrated, that's really helpful and that can be helpful in relieving eye strain.

• 32:22Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 32:23Speaker 01

  So you can get some benefit from that as well. But I think that just the moving around is the key thing. If you, you know, I, yeah, absolutely, I do that. I get up, have a stretch, say I'm working in the library or the office, go out, have a look at the window, walk up and down the steps for, you know, a few minutes, but try not to get engaged in any conversations.

• 32:40Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that five minutes, that five minutes is going to turn into 25 minutes.

• 32:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And the key is just kind of a few minutes, try to think about something else completely and then actually back to it. And it's, I just say, the time under the curve, you end up far more productive. And I find it really helps to focus as well because that 25 minutes is a relatively short period. And so, and I will give my all to that one task for 25 minutes. And you know, you then achieve much greater, deeper work. The Cal Newport kind of thing, which I know you've mentioned before, I think.

• 33:11Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the Cal Newport book is one that I kind of, I recommend to almost every, you know, the people, my colleagues, particularly younger academics, again, Cal Newport, this is the way to go, this is what you have to do. And you can be enormously productive with mine, relatively minor changes.

• 33:28Chris Williamson?

  It's intense work, intense break, right? It's all or nothing, on or off. And I think an awful lot of the time, especially because a lot of people may be, especially knowledge workers, how many tabs have you got open at once? You're switching between 20, 25 different tasks at once. Oh, well, I'm also content sourcing for Instagram, so social media is up and I've, anyone, anyone who's listening knows just how much I hate the rabbit hole of cognitive manipulation that, that occurs as soon as you get onto a, onto a social media website. But yeah, it's, it's.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, multitasking is for muppets. That's my, my approach. It really is.

• 34:09Chris Williamson?

  One thing at one time.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's not a shred of evidence that you can multitask as effectively as you can, you know, the kind of the intense burst of productive work you get from focusing on one thing. That's what we're designed to do. Where we are serial, we should be serial focuses rather than doing, rather than trying to do multiple things. And it's incredibly satisfying.

• 34:32Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, there's taking it, taking it off the to do list and getting it out of the way is such a lovely sense of achievement.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think even just that kind of, even if it's a bigger part of, a bigger, a bigger piece of work, just knowing that you've really buried yourself 25, 30 minutes, done a really intense burst. It is, it is incredibly satisfying. The whole of Healthy Writer, I actually did with the Pomodoro method and I ticked off, I had little circles.

• 34:57Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  And every, every circle represented two Pomodoros. And it was the one thing that, looking back and when I could see a hundred of them ticked off.

• 35:04Chris Williamson?

  I was gonna say, how many, how many did it take?

• 35:07Speaker 01

  I think it was about, for my bit, it was over a hundred hours of editing.

• 35:11Chris Williamson?

  Oh, wow.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  But after the first draft, once, once that had been done. But it was kind of, it was incredibly satisfying to see, to colour in the boxes and, but to know that each of those was a really valuable. A really piece of the puzzle. It was great.

• 35:25Chris Williamson?

  What you're saying is that we are, for all that Chris Ryan from Sex at Dawn may disagree, we are monogamous when it comes to most optimal workflow approach. We should be, we should be monogamous, not polyamorous.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 35:39Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 35:41Chris Williamson?

  A task is for one at a time, not for two, not for two or more at a time.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:47Chris Williamson?

  Fine, absolutely fine. So you touched on it there and one of the

• 35:54Chris Williamson?

  next main issues which people came up with was an inability to switch off at night. Eyes flickering as if you're still staring at the screen. Also eye strain. I know that my business partner Darren, who will be listening, has just had to start wearing glasses. Although he actually manages to pull them off as much as I wish that he didn't. He's had to start wearing glasses and I think to myself, would he have needed to had we spent the volume of time that we do in front of a screen? So what's, what is looking at a screen doing to our eyesight?

• 36:26Speaker 01

  I think the main thing is, I don't know if there's any evidence that it increases your risk of refractory problems where you need glasses. But so it may just be, he has a little bit of something like an astigmatism, which is just giving him extra problems.

• 36:38Chris Williamson?

  You're just blind, mate. Darren, you were never, you were never ever destined to be able to see properly, I'm afraid.

• 36:43Speaker 01

  Just born, born damaged.

• 36:45Chris Williamson?

  Cursed with that, yeah.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  I think the main thing about staring at a screen is it dries your eyeballs out. They end up shriveled up. We normally blink about once every five seconds or something, 12 to 15 times a minute. Something like that off the top of my head, I think is the right amount. But when you start staring at a screen, you stop blinking. And to the extent that you only blink about sort of five or six times a minute, so once every 10 seconds.

• 37:08Chris Williamson?

  You're talking about like a 60% reduction.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's huge. And I kind of, the whole thing about tears is obviously they're required to keep your eyes moist and stop them drying out. And they help clear bugs. And it's an important protective mechanism for your eyes as well.

• 37:27Chris Williamson?

  Is it moisturizing the cornea on the front of the eye then, to a degree?

• 37:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, certainly. There's always that film of tears across the front of your eye, across in front of your cornea. And if you, as anybody, your cornea, if for some reason you can't blink, you say you get like a facial nerve palsy, a Bell's palsy, where you can't, you can no longer close your eyelids properly.

• 37:44Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  One, one of the priorities for us, when we see something like that, is to, people have to tape their eyes shut at night, and they have to use artificial tears. Otherwise, the front of their eye dries out, and the cornea can become quite damaged, ulcerated.

• 37:56Chris Williamson?

  Oh, wow.

• 37:56Speaker 01

  Now, I'm not saying staring at a screen will do that to you, but you're at that kind of point where blinking is-

• 38:01Chris Williamson?

  The bottom end, the bottom end will be getting towards it, right?

• 38:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, blinking's important, you know, that's, you know, and if you stop blinking as much, then you're not going to, your, your eyes are going to feel uncomfortable, and they're going to gritty, and irritable, and maybe slightly itchy, and just feel just, you know, like you've got sand, with all that feeling, you know, your eyes have been sprinkled with sand.

• 38:20Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  And they just feel dreadful. And so, there's a couple of things you can do that perhaps can reduce eye strain. One of them is to sit a little bit further back from your screen. So, usual advice is more than, I certainly read a, there was a good study that showed more than fifty, people who were sat more than half a meter away, fifty centimeters from their screen, had less eye strain. That's probably about an arm length or so. So, and the ridiculous thing about that is, and laptops are bad for this, that we, as well, it's another way that laptops damage us, is that we crane over them, and our nose is practically touching the screen.

• 38:53Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Well, the whole point is because the, the screen is, I'm just looking at mine now, it's two inches away from the top of the, the top of the keyboard. So again, if you're not on Bluetooth keyboard, Bluetooth mouth, your mouse, you're tethered, you're tethered, your face is tethered to the front of the screen.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  Very few people type with their arms straight out in front of them. Yeah, and I wouldn't recommend that either. So your laptops are designed to be bad for your eye, in terms of your eye, in that regard. So- So that's really important. I kind of, I've lost my thread now in terms of eyes.

• 39:26Chris Williamson?

  Moisturizing the eyes, you were talking about a number of solutions. Yeah, 50 centimeters.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you have to be more than 50 centimeters away. So that's really, so yeah, that's what I was going to say is that use the zoom function, you know, who, how many people are sitting there with their Word document on a hundred percent or whatever writing software you're using, just crank it up to 200%, 250% and sit back a bit.

• 39:48Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  There's no requirement to be close enough to see the screen. All computers have accessibility features within them. So from that regard, there's, you've just got to learn to delve into the settings a little.

• 39:59Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  Push the, push the screen away from you and increase that font size.

• 40:03Chris Williamson?

  I'm going to guess a potential solution for someone who is maybe looking to go maximally optimal of this would be to go for an external display as well, a larger external display that could potentially be mounted up on a wall or could be just raised up with a stand. And then you'd have the, the keyboard at where you need it. You could have the, the larger display, which allows you, if some people feel like they need to be able to multitask, but also want to have the large size font, you can't, you can't have your cake and eat it with this, can you? You can't have lots of things on a small screen, plus all of them be really big. Or else you're going to be, you're going to be whizzing, whizzing around the screen like a, like a blue bottle.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think about multi-screen options are easy and certainly I do that in my office. I've got a PC that sits in my office and I use whatever it is cable that connects it up.

• 40:48Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  DVI adapter and I have my laptop screen on one side and the external monitor on the left from the PC on the other side. So I've got a couple of monitors and you know, I can flick between, they're just different workspaces on the MacBook. And so I've got a two-screen option, dead easy, just using my laptop that I normally use and can take home with me.

• 41:06Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  Dead easy, works really well.

• 41:09Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that sounds great. So can you just tell us the 202020 rule again and why, what that's doing in terms of the, the focal length for your eyes and stuff like that?

• 41:18Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, I think the whole thing about the 2020 rule is so every 20 minutes or so, take a break from your screen and stare at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds. And I think it probably just helps reduce eye strain rather than your eyes being fixed in a sink, your all the muscles around the eye, the ocular muscles being fixed in one position. It just forces you to contract and move them a little bit as well. So they have to do the work of pulling open your, of changing the focal length. So your focus at a different distance. So it gets them moving, but it probably also just when you look somewhere else and you move around, it forces you to blink and it makes you blink. Now you can, I've read some places where it says, make sure you blink every 30 seconds or what have you. Or, you know, blink every 10 seconds and it will become natural.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  I, I find that hard to believe that it wouldn't be a constant distraction trying to remember to blink.

• 42:07Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  So the trick is just to change, you change where you're looking a little. So you look at something a little bit different and then that all you're naturally blink when you do that.

• 42:16Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  And, you know, you achieve the goal of actually blinking a bit more often, moisturising your eyes, given your folk, given your muscles a little bit of a change of perspect, a change of focal length, which will just work those ocular muscles a little and has likely to reduce your eye strain generally.

• 42:31Chris Williamson?

  So I suppose that ties in again, as we've said with the Pomodoro technique of going for the 25 minutes. You can do that as part of your little loop that you do to get up, to go to the bathroom, to do whatever it might be.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. If you don't, you don't have to even think about the 2020, 20 thing. If you're doing the Pomodoro, because you're going to do it naturally anyway. So it becomes, it ceases to be a problem. But if you, for some reason, you can't get up or you're stuck at a desk, can't move, even just 20 minutes, just doing this thing for sort of 20 seconds, will actually help reduce your eye strain. And the other thing to reduce your eye strain is get a little, get a little, get some artificial tears, get some eye drops. You know, if you've got really, if you get really bad eye strain, eye drops are absolutely, you know, they work. They will, they will, they will do the, that's what we give to people who can't blink properly or like, you know, got facial paralysis.

• 43:18Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  And can't close eyelids, they, they will, they will do the job.

• 43:21Chris Williamson?

  Okay. So is there a reason why you would get this, the manifestation of eyes flickering at night? As if they're still staring at a screen. Do you understand what that's due to?

• 43:32Speaker 01

  No.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  I'm not sure, but I suspect it's somebody, you know, it's somebody who's just got too much screen time and is not making it and it's not reducing. I mean, my, my, my sense is I don't, I'm not aware of any sort of specific neurological problem that that is due to.

• 43:49Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  But it sounds like somebody who desperately needs to unwind a little and have an hour. Someone, someone who needs to have an hour before they go to bed of not looking at a screen.

• 43:57Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  I mean, and we haven't talked about sleep and we've, we've got a chapter in sleep and healthy writer. And I mean, for me, it's a superpower and I prioritize it now more in my life, more than I have ever done in my whole life. Because if I don't sleep right, my life is rotten. And if I get my sleep right, I feel great. And part of that good sleep hygiene is turn not looking at my screen. I go to bed at 10, my screens go off at nine.

• 44:24Chris Williamson?

  Digital sunset, right?

• 44:26Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And you can do that whole using flux or those, the things that change the kind of the background.

• 44:32Chris Williamson?

  The hue.

• 44:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, the hue of your screen. And I do a little bit of that as well. But actually, you can't beat just the off switch is the way to do it. And I think if you really value your sleep, then you've just got to get off your devices and read a book.

• 44:43Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, no, there was a, some really interesting studies. Have you read Why We Sleep by Matthew, Matthew Walker?

• 44:50Speaker 01

  I have, yes.

• 44:50Chris Williamson?

  Well, I mean, anyone, anyone who's listening, who's having trouble sleeping, before you try and get hold of melatonin, or think that burning incense or getting a diffuser in your room is where you need to go, buy Matthew Walker's book, Why We Sleep. Or if you can't deal with the reading of that, if you want to listen to Joe Rogan podcast 1109, I know it off by heart because of how many times I've listened to him on it. It's one of my favorites. And he is, he's absolutely fantastic. And the, the, um, the summaries that he makes and the conclusions that he draws about just how important sleep is to short term and long term health, longevity and all the rest of it, is, they're terrifying. They're nothing short of terrifying.

• 45:35Speaker 01

  I, I, I think, I, you know, if. Moving is really incredibly important, getting more exercise, but the three pillars of being healthy are moving more, eating a bit better, however that is, but sleep is absolutely up there as that kind of holy triumvirate of being healthy. And if you're not getting your sleep right, everything else falls apart. And I've got three kids, they were like, they're now a little bit, they're now like 11, 12 and 13, but when they were one, two and three, I wasn't getting a whole lot of sleep. And I just, you know, my kind of the difficulties of motivating yourself to do exercise, to cope with your normal work, the kind of the extra kind of anxiety it provokes.

• 46:17Chris Williamson?

  The difficulty level on everything's been turned up, right?

• 46:19Speaker 01

  They're men, oh, it just cracked. And, you know, obviously as a doctor, I've had some experience of sleep deprivation and in the army, the army were quite keen on it as well at times. So I've been through the pain of not sleeping and life is just so shabby. That actually, that's why I prioritize it. And there's so many things you can do which don't require taking medication. The evidence for melatonin is really weak. There's a little bit of evidence in older people over the age of 55 that it can help you get to sleep a bit quicker and your quality of sleep's a wee bit better. But there's not good evidence it makes any difference in younger folk.

• 46:52Chris Williamson?

  There's potential for resetting circadian rhythms when travelling as well, right? I think it's a good way to hack jet lag, or at least Matthew Walker alludes to that in the book.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, they've certainly looked at it hard. I'm not sure how good the evidence is for that either. There may be a wee bit. Yeah, I know that's certainly been tried by a lot of people.

• 47:07Chris Williamson?

  So rely on, rely on what we know works, which is digital sunset, reduce, reduce the, or increase the melatonin response naturally.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:17Chris Williamson?

  By not having blue light pouring into your eyes and 20 seconds before you go to bed.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I think that's it. I think my eyes would be jumping around a bit if that were the case, if I did that. And I don't, my phone goes on airplane mode at nine and happy days.

• 47:31Chris Williamson?

  Well, I think one of the, anyone who's listening will know what I'm about to say. One of my number one solutions for anybody is to charge the phone over the other side of the room. And when, when you get into your bedroom, as I explained in a hacker in your pocket podcast and in number 10 with Kai Way from the Light Phone. You're, when you are in a inertial frame of reference, the likelihood of you staying there when you're on your phone is greater. So use your phone when you're standing in your bedroom, fine. But as soon as you lie down, you're not allowed to have your phone in your hand. Because if you're laid down with your phone in your hand, you're probably gonna, you're probably gonna stay there. And it's more likely you're gonna stay there than if you were sitting, more likely that if you were sitting than if you were standing.

• 48:11Chris Williamson?

  So charge the phone over the other side of the room, get an alarm clock that doesn't require you to put an alarm on your phone. Or do both. And then your alarm will go off over the other side of the room and you've got to get up. It blows my mind, it blows my mind that there's an entire industry of these rug alarm clocks. I don't know whether you've seen them where you have to,

• 48:28Speaker 01

  No.

• 48:28Chris Williamson?

  You have to stand on a little mat to turn the alarm clock off. I'm like, well, you could just put an alarm anywhere else that wasn't next to the bed and it achieves the same objective. But that's, you know, I'm not going to get sent one of those for free anymore. Definitely.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  No, I think you've blown it there. You're right off their list.

• 48:43Chris Williamson?

  Ruined it.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, I mean, the thing is, if you're a student and your room is your bedroom sort of thing, then absolutely you've got to deploy some of these strategies. But if you've got a separate bedroom, then don't let the phone in your room.

• 48:53Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 48:53Speaker 01

  You know, bedroom is a phone free zone.

• 48:56Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. That's, I mean, that's, that's the absolute goal, right?

• 48:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, definitely.

• 49:00Chris Williamson?

  So moving on, hot desking and university libraries. So you actually, you actually touched on this earlier on. If someone doesn't have the capacity to, let's say, perfectly customize or build, build their ideal workstation. I know that I would write in saying that almost all doctors will be using shared desks at work.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, certainly a lot will be.

• 49:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  Certainly GPs, there's a lot of GPs work part time. Yeah, you're going to be a lot of premises struggle. So you are to a certain extent, you won't have your own room. You'll be going in and out.

• 49:37Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. So what are the carry in your bag or the, I guess, the SOS pack of trying to fix ergonomics for work there?

• 49:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I think, I mean, an external keyboard and a mouse relatively light should be able to. I think if you've got a notebook, I guess it depends whether you're using your own laptop and notebook or whether you're using, you know, like say a university student, using one of the PCs in the library or whatever's available. I guess the first thing I'd say is you don't have to carry anything with you just to take a moment to, you can adjust the height screen of all of those. You can move things into the correct position. You can adjust the height of the chair. It's actually rather than just plonking yourself down in, you know, whichever, you know, weirdly proportioned person was there before you.

• 50:22Chris Williamson?

  She's almost definitely not going to be exactly the same as yourself.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  Quite. I'd actually take the time to make the adjustments. And as I said, get the, get the height of that screen. So it's just, you know, the top of the screen's level with your eyes. Get the, get the seat at the right height so that you're kind of, your, your thighs are likely to be parallel to the ground and your feet are flat on the floor. Do those things first so that you're absolutely sorted out. I think then if you're doing your own, then in terms of working continuously, I would make sure I had some way of, not my phone, of preferably of a little alarm for 20, 25 minutes. So that you kind of stick to it. I've got a little watch, my watch buzzes. So that's handy in the library when I'm at the university library.

• 51:05Chris Williamson?

  It would be cool if there was a web based Pomodoro timer, wouldn't there? Like a cloud based one. I wonder if, I wonder if someone's come up with that. That would be a really good, if someone needs a business idea, come up with B focus pro for web browser that would allow notifications to pop up. That would be lovely.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's the kind of thing. Yeah, absolutely. So you need to, you need to have that handy. I would, you know, if you can, a notebook riser is a little bit of a big ask, I think, because they're probably quite bulky to fit in a bag. But if you've got some books with you, you may be able to use them. The only thing I'd say is there are always books in the library.

• 51:37Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that's a very good point.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  You've just got to go to the, you've just got to go to the nearest shelf and pull off two or three books. Doesn't matter what they are. Stick them under your laptop.

• 51:43Chris Williamson?

  Taking them out. No one's gonna, no one's gonna.

• 51:45Speaker 01

  No, the librarians will put them away. Again, they're very nice like that. In fact, they prefer it if they don't like it when you put them away. They prefer it to do it themselves.

• 51:52Chris Williamson?

  They like, they like to work, don't they? I've always found that.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  They don't trust, they don't trust students and they definitely don't trust staff to put them back where they got them. So they're then lost forever.

• 52:02Chris Williamson?

  Agreed.

• 52:04Speaker 01

  So you can grab a book. So you don't, you just use what's there. That's easy. And then a little external keyboard and a mouse, you're good to go. I think a little bottle of eye, if you're going to, you're really settling in for the long haul.

• 52:16Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  Then some eye drops is a good plan.

• 52:19Chris Williamson?

  Is there a, is there an optimal frequency for using the eye drops every couple of hours or during every break? Is that, is that, are you going to end up swimming, swimming in tears?

• 52:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, dripping. Yeah, like crying.

• 52:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Not especially. The general advice with these is we put them in every couple of hours if somebody's got absolutely nothing going. I think it depends how you feel.

• 52:37Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  One or two hours. I don't think you need every 20 minutes would be a bit.

• 52:41Chris Williamson?

  A bit much.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. I personally, I despise putting in eye drops.

• 52:45Chris Williamson?

  It's never going to be an easy task to accomplish, is it?

• 52:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're probably not old enough to remember the Friends episode where they tried to put eye drops in Monica for the whole episode. So it turns into one of those for a lot of people.

• 52:58Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 52:59Speaker 01

  So I would say a couple of hours is good.

• 53:01Chris Williamson?

  Got you. Okay. So I wanted to talk about some more, some of the slightly more funky solutions that I've seen, which exist for people who want to really optimize their workstation. I know that Johnny, another one of the co-hosts of the show, he has a really fancy desk that does both seated and standing. I know that the receptionist at Be Fit, which is the physiotherapy place that I go to around the corner, sits on a Bosu ball. When I go in, she's on it, sat on a big, big Swiss ball bouncing around. And I just, I wanted to know what the efficacy of those particular approaches are.

• 53:42Chris Williamson?

  And if there's any others, any other sort of weird and wonderful approaches you've seen for. I know, I know Ben Greenfield has a treadmill office, a treadmill station where he can walk on a true form runner at the same time as dictating and writing and stuff like that.

• 54:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, Ben's, he's quite out there though. He's pretty full on with his self efficacy stuff.

• 54:05Chris Williamson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  I was, the problem with all this is it is probably worth a very minor digression is that the evidence is rubbish for a lot of this stuff. It's really hard and it's not rubbish as in it's just hard to do good research, medical research into this kind of thing because, you know, you can't do, there's no sort of placebo effect. So you can never quite know what you're, whether you're measuring it in motivated people who then feel a bit better or so the evidence is really hard to pick out.

• 54:34Chris Williamson?

  Tenuous, right?

• 54:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just not good quality. And so it makes it really hard to offer definitively. You lurch into anecdote quite quickly and personal opinion.

• 54:45Speaker 01

  I would say there's not an awful lot of evidence for Swiss balls. So that kind of what's, they fall under the category of dynamic sitting, that kind of where you've got to continually adjust and micro adjustments where, you know, kind of using core strength and to keep yourself in an upright position. I have a Swiss ball in my room and I don't use it very often. Sometimes if I'm a bit bored, I'll sit on it.

• 55:06Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 55:07Speaker 01

  There isn't great evidence to make a huge amount of difference, but it's one of those which I think if you get relief, it does force you to sit in a probably much better, it improves your posture. You've got to, you can't slouch on a Swiss ball or you end up on the floor. You know, you're, you're obliged to put your feet flat down. You've got to, you know, you've got to engage your core. You've got to sit up straight.

• 55:26Chris Williamson?

  So potentially rather than the, the Swiss ball actually being something magical in and of itself, it's just forcing you into a position that you could replicate on a normal seat.

• 55:35Speaker 01

  I would, I would think that's almost entirely it. Though I think there is a, there is a kind of evidence, there is research that's gone on around dynamic sitting to try to work out if it's all the micro-adjustments that makes a difference. I haven't read anything that really convinced me that there's great definitive evidence that makes a great, it makes enormous difference. The other thing then is you're kind of into standing desks, as you mentioned. I've also got a standing desk at work. I haven't got a posh one. I think, I think there were pictures posted at the time when the book came out last year that mine was just an old school desk, like a primary school desk, which I cut the legs off and then I whacked a bit of one-inch MDF on the top. And I didn't even nail it together, I just rested it on there. And that, I find that really, I find that really good.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  I kind of enjoy working there, but I like the variety. Sometimes I sit, sometimes I stand, sometimes I wobble around on my Swiss ball. And sometimes I think that is the kind of, the thing about these slightly wacky things is that it's just the variety that is really helpful and makes a difference to me. There isn't, there is some little bit of evidence for stand-up desks in the literature that they can help in some respects, but for back pain particularly, but nothing, nothing really monstrously good.

• 56:49Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  Actually, there's a lot more evidence for Ben Greenfield's treadmill desk.

• 56:54Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 56:55Speaker 01

  Quite a few people use, and that certainly seems to be, I've certainly read a couple of papers. One of them showed, you know, things like they measured people's cholesterol and, you know, kind of blood glucose to check for diabetes. And those, all those sort of markers were quite significantly improved when someone used a treadmill desk.

• 57:12Chris Williamson?

  Wow.

• 57:13Speaker 01

  But the weirdness of, I mean, and I suppose that makes sense because you're walking.

• 57:18Chris Williamson?

  Well, yeah.

• 57:19Speaker 01

  So, so it's better than sitting there doing nothing.

• 57:21Chris Williamson?

  By distance.

• 57:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. And they did also comment that they noticed that the US, and as I always thought would be the problem with a treadmill desk is it's just blooming hard to concentrate when you're walking on doing something else. And there is, there was a reduction in your sort of cognitive capacity when you're on a treadmill desk.

• 57:38Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, well, you've, you've got to spend a little bit of, expend some mental force just walking, right? Not falling over.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Well, you think you're doing it automatically, but it does require a little bit of effort.

• 57:49Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 57:50Speaker 01

  But it's really good for sort of relatively low level tasks. And you know, Ben, when we chatted on this podcast about it, he said exactly that. It's done for answering emails, you know, doing other bits and bobs, admin tasks, not for the really deep work, the Cal Newport sort of really high focus.

• 58:03Chris Williamson?

  Cal would not be happy with a walking desk at all.

• 58:06Speaker 01

  No, if Cal was here, he would probably, absolutely, he would be slapping us.

• 58:10Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, the treadmill would be out of the window. I'm just looking at, so I got hold of the Biohacker's Handbook, which is something Ben Greenfield's actually affiliated with. Partway through that, I've got the work edition of this open. There's one on work, one on sleep, one on nutrition, one on exercise. And it is showing me the effect of body position on introvertebral disc pressure. So 100% disc pressure, the effect of, the effect on four postures on the introvertebral disc pressure as measured between the third and fourth lumbar vertebrae. So 100% when standing.

• 58:50Chris Williamson?

  If your back angle when sitting is at 110 degrees, so a little bit leaning back, it would be 105%. At 100 degrees, 115%, at 90 degrees, at 140% and at 80 degrees, at 190%. And that's sourced here, Hedman T. and Ferny G. 1997 Mechanic Rule Response of the Lumbar Spine to Seated Postural Loads.

• 59:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:18Chris Williamson?

  So not being in, being leaned forward, which I see an awful lot, especially if you look in university libraries, you'll see that people a lot of the time will naturally hook their feet under themselves onto, onto the little wheels and they'll pull themselves right forward. Do you know what I mean? So their feet, they're not even on the floor, they're on top of the seat, on the, the base of the seat. And then they're leaned right forward. Apart from the little bit of assistance you'll get by having your elbows pushing up from the desk, you're going to be looking at nearly double the disc pressure. Which is, which is pretty catastrophic, I imagine.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  Well, the only thing, well, I've got a couple of thoughts. So the first thing I'd say is the simple fix for that is plant your feet on the floor, as we said earlier. That kind of that fix, that is the one hack that fixes that completely. Because you're right, it does put you into a really awkward position. The only thing I'd say is it's a slightly proxy marker that it doesn't actually tell you whether you'll get back pain or give you any problems.

• 1:00:15Chris Williamson?

  Can you back deal with it? Yeah, fine.

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just measuring increase in pressure in one intervertebral space. Actually, it doesn't necessarily mean it will turn into anything later on.

• 1:00:23Chris Williamson?

  Pressure doesn't equal negative.

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  Not necessarily, but I agree, it doesn't, I wouldn't wish to underestimate it. It's clearly a pretty rubbish posture as well. And I likely to quite likely to cause your problems in the longer term. But I'm always a bit wary about the problem with the research is you can, you see evidence like that, but it very, it's very difficult to translate it into people who get back pain by, you know, later on down the line. So the real sort of clinical endpoints that we're interested in.

• 1:00:51Chris Williamson?

  Interesting. Yeah, that is cool. So I wanted to touch on more of the outside of the day, outside of work and outside of writing, uh, health, the more sort of general health, as we could call it. And I know that you are a fan of gratitude journaling, based on some of the bits that I've read about you. I wanted to allow you to elaborate, we haven't touched on gratitude journaling almost at all yet so far, although I do do it. I wanted to hear your thoughts on it and your experiences with it.

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. So my, and one of the things we wanted to do with the book was just to point out that writing in particular wasn't all just catastrophically bad for your health. There was a slight danger that the book was just going to be.

• 1:01:34Chris Williamson?

  Give up being a writer, it's going to destroy you.

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  Immediately, it's horrific.

• 1:01:38Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  And one of the clearest bits of evidence about writing was writing is, I mean, there's certainly some medical stuff about writing as therapy and people with mental health problems and other things. But actually for just thinking for people in general and for the wider population, that's something everybody can do, gratitude journaling has a really pretty decent, has, has some decent evidence that underpins it. And it goes back to some Californian psychologists who looked into this, Emma and McCullough. And they, there was an experiment, it goes, I think it was back to 2003 or the early 2000s, sometimes like, sometime like that. And they, they ran one of these studies that psychologists love to do. And they got the participants to write down just a few things that they were grateful

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  for every day, whether that was the, you know, the kindness of a friend or a beautiful sunset. And incredibly, they only had to write a sentence and they only had to do it once a week. So it was really not a big ass. That's low investment, right? Yeah, that is really, you know, the biggest problem with that would be remembering to do it because it's so low. Yeah. It's absolutely tiny. And they found that it really seemed to, they stopped, they found some clear improvements in wellbeing for those people. And that they felt better, but really, one of the things that really piqued my interest about that study is because I can be a little bit cynical about some of these psychologists, psychology studies, they're often got very low numbers. And, you know, you've got to be careful about how far you draw your inferences with them. Yes.

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  But they also, they also found evidence that the, the families of the participants had noted that their loved ones were, seemed to be better in themselves. And they had improved wellbeing. And I thought that was, that was a really interesting kind of nugget as part of that. That really kind of, for me, gave this a lot more credibility. And the California psychologists have gone on to do more studies and there's some Manchester psychologists who've also looked into this and a host of others. But what they also found, so they also found that there was good evidence that doing a gratitude journal could improve your sleep. Okay. Reduce your anxiety, improve your sleep. So it feeds exactly back into what we were saying before.

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  They, and if you have better sleep and you sleep longer, well, crikey, I mean, that is, you can, you know, the effects that Matt Walker have talked about, has talked about in his book, that means that you're less likely to get cancer, you're less likely to have a heart attack, you're less likely to have a stroke or Alzheimer's. Yeah. So actually, there is incredible power. If a very simple intervention like a gratitude journal can reduce your anxiety, can help you to sleep a little bit better. There is, I mean, you've got to be a bit careful about pulling this chain out too far.

• 1:04:17Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, downstream, where do you stop?

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, but there is, if it makes you feel better at the time, then that's a pretty good place to start. Because, you know, people are not very good at doing stuff that will keep them, make them live six months longer when they get to 70. They're good at doing stuff that makes them feel good at the time. And I think that's a lot of the experience of doing a gratitude journal that I've found and a lot of people have found is that it just helps you feel a little bit better about your life, helps you, it gives you a more positive slant on life. And it reduces that sort of stress and anxiety.

• 1:04:49Chris Williamson?

  An interesting, an interesting point that Youssef made on one of the last podcasts where the typical experiment, he says, look around your room for something red. Now, close your eyes and tell me what in the room is blue because the reticular activating system focuses, it narrows in, right? And his, his argument was that something similar was going on, that it's very difficult to hold anxiety in the mind at the same time as searching. On my gratitude journal, I'll

• 1:05:20Chris Williamson?

  hold my hands up and say that some mornings, finding something which isn't what I wrote about the, the day before, or just the first thing that comes to mind, I, I am grateful for the taste of coffee, I am grateful for, you know, it, it can be, it can be moderately challenging some days to come up with something which is meaningful. But that search for what is, what does have meaning to me today, what am I genuinely grateful for today? It forces an awful lot of worries out. It's very difficult to hold both of those things in the same moment.

• 1:05:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that may be exactly what's going on. I, I certainly haven't looked too hard into what the psychologists think. I mean, it's one of those things that people who get depressed and anxious often have intrusive negative thoughts and kind of ongoing difficulties breaking out of that cycle of negativity. And, you know, that's the whole basis of something like CBT really is to help link how you think with how you behave, with how you feel and break some of those barriers down. And I wonder sometimes if gratitude journals just start to nudge that along a little bit. They're, they're almost like an initial step. Perhaps with the, the bit you mentioned about actually holding negative thoughts in your head at the same time for those who haven't got as far as, you know, having full blown depression or anxiety kind of problems.

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  Is that they're just a really simple little hack.

• 1:06:39Chris Williamson?

  It's nice.

• 1:06:40Speaker 01

  You do them every morning?

• 1:06:42Chris Williamson?

  I do, yeah. So I've got, I'll put a link in the show notes to the six minute diary, which is scandalously a rip off of the five minute journal, but is, is better as far as I'm concerned. It's by a company called Your Best Self. And it's available, it's available on Amazon. The link, the link will be in the description, but it's three minutes on a morning and three minutes at night, three, three things you're grateful for is the first thing you do in the morning. And yeah, it's, it's interesting.

• 1:07:15Chris Williamson?

  It helps to bring into perspective on more of a, a direct level from what you're actually writing. When you do a gratitude journal, I find that it is brought more sharply into perspective, things which I am actually grateful for, but surprise, surprise. But it's interesting what those are, because a lot of the time you look back at your day and you think, what did I do with my day, which produced something which I was grateful for the next day? And it's never, I'm grateful for gaining a thousand followers on Instagram. I am grateful for this. It's, it's stuff like, I'm grateful for the incredibly meaningful message that someone sent me about last week's podcast episode. I'm grateful, I'm grateful for the message that my mum sent yesterday,

• 1:07:59Chris Williamson?

  or that I got to spend, I get to spend this afternoon off and I get to go and see my friends. Or do you know what I mean? It reminds you of what you should be spending your time doing. Because when, when you're alone with your thoughts, with nothing else to distract you, these are the things which percolate to the surface.

• 1:08:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's interesting. So I think for such a little, simple thing, it's got, it's quite, it's probably, there's quite a complex set of consequences of doing it that it triggers off. And you know, there's probably, it's working across multiple mechanisms.

• 1:08:30Chris Williamson?

  It would be very interesting to work it out, eh?

• 1:08:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's, and it probably varies person to person. That's the thing as well. If you know, kind of in terms of you say breaking sometimes that negative cycle, just sometimes getting you to focus on the important things. Just sometimes letting go of the petty trivial irritations that you're letting dominate your thoughts, really incredibly useful.

• 1:08:50Chris Williamson?

  Provides a lot of perspective. So I wanted to, I wanted to give you, we haven't touched that much on writers per se, but I know I have a access to a swath of US romance authors who hopefully will give a little, a little cheer that, that they've got a shout out there. And I know for a fact that a lot of them suffer with writer's block.

• 1:09:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:09:13Chris Williamson?

  And I wondered if you had any strategies for people who are potentially content creators, potentially writers, maybe on a blog, maybe authors, as I've said, and they're attacking either high volume or high frequency workloads of writing. Are there any strategies which you employ to try and get around writer's block?

• 1:09:37Speaker 01

  Um, I'm not sure. I've not, I don't think I've ever suffered from writer's block as such, where I've just sat down and not been able to write anything. And I know that a lot of, it's perhaps a slightly contentious area, isn't it? That some people would claim it doesn't exist. There's certainly, I've suffered from, you know, if, if procrastination is a, is a subset of writer's block.

• 1:09:57Chris Williamson?

  I would absolutely class it under that, yeah.

• 1:09:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, then I've suffered from that to the nth degree. And there's nothing like, I guess one of the best strategies I had was having a co-author. Because it's, and I'm going to, you know, as a, as a particular, I guess it's a medic thing, as a doctor, we're, it's very, we're all kind of, you have all this academic path and you pass exams and you're always wanting to please people. That we're not very good at not doing what's expected of us in some ways. So when I've got a commitment to somebody else, and I guess that's one way of doing it. And you could do that commitment, whether it's you've got a co-author, whether you make that commitment publicly, that's a, that's probably a really good way for me to beat procrastination. A proper hard deadline.

• 1:10:36Chris Williamson?

  External accountability.

• 1:10:37Speaker 01

  Absolutely. It's what really does it for me when it comes to getting over procrastination, getting over that kind of subset of writer's block. That's the one that I have the most experience with. And, you know, I still suffer with on a daily basis. There's always, you know, I could always tie up a website a little bit rather than actually writing some proper content for it. And it's just that kind of that. And that's just, that's another, it's not like I'm sitting around lying, going to bed because I'm procrastinating, I'm finding other petty jobs.

• 1:11:06Chris Williamson?

  It's the low hanging fruit rather than the deep work, right?

• 1:11:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And I guess, yeah, feeds right back into that is I need to go away and read Cal Newport's book again.

• 1:11:13Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:13Speaker 01

  To remind myself of how the hell to get down to some proper, serious work.

• 1:11:19Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I understand. Well, Euan, I really, I really appreciate today. I think we've attacked a problem which is incredibly widespread. Anyone who is listening will have spent the, some portion of their last day sat in front of a laptop. And for those people who are spending a lot of time there, hopefully we've managed to provide some, some solutions. Can you tell the listeners where they can find you online?

• 1:11:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the best place to find me is, I have, my website is www.blokeology.io. So I've got, so I do some writing there on health, fitness, a bit of lifestyle stuff. And I've got a podcast as well. So that's all at blokeology.io. And probably online, the best place to connect with me is you can get to me via blocology or just on Twitter. So Euan underscore Lawson, that's E U A N underscore L A W S O N.

• 1:12:11Chris Williamson?

  Fantastic. Thank you very much for your time, Euan. I'll make sure that the links to blocology, your Twitter, your podcast as well, which is fantastic. I'll make sure the links to all of that are in the show notes below. But thank you very much for your time. It's been a pleasure.

• 1:12:23Speaker 01

  No, my pleasure entirely, Chris. Thank you.

• 1:12:25Chris Williamson?

  Thank you very much.