Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #64 Time and How to Spend It with James Wallman

Episode Date: May 29, 2019

Time is the most precious commodity we have, yet despite all the advances in technology, most of us are more time poor than ever before. Cultural commentator and best-selling author, James Wallman, believes that few of us really understand which experiences bring us joy and success, and which don’t. In fact, for many of us, free time can be harder to enjoy than time at work. James argues that just as we have learned to spot the differences between junk foods and superfoods, we need to learn the equivalent rules for time. He has drawn on research from psychology, economics and culture to create a seven-point checklist that he believes will help you avoid empty experiences and fill your free hours with exciting and enriching ones instead. We discuss the importance of putting ourselves in challenging or unusual situations, having fulfilling relationships, achieving a state of flow and being in nature. James also talks about the importance of having status and significance for happiness and explains how we can all attain this in our lives. Finally, James gives his top tips for leading a happy and fulfilling life. This is a really lively conversation and James is bursting with anecdotes – I hope you enjoy it! Show notes available at drchatterjee.com/64 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Think of an elderly neighbour or someone who's a bit lonely and go do something for them. Have a cup of tea with them, maybe take three cookies and say, look, I've only got 15 minutes and have a cup of tea with them. Or maybe go and dig in their garden or do something for somebody else and it'll give you free happiness. Hi, my name is Rangan Chastji, GP, television presenter and author of the best-selling books, The Stress Solution and The Four Pillar Plan. I believe that all of us have the ability to feel better than we currently do, but getting healthy has become far too complicated.

With this podcast, I aim to simplify it. I'm going to be having conversations with some of the most interesting and exciting people both within as well as outside the health space to hopefully inspire you as well as empower you with simple tips that you can put into practice immediately to transform the way that you feel. I believe that when we are healthier, we are happier because when we feel better, we live more. Hello and welcome to episode 64 of my Feel Better Live More podcast. My name is Rangan Chatterjee and I am your host. In today's show, we talk about time and how we are spending it. Time is the most precious commodity that we have.

Yet despite all the advances in technology, most of us are more time poor than ever before. Today's guest is the cultural commentator and best-selling author James Warman, who believes that few of us really understand which experiences bring us joy and success, and which experiences don't. In fact, for many of us, free time can be harder to enjoy than time at work. James argues that just as we have learned to spot the differences between junk foods and superfoods, we need to learn the equivalent rules for time. He has drawn on research from psychology, economics, as well as culture to create a

seven-point checklist that he believes will help you avoid empty experiences and fill your free hours with exciting, enriching ones instead. We discuss the importance of putting ourselves in challenging or unusual situations, having fulfilling relationships, achieving a state of flow and being in nature. James also talks about the importance of having status and significance for happiness and explains how we can all attain this in our busy lives. Finally, James gives his top tips for leading a happy and fulfilling life. This is a really lively conversation and James is bursting with anecdotes. I hope you enjoy listening. Now before we get started, I do need to give a very quick shout out to our sponsors who are

essential in order for me to be able to put out weekly podcast episodes like this one. Athletic Greens continue their long-term support of my podcast. Athletic Greens is one of the most nutrient-dense whole food supplements that I have come across and is full of vitamins, minerals, prebiotics and digestive enzymes. Now, I prefer that people get all of their nutrition from food, but for some of us, this is not always possible. This week, for example, I have been super busy and rushing around. And taking athletic greens has made a huge difference to my energy levels and mood. So if you're looking to take something each morning as an insurance policy to make sure that you are meeting your nutritional needs, I can highly recommend it.

For listeners of this podcast, if you go to athleticgreens.com forward slash live more, you will be able to access a special offer where you get a free travel pack box containing 20 servings of Athletic Greens, which is worth around £70 with your first order. You can check it out at athleticgreens.com forward slash live more. Now, on to today's conversation. So James, welcome to the Feel Better Live More podcast. Thank you. James, huge fan of your book, Time and How to Spend It. And I guess the obvious place to start for me is, you know,

why do we need a book telling us how we should spend our own time? There's a whole bunch of reasons why today people struggle with getting the most out of their time. One of them is our telephones, but there's a whole bunch of other reasons why we feel time poor, we feel a time crunch. And I think we struggle to get the most out of our time. And also, one of the key reasons why I think there's relevance in this book is that we learn how to be productive with our lives. So we learn the skills of production. That's what we go to school to do. And people go and do marketing degrees and communications degrees, and they want an MBA. But no one takes you aside at school and says, this is what you should do with your free time.

We all think it's really obvious. And if you look at Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's work, the Hungarian-American psychologist, there's a lovely line in his book, Flow, from the early 90s, where he says, and this is from like more than 100,000 pieces of data from people around the world, free time is harder to enjoy than time at work. People think that we know how to have a good time. You know, you look forward to Friday night when you can have a few drinks or you can sit in front of the TV. We look forward to a holiday where you can sit on a sun lounger and do nothing. We think, ah, that's when we're going to be happy. When the

work is done and the stress is over and we're there we've arrived we think that happiness is some kind of destination but the problem is sitting not doing very much is really bad for us because your mind kind of wanders and what we the times when we're happy is this is from flow for example the times when we're happiness is when we're like intensely in the moment let's say you're doing a podcast with somebody who's like super famous and on TV and you're saying stuff, this is me now, and you're thinking, am I just talking? I'm like, no, you're the one on TV.

You know, am I just sort of talking nonsense or am I getting to something? And the opportunity to fail means that you're in the moment and you're kind of like doing what you can to do your best. And that actually, when you kind of check in, that's when people are happiest. So I think that we tend to mistake when we think we're going to be happiest. And we've got a load of pressures on our life that means that we're not getting the most out of our time. So this book does have a relevance for people today. Yeah, I 100% agree. I think your book has really hit on something of this stage in the 21st century where we're living, where we do feel time poor.

And I feel that the time that we do have off, often we're just frittering away, whether it's just, you know, spending three hours just mindlessly surfing the web or whatever it is. And it's a theme that comes up quite a lot on this podcast. I had a guy on recently called Cal Newport. Yeah, deep work. Yeah. And he's got a newer book minimalism sorry no no no just yeah i know that guy yeah but yeah cal's what's great and he um he talks about this idea if we need to be focusing on high quality leisure activities and and that that kept ringing through my mind as i was going through your book it's not dissimilar in terms of, you know, time is a precious commodity that we have that we're sort of, many of us are just wasting away. And you've

got so many great tips in the book on how we can better spend our time. So, you know, I guess it'd be quite good to start off, you know, people listening to this and thinking, well, okay, yes, James has written a book on how I can better spend my time. What are some of those things that I could be doing? Would you mind if I picked up what you just said just then? Sorry, I know that you want me to answer the question. Not at all. Do you remember going to the video store when you were a kid?

Do you remember that thing? Blockbuster. Yeah, exactly, Blockbuster. I remember going to the local ones before there was Blockbuster, really. And you know how you'd go in there, and there's always been loads of movies you'd want to see, ones before there was Blockbuster, really. And you know how you'd go in there, and there's always been loads of movies you'd want to see. But you get into Blockbuster, and you just spend ages in there looking for movies,

and you could never find a movie that you wanted to actually watch. It's like what I do sometimes on Saturdays when I'm trying to watch something on Netflix, actually. I spend like an hour and a half looking, and then I say to someone, we're going to be in bed late now if we watch this. It's too late now to start. Yeah.

The thing is about digital, it's like that hour in the video store, but there's so much more possibility of it so exactly with netflix but we also got it on the internet so we're always looking for something that may be interesting and worth spending our time on and the problem is with this kind of you know massive um you know menu if you like but it's huge opportunity of things that we could do it It becomes ever harder to find. I love that idea of the quality leisure time, quality time. So to answer your question about some tips, probably the simplest thing is to think about the checklist in the book as a kind of way. And the checklist being stories, S-T-O-R-I-E-S. And I'm sure you've got this, i guess for the listeners yeah yeah go through

it please none of the ideas are mine they're all stolen from people much cleverer than me uh i talked to anthropologists and sociologists and psychologists and economists and historians etc i read their science papers and i stole their ideas and pulled them into something that's you know something that works for people, something you can remember. Because the problem with knowledge is not that there is knowledge out there of what we should do with our time. The problem is actioning it on a Saturday morning or a Friday night.

Yeah, James, and I think there's another theme to that there, which is that this area in which we're living in means there is always something else we could read. There's always something else we could watch. There's always more information. You think you've got your head sorted about what you want to do. And then you go on Twitter and you see another asker go, oh, you know, maybe I should be doing that. So I think there's incredible value in terms of what you've done, which is, you know, learning from this great body of research and sort of pulling

it all together in a very actionable form for people. I think it's an incredible value. Thank you. The story sounds, it's funny, I remember, you know, talking to people about this, trying to come up with a checklist. So you've read Atul Gawande's work, I'm sure. You're the kind of British Atul Gawande? I wouldn't go that far at all, no. He's a physician and a great author. You're a physician and a great author. I certainly would not compare myself. He's not on TV though, is he? You got one up on him.

You're winning. I like that, no? I don't even watch much telly. That's the irony of this. I will come to telly because telly is something that you talk about quite a bit, isn't it? Yeah, well, you know, it's a bit like mobile phones.

Mobile phones, TV, lots of things. You know, a bit like alcohol. Use is fine. Abuse is really bad. So a little bit of it is great. You know um watching tv i love the office the u.s office i like watching ricky gervais do comedy stuff um but too much is bad um so stories is um the first s is story uh then it's transformation outside and offline

uh the r is relationships i is intensity e extraordinary. And the S is for status and significance. And all of those sound super simple, obviously, and I hope they should do. Hopefully the story's idea is memorable enough for somebody to action and use. But there's science underneath each one of them. So the story is really simply put, although I'd love to go into it in more detail if we have the time, is really simply put, although I'd love to go into it in more detail if we have the time, is the magic of story is when you tell a story, it connects you with someone else. It sets off a domino line that leads to happiness pretty directly. So the way that this works is if I was to tell you a story about the time I was cycling on my bicycle through London

and another cyclist came up alongside me and bumped into me and knocked me and I fell onto some grass. The thing is, as I tell you that story, you're picturing it. And that's something called mirror neurons, which was discovered, I think, like within the last 10 years or so, maybe a little bit longer. And mirror neurons is the basic idea that when one person tells a story, the other person's neurons in their brain fire up as well. So basically, our brains are working in the same in sync, which is a, I guess, a physical manifestation of empathy because it creates some, you know, we are thinking on the same lines. And that creates a connection. Connection is relationships. Relationships is happiness.

connection. Connection is relationships. Relationships is happiness. So when you start by doing something, doing anything, if you, you know, go climb a tree, if you go for a walk with a friend, or if you actually, the best stories, the ones where something goes wrong, if you go camping and your tent blows down, or you try to get a job and you, um, it doesn't work out or you go on a date, it's probably some years since you've been on a date, but you know, if you, you know, those friends of ours that, you know, go on on dates the magic of a bad date is a bad date turns into a story a story when you tell it fires up the person listening's mirror neurons that creates empathy that creates connection that creates relationships so the magic of any kind of story is it creates relationships and that's happiness there's so much coming in my head as you said that um you know we're joking a little bit about

the sort of telework that i've done in the past and what's interesting is that a few years ago when i've never done any television i remember the producers saying to me there has to be a hero's journey in everything that comes out so that's kind of what you're saying is that there has to be that that story when they're editing it has to be that failure in the middle that you then overcome um and there's a book out in the middle that you then overcome um and there's a book out at the moment that you've read it or not by will store the art and science i think it's called the science of storytelling and again it's about how you know how um how sort of ingrained storytelling is to us as humans and how important it is and so when you talk about

storytelling and stories let let's say, how does that equate to people better spending any time off that they've got? It's a great question. I don't know that book. So thank you. I read a whole bunch of books on, you know, story. In terms of how you think about your time off, the difference that it makes is if you know the story leads to happiness, then in your experiences, in what you do with your weekend and what you do with your holiday and what you do with your Thursday night, you should think about the story that it might give you. And what's, I love the fact you brought up the hero's journey here because most of us think

that what we want from our time off, because we work hard and we deserve it, thank you very much. We want this kind of relaxing time where everything works. But if you look at the hero's journey and the structure, the kind of man in whole person problem solution kind of, you know, three step arc, if you like. No decent story happens where everything works out. You know, think about Cinderella. decent story happens where everything works out you know think about cinderella there's no if cinderella had been living with her mum and dad and um she met a prince and got married it's just not a story yeah but her mum dying her horrible stepmother movie and her evil stepsisters coming and making her life terrible and then her kind of hauling her way out of this and that um

magical woman uh fairy godmother yeah you know she gave her the opportunity and she meets the prince and she goes to the ball and then she has to come away because you know it's midnight and then jeopardy is she going to get the guy or not and eventually you know he goes around with a glass zipper and he finds her and they're all happily ever after that's only a story because things went wrong so what that means in terms of, you know, the takeout for a person in terms of what they should do with their time is instead of just always aiming for sort of the perfect weekend or the perfect holiday, when stuff goes wrong, that's your opportunity to have a story. So the thing is, if you think

about the importance of story in terms of it leading to relationships and therefore happiness, if you come back from your holiday and someone says to you, how was your holiday? And you say, ah, it was really nice. We went to this villa, we hung out, we had barbecues, we swam in the pool. It was nice. That's a rubbish story. Whereas if you go on that holiday and let's say you've got that set up you've earned you know you've earned your your holiday so you're going to do that go do this thing um but if you're aware of the fact of the importance of story you won't just sit by the pool and have a nice time and have a barbecue i'm not saying you necessarily will um you know you know smash the windows or something yeah i'll have a hike on nicks or something which is a great story well getting lost is a great story yeah but maybe what you'll do is you'll go out and you'll seek out some kind

of adventure and you'll be aware of the fact especially if you were to buy the book and read it and you were to look at the structure of the hero's journey and you were to understand the importance of um tests and allies and enemies and saying yes to adventure you'd think to yourself okay fine so we should do something while we're away. This is on a weekend, this on a Tuesday night, whatever. We should do something. We say, yes, there's some kind of adventure. And then we should accept the fact that it's going to have some challenges in there. There'll be some tests. There'll be some allies. There'll be friends on our side and there'll be enemies too. There'll be people who will deliberately,

you know, like the annoying boss that you may or may not have had or maybe a director you've worked with or some i don't know there's people who you just think or maybe when you've been on tv you've had people who just say weird stuff to you when you're doing live tv and you think they're trying to stop you they're giving you an opportunity to grow and to be the hero of your story which will give you a better story to tell other people and therefore as you tell story, it will fire their mirror neurons, better story, better connection, better relationships, more happiness. Does that make sense?

Yeah, no, it does make sense. So I'm just trying to think, does that mean in some ways, you know, have our lives become a little bit too safe, a little bit too predictable, a little bit too, so this is what I do at the weekend. You know, I go and I run on the treadmill for 30 minutes, you know, on that flat, predictable

surface. I mean, it doesn't have to be running, let's say, but for example, running out on a trail or in the local, you know, park or whatever, where, you know, you're going to have a few obstacles or there might be a dog that you have to coming up to, avoid i don't know it's not quite the same thing as hero's journey i don't know i'm just trying to draw into something practical is that a way of creating a little bit of a story for someone like they want to go running right so they enjoy running but doing it on a treadmill in a very sterile environment it's going to have a very different experience than doing it out and about right yeah yeah i really like the way you're taking this thank you it's really it's no no but but how do you take this idea and actually apply it in your life and your idea

is a good one actually especially being outside and offline and going running in the woods as opposed to just running on a treadmill it's going to be really good for you but you're right i think this is it's not so much about designing every last part of your life. It's accepting that serendipity and spontaneity is a key part of things. But maybe it's putting yourself in a situation where something might happen. Doesn't necessarily happen. Doesn't happen every time, but putting yourself in a situation where there's a line I use in the book, instead of head for the holes,

think about the man in whole journey so the person problem solution the idea that we need to test and a trial is aim for um or put yourself in a situation where something might happen so yeah going on a trail run you could bump into an old friend you may or may not i don't know but you could bump into some people which is always a good thing too because you may communicate with people you might get lost you might get lost and lost is great because well, as long as you come back alive, that's an ideal situation. But lost is a great situation because it's automatically going to be a story. You're going to have a challenge because you don't know where you're going, especially if you get lost without your telephone, because then you actually have to ask people.

And you actually rather than just like, oh yeah, okay fine and you you know follow the way back yeah and i guess telephones well we call them telephones they're not really telephones anymore are they they're in fact talking on them is probably one of the least things that we do on them you know our smartphones they're sort of computers like mega computers in our pocket in so many ways, they've sort of, you know, the convenience that they've afforded us has actually taken away some of this uncertainty. So, you know, you're on a run with your phone, you always know where you are with the GPS, right? So, in theory, anyway, and so that idea that you could get lost is, you know, technology, I think, has started to erode those things slightly out of our lives, that uncertainty,

because we can get access to everything. We don't have to imagine because we can just find out, you know, I don't know, there's something in that, isn't there, where society has changed so dramatically in the last five or 10 years, that these experiences that, you know, that probably the experiences that we need to go through to, you know, that is inherently human, those for some of us have just sort of been eroded out of society. And then you write about Tough Mudder in the book. And I guess, is that why we're starting to crave things like Tough Mudder and these sort of uncomfortable, challenging experiences? Are we trying to put that back in to something that we've lost? Yes. challenging experience that we're trying to put that back in to something that we've lost yes um there's a great book called what doesn't kill us by a guy called scott something american guy um really nice book and i met him um he's a friend of scott keneally's who's in the book who is um the guy who made that movie rise of the sufferfest and his um exploration in that movie

was why do people want to do this thing and I remember when I met him and he said look you want to come up and do this tough tough guy thing the original one up in Wolverhampton and I went up there on a Sunday and I just I mean it was cold there were people you know just basically jumping into icy water and I was wearing a big puffer jacket. I think that what modern life has done has taken away so many of the things that have made us who we are and the things that have given us. This guy, Scott, in this book, What Doesn't Kill Us, his theory is that we're mollycoddled, we have central heating, and it's really not good for our physiological well-being either. The fact the fact that we never get cold anymore he thinks we should do that we should get hungry as well you know we're always kind of you know fat and well-fed and if you think about what life was

like till 1750 or maybe even the 20th century for 99 of humans the big problem the most humans since we became homo sapiens what 400, 400 odd thousand years ago or whatever, was how do you get enough food to feed the family, to, you know, to make things work, right? And all of a sudden we live in this world where we have central heating, we've got too many pairs of shoes. My kids can say in the morning,

I don't want that cereal, I want the other cereal. Yeah, you can choose. Yeah, exactly, choice. And you don't have to finish everything in your bowl. We try and make them do that. But, you know, yeah, I think the people, you know, the reason people want to do Tough Mudder and they want to do extreme sports and, you know, think about the idea of a treadmill for a moment. Imagine trying to sell that to somebody 150 years ago. Okay, they'd be like, what? So you run on the spot? Why would you do that? It doesn't make any sense. But we live these sedentary lives where we just press buttons for a living. And I think we need something else. I'm into bouldering on a kind of climbing wall. There was one opening in my house recently.

And I pop out there probably four times a week because it really scares me, you know, even when I'm about a foot off the floor, which is embarrassing, but true. It's frightening and I could fall and I'm in the moment as opposed to when I'm sat and I work from home. So I work and I work kind of locally in cafes, you know, wifi places. You know, I sit there and people bring me tea or I'm sat in my kitchen and it's all very pleasant. And, you know, if I press that email and I've sent it too soon, oh, that might be a bit awkward. But it's not very awkward. Nothing's really going to happen. There is something about what you're saying about a little bit of fear, a little bit that things could go wrong. That really has been removed from so many of our lives.

Everything's safer. That's a good thing, right? been removed from so many of our lives um everything's safer that's a good thing right in general you know it is a good thing for society but you know maybe it's come at a cost for us in terms of our happiness the way we feel about ourselves it's just too sterile and uh you know it's it's dull isn't it yeah i think so i think so and i think your example of bouldering is a great one because people who are listening to this might be thinking okay that's great but how do I get a bit more fear and excitement into my leisure time let's say and you know you're not necessarily saying go skydiving although I'm sure you wouldn't be averse to people going skydiving you're saying well I go bouldering three to four times a week indoor climbing to give you that sense of um adventure and you know as we said

just off air before we started recording i in my last book the stress solution i spoke about how my wife um she was i sort of told the story about how you know she would sometimes get quite stressed and quite anxious and is that living with you is that what caused well that would do that to be fair that would do that to anyone uh but indoor climbing she'll be loving that when she hears that she's absolutely loving that okay good um but i think indoor climbing has you know it's changed her life um she loves it she loves the challenge but she also says when i'm up there on the wall i switch off all the troubles in life, all the stresses of day-to-day life, because I've got to be focused on where my next position is going to be. And I guess that's not quite the same thing as fear. But it sort of is, isn't it? Because you're scared you're going to fall. So the fear forces you to be in the moment. Maybe that'll set it. No, no, totally. I want to think about what you said before about, you know, it might be skydiving from one person, but that may not suit someone else. If you look at,

again, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's work, he's got the challenge and skill kind of he's got a graph that shows the difference between the two. And the magic for flow is finding the right combination between challenge against skill that suits you. So let's say you're playing tennis against a friend and your friend is like rubbish.

I don't know if you've ever done that or played squash or played sport against someone who's not very good. It's no fun, is it? Because, you know, basically your skill is way too high for the challenge. But then there's that other time where you play a friend who's so good that, you know, they serve and it just goes straight past you. There's no fun there either because you...'s you need the sweet spot don't you exactly and he talks about it i think calls it um the flow channel or something where you got the right mix between challenge which could which could be you know for some people jumping out of a plane is exactly the kind of um challenge that suits them to get into flow for someone else they might

think wow that is way too much for your wife it clearly works for bouldering and it's really for indoor climbing so how does something like parkrun for example parkrun is a activity that people will do at the weekends and is exploding in popularity that started off as a i think 13 men in london having a run i think in 2004 i could be something wrong i hope yeah in a park that's the name and then it's now exposed to millions around the world are doing it weekly which is just incredible so what is it possible to run park run through your checklist and see how many of those criteria it meets yeah yeah absolutely um i think one of the things the way the stories checklist can work for people is you can think of previous experiences you've had

run it through the checklist so you start to understand how how it works because then you think about future experiences and if they're missing out on on a past element you could bring it in so let's so with parkrun, so does it give you a story? I mean, it's a simple story. It's, you know, I got up on a Saturday and I went for a run. It's probably not the most complex story there is. But there is a story there, I think. One of the things about running, actually, is you hit the wall.

And when I do running, I kind of hit the wall after about 50 meters. I hit my first kind of, oh, can I stop now? But the story could be, I mean, I do it every Saturday with my son. Okay. How old is he? He is eight at the moment. And he, like, I don't know, just trying to think about stories. We're quite creative, can't we?

Because sometimes, let's say, something's hurting, he doesn't want to do it, and he gets to a point, and there's a volunteer that says, come on, you're going to beat your dad today. And that sort of gives him a little spark, you know a little spring in his step oh you know i could beat daddy today that is kind of a story isn't it you're right and it's certainly a better story than staying at home watching tv it definitely gives you a story or you're just going on the treadmill you did it yeah absolutely it's a better story than that because you'll be in a park and

you'll interact with other people and if you look at the hero's journey the importance of the the test and the allies and the enemies and the example you've just given is a really great example of an ally of someone saying hey go for it you know you can do this yeah i guess the enemy is that voice inside that says i'll take it easy you don't need to go running um and it is a test in itself actually doing it's 5k correct yeah yeah so it's you know it's 5k it's a especially for Yeah. So, you know, it's 5K. Especially for an eight-year-old. Yeah, it's a test. It's doing well.

So what else is in the checklist that we can go through with respect to parkrun? Well, let's run through the whole thing. So, you know, there is a story to it. And I think you're absolutely right. There is a hero's journey and that there is a challenge and you get over that challenge. Transformation is at its simplest. at its simplest, it kind of takes the idea of the four or five most robust frameworks for happiness, like self-determination theory, which all have the idea of autonomy and change and growth and development in them. So it's the idea of being who you really feel you are and growing

into the person you feel like you could become. And so the magic of going on a park run is, for a start, there's transformation that you're not just at home, you're not just at work, you're not just doing the thing, you're not just at school, you're doing something different, you're in a different place. In the book, I've got this idea of the three degrees of transformation. I love that chapter on transformation. It's really, really great. But also, if you think about that park run, it's very much something different to what you'd normally be doing. And the fact that you're spending a bit will come to the after relationships. Yeah.

But, you know, the opportunity for you and your son to do something together is wonderful because you're building, you know, you're building a relationship with him. And if you then think about the O for outside and offline and where running came from originally and the guy who discovered it he partly discovered i think i think all of us when we go and um you know come up with something in our in our lives some it sometimes harks back to who we are and if you think about um trying to think of his name now the chap who discovered running the guy who was running jerry morris when you say discovered running the health benefits of running exactly because you i didn't know that story it was great and now he's running in london at the weekends and he's he's putting together the research and how running is good for us or oh or exercise of sorts yeah i think the hunch for that partly came from the fact when he was a boy in glasgow his dad used to make them walk i think it

was um a mile or two miles or something and if they achieved it in a particular time he'd get he'd get an ice cream right and if they were slow in a particular time he'd get he'd get an ice cream right and if they were slow in that time he'd just get a choc ice and i got the impression that the ice cream was better so you know he had this memory of him and his dad doing this thing so when he when he came across this was in the late 40s this problem of more men getting cardiovascular problems and you know heart attacks and dying he kind of had this hunch that it might be to do with the fact that because it was on the buses he noticed that the bus drivers were dying uh this was the research twice as often

as the conductors and this is something that just just for people who've not read the book yet just to you know you make the case so beautifully that this is something that we take as gospel now that being physically active is good for us but we didn't always something that we take as gospel now that being physically active is good for us but we didn't always know that we didn't always have the research to back it up but it's amazing how quickly society changes and what we something we don't know we we now regard as fact yeah i found that super interesting actually well that's one of the things i think that stories should help nudge people to have make better better decisions. Once you know, there's, there's science behind a decision.

This is going to nudge people to make the better decision. And in this, you mentioned there about the, the, um, jogging. It was in, um,

if you look at stats for smoking in the U S for example, up till 1962, the numbers of people smoking went up and up and up and up. Then 1962, u.s surgeon general says you know something that i think people probably intuitively knew because if you smoke you get a smoker's cough right and you're breathing in smoke i mean it doesn't make a lot of sense but in 1962 the u.s surgeon general says smoking is bad for people you know and all of a sudden it goes down and down and down and down

and down and so having that science as you say once we know that um jogging is actually really good for people and you know impact stuff that gets your heart really going more people go do it and so we're now seeing this incredible increase in people doing it so yeah so the transformation is doing something different to what you normally do but it's also if you think about you know running 5k it's becoming something it's because a you're becoming because you're becoming fitter it's also the potential of who you who you have the possibility to be so going now from s and t now to the o and the the two o's of the o stories yeah you see how i cheated i like it there's a friend of mine who's like, so it's not really stories, is it?

It's stories. Anyway, the O section of the book about outside and offline, biophilia is really a thing. So when you see, and there's weird data that people looking at trees are happier than people looking at buildings,

not weird data, but data that confirms what we sort of feel intuitively. I love it when there's so much science now supporting what we sort of intuitively know which is great yeah you know because we all know we feel better in nature yeah we all know that and you you like i did actually in my last book talks about forest bathing and the science behind it yeah um but there's also this thing that i've explored before about fractals in nature okay do you know fractals yeah yeah you know there's geometric shapes you only get I used to go to raves in the 90s so I know what fractals are but simply when we look at fractals the levels of the stress

hormone cortisol go down in our body so you know just simply being in nature will lower your stress levels and what I find remarkable is I think the University of Brighton did this is being in nature will lower your stress levels. And what I find remarkable is, I think the University of Brighton did this, is being in nature lowers your cortisol levels. Brilliant. Even if you can't go into nature, even just looking at nature, you think, this is incredible, isn't it? We've got science to support what we sort of already know. Yeah.

I've got the kids to start watching the David Attenborough show. Yeah. Because we're watching some nature. But, you know, knowing that stuff makes me go to our park more. But the, you know, if you're doing a park run, you are by definition outside,

you're in a park, which is, we've talked about the biophilic, it's really good for you. You're offline. But James, look, there is so much in there.

There's so many practical examples of what people can do to, you know, to, to make more, I wouldn't say efficient use of their time, more productive use of their time, use their time in a way that's going to make them happier. If you think about food, okay, so if you think about, you know, there's loads of food that you could eat, but we all know there are some foods which are empty calories, you know, some fast food,

sugar products, you know, there's the data that comes out that shows that you know there's too much sugar is not very good for us but we also know there are like superfoods and whether superfood is a bit of a marketing term but we also know there are certain foods like blueberries like broccoli like kale like you know vegetables you know this stuff will give you good skin they'll give you good energy they'll they'll probably lower your stress rather than increase your stress versus sugar. I'm sure you know much more about this than I do. But, you know, basically…

No, no, it's a good analogy. There are empty calories and there are superfoods. And in exactly the same way, there are empty experiences and I think there are superfood experiences as well. And the stories checklist is intended to nudge people to have fewer of the empty experiences and far more of the superfood experiences and the park run should we continue the analysis so um outside and offline we got we got that and just to throw in there that that one of the the great things about going for a run with your son with the with the phone left in the car is that you're just there yeah you're in the moment you and the problem with device do you

charge your phone in the bedroom no absolutely not congrats okay fine i also agree i think there we haven't gone to the the the sort of things we we mutually agree on but i saw one of your tweets a few days ago which is i was so happy to see you know you were saying no notifications don't charge your phone i was like yeah these are the things i'm absolutely behind 100 have you met a guy called bruce daisley no he's vp at twitter he's got this thing about doing new stuff for work and he says similar kind of things interestingly it's kind of a thing around really um but i imagine some of your listeners chart i'm going to mention this because some of your listeners probably charge their phones in their bedrooms. No doubt.

And the thing is, if you charge your phone in the bedroom, you won't sleep as well and you'll have less sex. And there's data backing that up, both of those statements, which I love. Because the thing is, you know, if you've got your telephone in your bedroom, that's the device that your boss contacts you on. It's the one that you get messages about school or whatever right or find out about football next week or whatever or you know people try and sell you stuff there and you're taking that all into the bedroom with you but if you have that somewhere else then you can actually switch off and be just you and your partner in the bedroom um and a lot of people say but i use it as my alarm clock and I just mention this

because alarm clocks are quite cheap they're really not that expensive I've got a five quid one at home right yeah exactly you can get them for about five pounds

or if you spend ten pounds you can get a stylish one yeah there you go anyway I just mentioned that so okay going back to the park run so we've got the ST and we've got the O

and then the R is about relationships and particularly in your case you're going with your son so you're building something that you do with him he'll remember that you'll remember that

or you know leave you with a happy memory I want to have that to my week genuinely nice but there's all those other people so you might recognise some of them but also one of the reasons

why I experience the better material goods is they connect us to other people in a way that material goods just don't so the fact that you're going running at the park run you might see people you recognise or people you don't but you're all like you're all in this together. So it gives us a feeling

of belonging. And there's this data from Harvard, I think possibly one of the longest studies ever conducted, but been running since 1939, that shows very clearly that the best indicator of a long, happy, healthy life is not how much you smoke or how much exercise you get or what you eat. It's having relationships. So putting your focus into relationships in some ways is great for happiness and well-being and longevity. The eyes for intensity. Okay, so there are only two checklists in the book. It's the stories checklist and the dark funk checklist.

In the chapter intensity, so there's the checklist dark funk, D-A-R-G-F-U-N-C. And that is all about how to design a flow experience. D is for delete distractions. And the thing is, if you're running and you've got, you know, adrenaline running through your system, maybe you've taken your phone with you. You should probably leave that at home. You're probably not thinking about your deadline because after a while you're just in the zone. I mean, that first bit, maybe you've taken your phone with you, you should probably leave that at home. You're probably not thinking about your deadline because after a while, you're just in the zone. I mean, that first bit, maybe you are, maybe those thoughts come, but the magic of running,

it's a bit like, you know, really well done meditation. But I think it's the same kind of idea. You're going to be, so flow is, D is delete distractions. A is being active physically, mentally, emotionally, etc. R is for risk because you might fail to finish your run. You might go so far. You know that thought sometimes when you're running, you think, what if I've run out of energy?

Can I get a taxi home? Do you know what I mean? G and F of goals and feedback. So the thing is about running, you'll know you're getting somewhere. You can feel that. Do you see what I mean? You've set yourself a run around the park once or whatever. You've got a goal that you want to achieve or you want to get there and then go home again.

And then the final bit is the unc which is um unusual new and complex even if you're if especially if you're if you're running on a treadmill you know what's there but if you go for a run in your local park or in local woods or something you're going to see things that are going to be in some way possibly unusual possibly news possibly complex if you think about you know the machines taking over all sorts of kind of tasks if not jobs at this moment but if you think about the future the future more tasks will be done by the machines so how do we stay relevant how do we be valuable we need to be creative if you want to be creative you want to be happy you

need to get into flow the way to get into flow is by using this dark funk checklist and the park run is a great example of that. The E is for extraordinary and extraordinary is about, it's about the moments in life. We remember things through snapshots. So if you were to think back to your week,

you would forget most of it. You'd probably forget a large part of the journey to get here today. You'd probably forget everything about this conversation with me, but you'd probably remember running with your son whether it's especially

actually if it's raining you'd remember that you know that thing that happened so designing experiences thinking about stuff that's kind of unusual unusual or different is really important there's more to extraordinary but parkrun can work for that and then the last one is about status and significance. And this is the surreal fact that Oscar winners live four years longer than normal actors. It's a surreal fact. And it illustrates something. I mean, whether that's because they won the Oscar or not is really up for debate, frankly. But it illustrates a very simple fact, which is that more status means you'll live longer and you'll be happier and healthier. And that's kind of scary because, you know, everyone's happy to talk about exercise. Everyone's happy to say, yeah, exercise makes you live longer. I'm going to do it. I'm going to get

more of this. And you, you know, your parent or your partner will say, you know, go out for a run, go out and do something. But no one says, you know, no one's going to come out of listening to this and say, I want more status. It's a really weird thing to say. So how can people get more status? Well, there's a whole bunch of ways to get, you know, status is evolving. But one way is being fit and healthy, actually. Right. If you think about, if you see people who are kind of slovenly and overweight compared to someone who's kind of super slim.

Look at Jeff Bezos. If you see pictures of Jeff Bezos from the 90s, he was kind of nice kind of geeky out of shape guy look at him now he's a billionaire yeah he's hot you know he's in really really good shape um i think we get status by being healthy nowadays and we get status in a whole bunch of other ways um but so the park run would definitely give you a sense i think of standing taller yeah you know being happy with who you are and being being a feeling of self-worth isn't it as well which I guess plays into status that feeling when you're you're doing something challenging you're doing it regularly you feel good about yourself it builds up your

self-esteem which it must be a huge part of status is how you feel about yourself and your self-worth yeah absolutely and there's the other element of status and why that chapter is called status and significance is because people are so bloody awkward about the idea of status and i think we can upgrade brits i would guess do you know truth be told it's everywhere you go is it i've been you know in the us and of course they call it status and they i've had people really because talk once i gave in New York, and a few of the people were really like, no, no, no, no, you know, status doesn't matter to us. I'm like, it does.

In fact, it matters to you more than other places because if you've read Status Anxiety by Alan de Botton, it's a wonderful exploration of this kind of field. If you live in a society where nobody can change who they are, you live in a kind of very structured feudal society, status doesn't matter. It has no pejorative kind of sense to it because you just are where you were born. And that's not bad or good. rise to the top if we believe in social mobility and the idea that people can rise to the rise higher that also means people can fall lower so in that kind of society your status has a real impact yeah on you know because if you fail kind of says something maybe about you as well yeah um i don't want to be negative about failure because you need to be able to go you know go on that

journey but i'm going to throw in here the importance of significance associated with status because status can be very egotistical can be very kind of me me me my success is my success but significance is about success that's that's egotistical but also altruistic oprah winfrey is a super example of this she is obviously wildly successful but she's also given away more than 400 million. She's taking people with her. And it's this idea that, you know, let's take your work, you know, as a GP, you know, being a GP is a wonderful way to have status in society because you've, you know, you've earned it by studying to get to that point, but it's also significant because you could, because you mean something to a community and you're doing something for other people. So to this back to the parkrun one of the things that you're doing is

you're doing something for your son i think one of the reasons why um children are so good for our happiness is we give so much to them but when you give to your children you're sort of not giving it to other people because you're giving to someone that's you know you know who's very closely connected to you but you're giving something to your son which is running and you're giving him the joy of exercise and the well-being that comes with that and that just gives you a sort of different sense about who you are as well there's there's loads of data that shows that um wonderful data that shows that if you've got um spare 100 pounds if you want to be happy the best there's two places to spend it on. One is experiences and the other is on other people that will make you happier than spending it on yourself. And there's this new data that's come out, um, like within the last year or so

from Cassie McGillner, uh, in particular, um, UCLA that shows that if you give your time to other people, you'll be happier too. So it weird you know think about money you can always get more money but the idea that giving your finite resource you know the ultimate resource that you have which is time giving that to somebody else can actually bring you more happiness than doing something for yourself so if you're taking your son even though you're getting something good out of it for yourself but you'll run obviously at different pace so you get slightly less kind of exercise benefit if you go with your son but you'll get so much more because you're giving something to somebody else. So that's a brilliant place to end the podcast. So many thoughts going through my head, so many other themes we could have explored. Maybe we'll do that at another time. Always,

if possible, like to leave the listener with three or four quick and simple tips that they might be able to apply in their own life immediately? I don't know if you have any at all that you could think of. People listen to this podcast, so they want to be happier. They want some tips on how to better spend their time. You've got three or four things that they could think about doing. The simplest thing is to think about that idea of stories. Because from stories, you can go to everything. You can go to story, which is actually head for the holes, head for the problems, go on adventure. The T, which is, you know, change is good.

O, outside and offline. Turn your notifications off. Put your phone on airplane mode more often. If you go to meet a friend in a pub, do you remember the old way where you'd like say you're going to meet somewhere? And you'd have to be there. And you'd pitch up around that time. You wouldn't text, I'll be there in five. And then you'd, you know that friend of yours that phones you and says, where are you?

And you're like, I'm in the pub, find me. Turn your phone onto silent mode. Relationships, spend more time with your friends and your family. Pick up the phone to that friend that you haven't seen for a while because maybe you had a fallout or maybe there was something that wasn't quite right and you haven't had the time for. And make that effort to make a connection. Eye intensity. Think of the dog funk checklist.

Turn your phone off. Go do something that's hard, like climbing, like swimming, like whatever. Something that gets you in the moment. Dance to music with your kids in the morning. Sing to, what's that? The Greatest Showman. You know, or to some, you know, some sort of ridiculous song from Frozen or something. dance to music with your kids in the morning sing to um what's that the greatest showman you know or or to some you know some sort of ridiculous song from frozen or something the e for extraordinary um one of the magical things about um extraordinary is anticipate

is about experiences is anticipation it's free happiness so make a plan today with somebody to do something in six months time doesn't matter if you're necessarily going to stick to it, but arrange lunch with a friend. It's that anticipation where the value is. Free happiness. You can look forward to that extraordinary thing you're going to do. That is a brilliant tip, actually. Put those in the diaries. You've got something to look forward to.

Book your holidays for next year now. So you know it's there. Exactly. That way you can look forward to it. And it's free happiness. And the status is significant is think of an elderly neighbour or someone who's a bit lonely and go do something for them.

Have a cup of tea with them. Maybe take three cookies and say, look, I've only got 15 minutes and have a cup of tea with them or maybe go and dig in their garden or do something for somebody else and it'll give you free happiness.

James, brilliant tips for people. Thank you for joining me today. I hope we get to continue this conversation at some point in the future. Thank you very much. That concludes this week's episode of the Feel Better Live More podcast. I really hope that the conversation I had with James has given you a fresh perspective and some new ideas on how to plan and spend your free time. As always, do let James and I know what you thought of today's conversation. James is most active on Twitter at James Warman, and I'm active on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Do wherever possible, please try and use the hashtag FBLM so that I can easily find your comments. If you want to continue your learning experience now that the podcast is over, do check out the show notes page, drchastity.com forward slash 64, where you can read more about James and his book, all of the things we talked about today in the podcast. And there are some links as well to related articles. Some of the themes that I've spoken about with James today, for example, getting outside and offline, spending more time in nature, trying to access flow states as much as possible, are topics that I've covered in great detail

in my first two books. My first book, The Four Pillar Plan, has been a bestseller all over the world and is available to buy in all the usual places. It is a really practical book that serves as a blueprint of how to live well in the 21st century. Please note that if you are listening in the USA or Canada, the book is available for you with a different title, How to Make Disease Disappear. My latest book, The Stress Solution, is also available to purchase and deals with the most important health epidemic of our time, stress. All of my books are available to buy as paperbacks, ebooks, or as audiobooks, which I am narrating. If you enjoy

my weekly shows, one of the best ways that you can support them is by leaving a review on whichever platform you listen to podcasts on. You can also help me spread the word by taking a screenshot right now and sharing with your friends and family on your social media channels, or you can simply tell your friends and family about the show. I really do appreciate your support. A big thank you to Richard Hughes for editing the podcast and to Ali Ferguson and Liam Saunders for the theme tune. That is it for today. I hope you have a fabulous week. Make sure that you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back in one week's time with my latest episode. Remember, you are the architect of your own health. Making lifestyle changes always worth

it because when you feel better, you live more. I'll see you next time. Thank you.