Modern Wisdom - #017 - Dr Euan Lawson - Your Desk Is Killing You; How To Reduce Workplace Pain And Become More Productive

Episode Date: June 11, 2018

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! Extra Stuff: Follow Dr Lawson online - http://www.blokeology.io/ Buy The Healthy Writer - https://amzn.to/2LHkf1U Check out everything I recommend from books to products and help support the podcast at no extra cost to you by shopping through this link - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Ewan 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 Blow College podcast, check it 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. 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. 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 Yusuf, 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 three, 3K views, maybe already, really, really happy with. I've had loads of messages about it. 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. Ewan Lawson. Enjoy, make some notes and hopefully you will wake up tomorrow with a fresh set of eyes

before you go to work. Doctor you in Lawson? Welcome to Modern Wisdom. Hello Chris. How are you? Very well, thank you, and yourself. 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 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 a For one of the better term kind of suffering in silence, dealing with it as a byproduct of, well, this is work, and the same way is going down the coal mine, you know, however many years ago would have been, oh, well, you know, this is just, it's just 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 it and the making of it to be a healthy environment doesn't seem to be? I guess the whole kind of, I think you're right, it's a bit of a modern

plague isn't it? People are absolutely just getting increasingly aware of 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, there's a bit of catching up to do 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 10, 20 years ago, we didn't have little screens to look at. The iPhone was only in, iPad only appeared a decade ago, whatever it was. It's a really short period of time, isn't it? And so the health-related consequences of doing, looking at screens all the time, looking at computers, that as 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. Yeah, no, I think that's 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 be waking up tomorrow with a fresh set of eyes as they go into work. So can you give us a little bit of background to yourself please for the listeners who don't know who you are? So I'm a doctor, I'm a GP, so a general practitioner. And for those of them, those of you 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 just 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 was in the army a few years ago, I've always had an interest in being physically healthy of course, but like everybody I've had my own set of 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. 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, 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 obviously aligns with my personal, my professional life as well as a doctor. And I was involved in writing a book last year with Drana Peiner, get a well-known creative

entrepreneur and nonfiction fiction writer, a 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. Absolutely. They're not getting active enough and they just want to do something about it. Yeah, I agree. I think that's, I wouldn't like to guess the percentage of people,

but a large majority of almost everyone will spend over 15, 20 hours a week, sort of towards the bottom end. And then you're talking, if you work in a call center or if you're a knowledge worker of pretty much any kind, it's.5 hours a week is probably 37 hours set at a screen. Yeah, it's insane. And 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 now become slightly a cliche

that sitting is the new smoking. And it's 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 the, you know, the sedentary life. That's a massively toxic, I think. Just, just a little disruptive, is it? 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 interested. I'm really keen on actually delving into the evidence and not just kind of putting out

you know kind of vague opinion. And actually, yeah, I recognize the importance of anecdotes as well, that you know, in certain extent, everybody that comes in to see you as a patient as they're then individual. And there's problems with applying evidence to individuals, that's the challenge of being a doctor. It's hard to put a number on it, because sometimes the relationship between sitting and putting health isn't completely demonstrable. It's not completely easy to show. And it's a little bit contradictory in places.

So you would struggle to quantify it. I think what it's easier to show is that people who are physically active enjoy longer life, better quality of life, and a whole lot of other kind of measurements that go with that in terms of their risk of the cardiovascular disease, diabetes, they're all massively improved by being active.

And it's harder to prove that just sitting as an activity is actually bad for you. Yeah, I think it's the general sort of the whole picture of how sedentary you are that's really important. Yeah, for think it's the general general sort of the whole picture of the house of entry You are that's really important. Yeah for sure. I think certainly for myself 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

Yeah, and I think I've probably kidded myself into believing for quite a while I also know that I'm very sedentary at other points as well. Yeah. And I think I've probably kidded myself into believing for quite a while that, well, it's fine. 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 screen, that's fine because the physical effect will be mitigated by me binging myself in a two-hour crossfit session or whatever it might be. Yeah.

Is that the wrong way to look at it? No, no. Actually, I looked into this a little bit for the book as well, and there's something that you fall into that, sort of, slight category of weekend warrior, that I recognize it's not always just at the weekends. And there is some evidence that if you do your exercise batched up, say it the weekend in that classic weekend warrior kind of approach, that does seem to be helpful.

So you can mitigate some of the harms of your rest of your week being relatively inactive. OK. I think some of the difficulties, you mentioned coal miners at the start. Actually, the difficulty that is coal miners were incredibly physically active. They didn't do any sitting down. I mean, at least that was one bonus to take away from it, I suppose. Yeah, but they're incredibly good at dying young for various reasons. But if you look at senior executives, aren't you, your average CEO, they spent their whole life sitting down,

but they're sort of societal level that they operate at. They're incredibly likely to have good health outcomes as well. So that's why they 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. I think if you look at a bit of one that I've certainly saw one academic paper which looked at all the evidence and it certainly suggested that sitting down and being an active actually caused deaths and so I think it's reasonable to say sitting is killing people. Wow. But that kind of it's always as Ben Goldaic here would say it's always a it's a it was a I think a finance a little bit more complicated. Yeah.

There's always complications around the edges. But I'm being active and tackling the sitting is clearly a massive priority for most people. Yeah, definitely. So, let's say with this Instagram post that I fired out earlier on, I got a whole host 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 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? Okay, so I'm not ever seen any evidence on what the mistakes people make, but what I would say is that the initial mistake

is most people don't make any effort to design their workstation at all. Is there a seat, is there a table, is there a laptop? Yeah, is there anybody else sat there? No, this or D. Okay. That is probably their approach. And hot desking, that's certainly gonna be the approach that a lot of people have.

Yeah, well that's all you can do, yeah. Yeah, exactly. You just got to turn up and plonk your butt down. And if you get a spare seat in the library, if you're a student, then you're happy. And there's often the way it goes. So I'm not sure about specific mistakes people make. The kind of things that the first thing we could perhaps talk about is laptops and notebooks. And I would say they are kind of things that the first thing I would perhaps talk about is laptops and notebooks. And I would say they are kind of like the, they are toxic, equivalent ergonomically. They are pretty horrific. And 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, for a lot of people, be a source of a great deal of problems. Okay. So, the first thing they do is they put your wrists all the wrong angles, and the ideal position for your wrists is that not resting on anything, and probably at about sort of parallel to the floor and 90 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 exactly

the right height so that you can make that work for your relatively 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. Okay. And then, because you've got the mouse sat in front of you, it's awkward, it tends to your wrists end up contorted in the wrong position. So an external keyboard is usually a really good investment. The next thing after that is that you're probably always looking down at it if it's a laptop

unless you're very small in stature. You're always going to be craning down at your laptop. And so raising your laptop up so you're next in a neutral position is the best way and that does mean it needs to come up quite a bit. Yeah, yeah, the screen of a laptop is naturally very low. Yeah, I'm all right in thinking that having that cranial angle being more towards the floor will apply more stress to... I mean, I think that's a general thought. I'm not an expert in ergonomics in that regard, but I certainly know that good ergonomic practice

is to have your neck in a reasonably neutral position, because that, which is generally just sort of looking straight ahead, eyes slightly down possibly. So eyes level with the top of the screen, right? Yeah, that works well. If your eyes are level with the top edge, then actually you're just looking very slightly down at the screen itself.

That's usually a good way to do it. And that just stops your neck muscles having to work. It has hard when you're in a normal position, so that's highly likely to relieve a lot of problems and discomfort. And you've got to remember, even things like your tension headaches, if you're next in the wrong position and you're under a bit of stress, then a lot of headaches, certainly we see as a GP, a lot of headaches, attention headaches, and that's all related to muscle tension in the back of the neck. Where do attention headaches manifest?

Well, the usually, the classic description is that they're a band. Sometimes around the front of the head, sometimes around the back of the head. And they tend to be much more constant, not easily relieved by medication as a general rule. 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. Okay, so that, you know, that is almost, yeah, so that way there you go. And we didn't rehearse that at all. No, I didn't.

I know that that's exactly a classic description of attention headache. Okay. And you have to remember that there are most, you kind of, you only got to have a brief is 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. So actually getting your screen position right can often deal with chronic headaches and kind of tension headaches, which is incredibly useful. So I suppose if you've gone Bluetooth keyboard and let's say that you are working at a notebook 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 could 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 killed two birds with one stone. Yeah, exactly, they're the two big things. If you get an external keyboard and raise up your laptop, and you're right, you combine

notebook, risers and all that and spend money on it. I don't have one of those. I use, I use, I spend them in my office. I just used three or four waiting medical textbooks, go underneath my laptop and that just does the job very nicely. I have an old keyboard from an, an ancient iMac that I have plugged in with a USB connection and a, a dead cheap mouse and there they go that I have plugged in with a USB connection and a dead cheap mouse and there they go, I use my MacBook with those and that's, you know,

and it's much more comfortable. Yeah. I think, well, I mean, for anyone who's listening, I know that you can get if you are a workflow nerd as some of us are and you like you like your gestures and stuff you multi-touch tools Apple do a Partner track pad 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 toto-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 to hear that you use something that's maybe not from quite from this century and you're still saying that it's a viable alternative and preferable alternative. That's reassuring. Someone's got some line around somewhere. Yeah, thanks, we've got, I think it alternative. That's reassuring. Someone's got some line around somewhere. Yeah, I think it was about 2003 that I max. So yeah, it wasn't quite last century, but it's pretty damn close. Not fine. There is that's a good point because I do actually find that what I struggle

with slightly when I use that is that I'm used to using the gestures on the touchpad. Yeah. So I do find that a bit awkward, but what I've tried very hard to do, and I've been doing this 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 just in terms of workflow,

it's more efficient just to use the keyboard shortcuts anyway. So I'm working hard to learn. So there's one of the co-hosts when we do our normal shows, Yusuf, who'll be listening, will be screaming in his pants right now, as he hears you talk about, as he hears you talk about keyboard shortcuts. Have you used Alfred before? Well, no, I know of Alfred, but I never have used Alfred, actually. Oh, okay. You're going to sell it to me. Oh, I mean, it is just an absolute game changer. Lifehack's 104, fully explains how far down the Alfred rabbit hole myself and Yusuf have tumbled.

But yeah, you are right. One of the main, Juju Mufu, who is bodybuilder and tricker, but also big interperiodization for work and training. 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 great. 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. Why is that? I guess it must, I don't know why exactly, I guess it's any repetitive movement, particularly when you hold your arm, you can get RSI anywhere in the body technically. But I guess most people get it in their hands, wrists, forearm. So fine, fine motor movement with little bits of control and sort of small stabilizations

and stuff like that, I guess, if you're doing that seven or eight hours a day. 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 and some people. You seem to have a pretty good understanding of RSI. Am I right in thinking RSI actually has two two distinct types to it? Yeah. Can you elaborate on that for me? Yeah sure, I could run that 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 as the only thing I would say. But if anyone does, we're relying on you here. 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 Carpool Tunnel Syndrome, and lots of people have heard of that.

It's where the nerve that goes through your wrist, the median nerve, there's a little sort of tunnel or space at 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 TNO sign ofitis, where it's where you get symptoms that then go into your hand. And so there's a very, with things like carpal tunnel syndrome or certain tino-sign abituses, where it's where you get an inflammation and the tendons going to your thumb or other things. There's usually a very clear treatment. And 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 doesn't feel too

better because we can give them a diagnosis and offer a management plan. That's in comparison to RSI type 2, which is a whole world of pain 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 the nice distinct patterns of these other kind of disorders like carpal tunnel syndrome. But can it be due to a repetitive action, which could be causing RSI one? Does that make sense? So you could be suffering with both essentially.

Yeah, I think in many cases it probably is due to some kind of repetitive, you know, various ongoing stress or tension. Yeah. That is the case. So you definitely could, um, 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. I understand. So 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. You can't work out what's wrong or how to fix it.

No, and it's a, and the definitely 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, that's the thing. It depends how the doctor phrases it, of course, because that generally goes down incredibly badly. If you're generally either working or if it was writers, no writer wants to stop writing, or it might be something

like work related, and people can't stop doing it. But I think my general advice is it's not really so much about stopping what you do, but you really have got to change up the way you do things in order to get it to resolve itself. And if you're working at a keyboard, you're flying a desk in the day, you've probably got to alter how you do, you've certainly got to alter your workplace, but I think some of the answers are a little bit more holistic and a bit more widespread as well. Yeah. And certainly Joanna in the book, they helped the right to go through this, that actually I think she tried a whole lot

of, 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 mouse ears, the keyboards, all of that, and it didn't make any difference. And what in the end fixed there was a whole body approach. And you know, yoga, right? Yeah, yoga. And I totally fixed that. 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. 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. Yeah. And I think, as you say there, it needs to be married with the two. Even if you optimize your workstation, but when you go home, you're set entry 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? Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. I suspect it's far far more important than actually the workplace stuff, all that. 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 paying your risk and your doctor tells you to get out and do a bit more walking or exercise. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, they really could, but actually I really do think it is, so you've got to have those conversations very carefully, not to accept it, to make people understand, but 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 they'll be regular breaks, there'll be opportunities to stretch, to walk, get away from the screen, and rather than sitting in a call center eight-hour of straight, whatever it is, actually there will be requirements to build in proper breaks. So we've touched on it there. I'm going to unload the meta-analysis my very very well-conducted Instagram research I came out and then we're gonna try and

design how someone could have a good working practice when they're sat at desk so yeah 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 lower back of the skull, difficulty in opening up the chest from being in that anterior folded forward shoulder tilt, 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 the keyboard down of 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? 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. Yeah. It's just simple stuff that actually, I mean, I guess, getting your feet on the ground is a massive thing. When you're sitting down and 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. It's actually sitting on your actual sit bones, getting your feet flat on the ground. Okay.

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 can 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 adjust it as you go, is the kind of thing that you do regularly can start to become automatic and you actually improve your general posture. Yes. I mean, I think in terms of rhythm, that sort of breaks is critical. More than anything.

Taking a break is absolutely essential. And my personal approach to this is when I'm in a big blocker 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 the watch, 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 walk around, have a bit of a, you know, and just get myself away from the screen as well. Yeah. To help my eyes, which we can also mention, 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 to, is that you've got to get away from the screen if you can. Yeah. You know, taking a break does not mean pushing the chair back.

You know, just like moving further away from the screen or closer to the screen, or looking at your phone, looking at a different screen. Yeah, looking at your phone and checking, you know, check in Instagram and Facebook, while staring at another screen while you're kind of slumping in your, slumping your chair. That's really, that's not the fact of break. 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. Yeah, exactly. That's not what we're prescribing here.

Yeah, and I think, you know, most people are listening, I think, wow, of course, I wouldn't do that, but I mean, I don't think you might do. Yeah, I think you probably will. So actually taking a break, 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 general and a general chance of improving. 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. I agree. I think there'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 she's 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 tells you right now go away for five minutes and then come back. And I think that, so doing those five minutes, what are people doing? Walk to the water cooler,

check the toilet, sort of, look out the window. Yeah, there's a certain thing in terms of ice strain about looking at the window. There's a bit of advice, which is the 2020 technique thrice strain, which is every 20 minutes. Take a break and look at 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 changing the focal length where your eye is, eyes are concentrated, that can be helpful and relieving eye strain.

So you can get some benefit from that as well, but I think they're just the moving around is the key thing. If you, you know, yeah, absolutely I do that. I get up, I just have a stretch, same working in the library of the office, go out, have a look at the window, walk up and down the steps,

but you know, a few minutes, but try not to get engaged in any conversations. Yeah, that's what I can do. That's got that five minutes, get that five minutes, gonna turn into 25 minutes. 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 you focus as well, because that 25 minutes is a relatively short period. And so I will give my all to that one task for 25 minutes. And you then achieve much and, you know, you then

achieve much greater, deeper work, the Cal Newport, kind of things. I know you've mentioned before, I think. 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 relatively minor changes. 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 maybe, especially knowledge workers, how many tabs have you get 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's up and I've, anyone who's listening knows just how much I hate the rabbit hole of cognitive manipulation that as soon as you get onto a social media website. But yeah, it's, it's,

yeah, multi-tasking is for Muppet. That's my, my approach. It really is. One thing at one time. 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. We are cereal folk. We should be cereal folks, rather than trying to do multiple things. And it's incredibly satisfying. Yeah. Taking it off the to-do list and getting it out of the way is such a lovely sense of achievement. Yeah. And I think even just that kind of, even if it's a bigger part

of 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 the healthy writer I actually did with the Pomodoro method and I ticked off, I had little circles and every, every circle represented two Pomodoro's and it was the one thing that looking back and when I could see a hundred of them ticked off. I was going to say, how many did it take?

I think it was about, for my bit, it was over a hundred hours of editing, but after the first draft, once that had been done, it was kind of incredibly satisfying to see, to color in the boxes, and to know that each of those was a really valuable piece of the puzzle. It was great. What you're saying is that we is that 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 monogamous, not polyamorous. Absolutely.

Okay, totally. A task is for one at a time, not for two, not for two or more at a time. Yeah, fine, fine. Absolutely fine. So you touched on it there, and one of the 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 is looking at screen doing to our eyesight? 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 it may just be he has a little bit of something

like an astigmatism, which is just giving you an extra problem. You just blind mate. You would never ever destined to be able to see properly. I'm afraid. No, just born, born, damaged. Churced with that, yeah. I think the main thing about staying at screen is it drives your eyeballs out, the end up, that's shriveled up. The, we're 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 staying at a screen, you stop blinking.

And to the extent you only blink about sort of five or six times a minute. So once every 10 seconds, you're talking about like a 60% reduction. 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. Is it moisturizing the cornea on the front of the eye then to a degree? Yeah, certainly. There's always that film of tears across the front of your eye,

across the front of your cornea. And as anybody, your cornea, if there's some reason you can't blink, you say you get like a facial nerve palsy, a Bell's palsy, where you can no longer close your eyelids properly. OK. One of the priorities for us, when we 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. No.

No. No. I'm not saying staying at a screen will do that to you, but you're at that kind of point where... The bottom end will be getting towards it, right? Yeah. Flinking is important. You know, that's, you know, and if you stop blinking as much, then you're not going to, 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. Yeah. 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 there was a good study that showed more than fifth people who were sat more than half a meter away, 50 centimeters from their screen had less

eye strain. And that's probably about an arm length or so. So, and the ridiculous thing about that is in laptops are bad for this, that we as well, it's another way that laptops damage us, is that we crane over them and I know is practically touching the screen. Yeah, well the whole point is because the screen is, I'm just looking at my 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, your tethered, your face is tethered to the front of the keyboard. So again, if you're not on Bluetooth keyboard, Bluetooth keyboard, Bluetooth mouth, your face is tethered to the front of the screen. Very few people type with their arms straight out in front of them. I wouldn't recommend that either. So your laptop's designed to be bad for your eye, in terms of your eye, in that regard. So that's really important.

I kind of lost my thread now in terms of the eyes. Most of your eyes in the eyes, you were talking about a number of solutions, yeah, 50 cents. Yeah, you had to be more than 50 centimeters away. So that's what I was going to say is that use the zoom function. How many people I've sit in there with their word document on 100% or whatever writing software using, just crank it up to 200%, 250% and sit back a bit. There's no requirement to be close enough to see the screen, all computers have accessibility features within them. So from that regard, you just got to learn to delve into the settings a little, push the screen away from you and

increase that font size. 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 keyboard that way you need it, you could have 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 have your cake and eat it with this can, 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 whizzing around the screen like a blue bottle.

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 Yeah, TVI 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. Yeah. Dead Easy works really well.

Yeah, that sounds great. So can you just tell us the 2020, 2020 rule again and why what that's doing in terms of the focal length for your eyes and stuff like that? Well, yeah, I think the whole thing that 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 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 you 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 cut, I've read some places where it says make sure you blink every 30 seconds or whatever. Oh, you know, blink every 10 seconds and it will become natural. I've, I find that hard to believe that it wouldn't be a constant distraction trying to remember to blink. Yes. So the trick is just to change where you're looking a little.

So you look at something a little bit different, and then that'll, you're naturally blink when you do that. Yeah. And you know, you achieve the goal of actually blinking a bit more often, moisturizing your eyes, giving your muscles a little bit of a change of, a change of focal length, which will just work those giving your muscles a little bit of a change of focal length, which will just work those ocular muscles a little, and it's likely to reduce the

your eyes strain generally. 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 loop that you do to get up to go to the bathroom to do whatever it might be. Yeah, absolutely. You don't have to even think about the 2020 thing, if you're doing the Pomodoro, because you're gonna do it naturally anyway.

So it becomes, it seems to be a problem. But if you, for some reason, you can't get up or you stuck at a desk, you can't move, even just 20 minutes, just doing that 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, you got really you get really bad eye strain, eye drops are an absolutely you know, they work. 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. Yeah. And can't close right

it. They they will they will do the job. Okay. So is there a reason why you would get this, the manifestation of eyes flickering at night as if you're still staring at a screen? Do you understand what that's due to? No. 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 sense is, I don't think I'm not aware of any sort of specific neurological problem that that is duty. But it sounds like somebody who desperately needs to unwind a little in having an hour. Someone needs to have an hour before they go to bed.

I'm not looking at a screen. I mean, and we haven't talked about sleeping. We've got a chapter in sleeping, the healthy right-own. 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. Digital sunset, right? Absolutely. And you can do that whole using flux or the things that change the kind of the background, 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 in your reader book. Yeah, now there was some really interesting studies.

Have you read Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker? I have, yes. Very good. 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, by 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 11 or 9 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 The summaries that he makes and the And 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 terrifying. They're nothing short of terrifying. I think, you know, if moving is really incredibly important, getting more excise, but the three pillars of going being healthy are moving more, eating a bit better more excise, but the three pillars of being healthy are moving more, eating a bit better over that is, but sleep is number, it's absolutely up there as that kind of holy triumph for it of being healthy.

And if you're not getting asleep 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. And the difficulty level on everything's been turned up, right? They're meant to have just cracked. And obviously the doctor have 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's why I prioritize it. And there's so many things you can do which don't require taking medication. The evidence to 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 you call it your sleep so we bit better, but there's not a good evidence. It makes any difference in younger folks. There's potential for resetting circadian rhythms when traveling 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. It's the, 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. So rely on rely on what we know works, which is digital sunset, reduce, reduce the increase the melatonin response naturally. Yeah. I mean, there's

a lot of pouring into your eyes and at 20 seconds before you go to bed. 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 my phone goes on the airplane mode at 9 and happy days. Well, I think one of the anyone who's listening, I'll 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 you get into your bedroom, as I explained in a hacker in your pocket podcast and in number 10 with Kai Wei from the light phone,

your, 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 stay there. And it's more likely

you're going to stay there than if you were sitting more likely that if you were sitting than if you were standing. So, try to phone over the other side of the room, get an alarm clock that doesn't require you to put an alarm on your phone. You'll 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, 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. No, I think you've blown it there. You're right off the list. The thing is, if you're a student and you're rumours, you're bedroom sort of thing, then absolutely, you've got to deploy some strategies. But if you've got a separate bedroom, then don't let the phone in your room. Yeah. Bedroom is a phone-free zone.

Yeah, that's the absolute goal, right? Yeah, yeah, definitely. 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 their ideal workstation, I know that I write and say that almost all doctors will be using shared desks at work. Um, well, yeah. Yeah, certainly that a lot will be. Yeah, it's certainly GPs.

There's a lot of GPs work part time. And you're going to be a lot of premises of struggle. So you work your art to a certain extent, you're, you won't have your own room, you'll be going in and out. Yeah. So what are the, um, carrying your bag or the, I guess the SOS, um, pack of trying to fix ergonomics for work there.

Yeah, so I think, I mean, an external keyboard and a mouse relatively like should be able to, I think, if you've got a notebook, I guess it depends whether you're using your own laptop in 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 would 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 whichever weirdly proportioned person was there before you. She's almost definitely

not going to be exactly the same as yourself. Yeah, quite. As actually take the time to make the adjustments and as I said, get the height of that screen so it's just, you know, the top of the screen's level with your eyes, get the seat at the right height so that your kind of 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 were 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're kind of stick to it. I've got a little watch, my watch buzzes, so that's handy in the library. I mean, at the university library. It would be cool if there was a web-based Pomodoro time, I wouldn't have, like, a cloud-based

one. I wonder if someone's come up with that. That would be a really good, if someone needs a business idea, come up with BF Pro for web browser that would allow notifications to pop up, that would be lovely. Yeah, that's going to think, yeah, absolutely. You need to have that handy. I would, you know, if you can, I notebook rises 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,

maybe I'll use them. The only thing I'd see is there are always books in the library. Yeah, that's a very good point. You 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. No one's going to know. No one's going to. No, their 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 to do it themselves.

They like to like the work, don't they? 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 then lost forever. Agreed. 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 I've a little bottle of I, if you're going to, if you're really settling in for

the long hole, then some eyedrops is a good plan. Is there an optimal frequency for using the eyedrops every couple of hours or during every break, is that, is that, you're going to end up swimming into the brain? Yeah, dripping, like crying. Yeah. Yeah. Not especially with the general advice with ease is we put them in every couple of hours if somebody's got absolutely nothing going.

I think it depends how you feel. One or two hours, I don't think every 20 minutes would be a bit. A bit much. Yeah, I'm personally, I despise putting in eyedrops. It's never going to be an easy task to accomplish, isn't it? Yeah, you're probably not old enough to remember the friend's episode where they tried to put eyedrops in moniker for the whole episode. So it turns into one of those for a lot of people. Okay. So I would say a couple of hours is good. 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 and other one of the co-hosts to the show, he has a really fancy desk that does both seated and standing. I know that the receptionist at B Fit, which is the physiotherapy place that I go to around the corner, sits on a bowl soup bowl when I go in, she's on it, sat on a big, big Swiss ball bouncing around. And I just wanted to know what the efficacy of those particular

approaches are. And if there's any others, any other sort of weird and wonderful approaches you've seen for. 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. Yeah, Ben's quite out there though, he's pretty full on with his self-efficiency stuff. I would, the problem with all this is, there's probably work, I'm 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 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, with you're measuring it in motivated people who then feel a bit better or, so the evidence is really hard to pick out. Ten years, right. Yeah, it's just not good quality. And so it makes it really hard to offer definitive, you lurch into anecdot quite quickly and personal opinion. I would say there's not a lot of evidence to Swiss bowls, so that kind of what's, they could fall under the category of dynamic sitting, that kind of where you've got to continually adjust and micro adjustments, you know, kind of using core strength and to keep yourself in an upright position. I have a Swiss bowl

in my room and I don't use it very often. Sometimes I'm a bit bored, I'll sit on it. 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 see it in a probably much better, it improves your posture. You can't slouch on a Swiss ball or you end up on the floor. 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 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 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've kind of been standing desks as you mentioned. I've also got a standing desk at work. I haven't got a posh one. 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 posh one. 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, so 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 I find that really good. I kind of enjoy working there, but I like the variety. Sometimes I see it, sometimes I stand, sometimes I wobble around on my Swiss bowl, 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 is some little bit of evidence for standup desks

in the literature that they can help in some respects, but back pain particularly, but for back pain particularly, but nothing, nothing really monstrously good. Okay. Actually, there's a lot more evidence for Ben Greenfield's treadmill desk, which quite 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 mentioned 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. But the weirdness, I mean, and I suppose that makes sense because you're walking. So it's better than sitting there doing nothing. By distance. Yeah. And they did also comment that they noticed that the US, and as I always thought would be the problem with the treadmill desk, because it's just blooming hard to concentrate when you're walking on doing something else. And there was a reduction in your sort of cognitive capacity

when you're on a treadmill desk. Yeah. Well, you've got to spend a little bit of expense and mental force just walking, right? Not falling over. Yeah, exactly. Well, you think you're doing it automatically, but it does require a little bit of expense and mental force just walking, right? Not falling over. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, you think you're doing it automatically, but it does require a little bit of effort. Yeah. But it's really good for sort of relatively low level task.

And you know, Ben, when we chatted on his 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. Cal, Cal would not be happy with a walk in Desk at all. No, if Cal was here, he would probably, absolutely, he would be slapping us. Yeah, the... No one's trying to know.

...would be out of the window. I'm just looking at, so I got hold of the Biohackers 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 effective body position on introvert, vertebral disc pressure. So 100% disc pressure, the effect on four postures on the introvertible disc pressure as measured between the third and fourth

lumbar vertebrae. So 100% when standing, 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%, 90 degrees at 140% and at 80 degrees at 190%. And that's sourced here. Edmund T. and Furny G, 1997 mechanical response of the Lumbar spine to seated postural loads. 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 the little wheels and they'll pull themselves right forward. Do you know what I mean? So they're feeling, they're not even on the floor, they're on top of the seat, on 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 pretty catastrophic, I imagine. 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 I said earlier. That kind of, that is the one hack that fixes that completely because you're right. It does put you into really awkward position.

The only thing I would 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. Yeah. Can you deal with it? Yeah, fine. Yeah, it's just measuring increase in pressure in one interpretable space. It actually doesn't necessarily mean it will turn into anything later on because that's equal negative.

Not necessarily. But I agree it doesn't, I wouldn't wish to underestimate it. It's clearly a pretty rubbish posture as well. Yeah. And I like to quite like 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's very difficult to translate it into people who get back pain by, you know, later on down the line. So the real clinical endpoints that we're interested in. 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 health, the most 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. Yeah, so one of the things we wanted to do with a 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 writing a book. Getting a right to destroy you.

Yeah, exactly. It's not immediately terrific. 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 something everybody can do, gratitude journey has a really decent, has, has some decent evidence that underpins it. And it goes back to some Californian psychologists who looked into this, Emma and McCulloch. And they, there was an experiment. It goes, I think it was back to 2003 or the early 2000s, sometimes like that. And 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 for every day, whether that was 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 act. That's a low investment, right? That is really, you know, the biggest problem that would be remembering to do it because it's so low. It's absolutely tiny. And they found that it really seemed to, they found some clear improvements in well-being for those people and that they felt better, but really, one of the things that really peaked my interest about that

study is because I can be a little bit cynical about some of these 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. But they also found evidence that the families of the participants had noted that their loved ones were seem to be better in themselves, and they had improved wellbeing. And I thought that was really interesting kind of nugget as part of that.

It 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 are 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. They produced anxiety and improved your sleep. So it feeds exactly back into what we were saying

before. 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 out timers. 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. Yeah, down downstream, where do you, where do you stop? Yeah, but there is, if it makes you feel better at the time, then that's a pretty

good place to start. Yeah. Because, you know, it makes you feel better at the time, then that's a pretty good place to start. Yeah. And 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 17. They're good at doing stuff that makes them feel good at the time. Yeah. And I think that's the lot of the experience of doing a graduate 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.

There's an interesting, an interesting point that Yves has 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 for it narrows in, right? And 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 hold my hands up and say that some mornings finding something which isn't what I wrote about the day before or Just the first thing that comes to mind. I I'm grateful for the taste of coffee. I am grateful for you know

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. Yeah, that may be exactly what's going on. I've 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 an anxious, often have intrusive negative thoughts and kind of ongoing, difficulty is 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 an almost like an initial step, perhaps with a bit of, you mentioned about actually holding negative thoughts and you head at the same time for those who haven't got as far as, you know, having full blown depression on anxiety kind of problems. Is that they're just a really simple little hack. It's nice. It's nice.

You do them every morning. Yeah, 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 better as far as I'm concerned. It's by a company called Your Best Self. It's available. It's available, I'm essentially. The link will be in the description, but it's three minutes

on a morning and three minutes at night, three things you're grateful for as the first thing you do in the morning. And yeah, it's interesting. It helps to bring into perspective on more of 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 and 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 the last week's podcast episode. I'm grateful for the message that my mum sent yesterday or that I got to spend I get to spend this afternoon off and I get to go and see my friends. Do you know what I mean? It reminds you of what you should be spending your time doing because when you're alone with your thoughts, with nothing else to distract you, these are the things which percolate to the surface. Yeah, it's interesting because I think for such a little simple thing, it's probably a complex set of consequences of doing

it that it triggers off. And it's probably it's working across multiple mechanisms. It would be very interesting to work it out. 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 let and go over the petty trivial irritations that you're letting dominate your thoughts. Really incredibly useful. It provides a lot of perspective.

So 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 cheer that they've got a shout out there. And I know for a fact that a lot of them suffer with writers block, right? 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 writers block? I'm not sure. I don't think I've ever suffered from writers blockers 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 procrastination is a subset of writer's block. I would absolutely class it under that, yeah. Yeah, then I've suffered from that to the end degree. And there was nothing like, I guess one of the best strategy I had was having a co-author because I'm going to, as a particular, I guess it's a medic thing as a doctor.

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 probably a really good way for me to beat procrastination. A proper, hard deadline. External accountability.

Absolutely. It's what really does it for me when it comes to getting over procrastination, getting over that kind of subset of writers block, that's the one that I've the most experienced with. And, you know, I still suffer with on a daily basis, there's always, you know, I could always top 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 that's another, it's not like I'm sitting around lying, going to beds because I'm procrastinating, that's I'm finding other petty jobs. It's the low hanging fruit rather than the deep work, right? Yeah, exactly. And I guess, you know, feeds right back into that is I need to go in, read

the count reports, book again to remind myself how the hell to get down to some proper. Serious work. Yeah, I understand. Well, you and I really, I really appreciate today. I think Well, I really appreciate today. I think we've attacked a problem which is incredibly widespread. Anyone who is listening will have spent 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 solutions. Can you tell the listeners where they can find you online? Yeah, so the best place to find me is I have my website is www.bluecollege.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 bluecollege.io. And probably online, the best place to connect with me is you can get to me via a bluecollege or just on Twitter. So you and underscore loss and that's EU AN underscore L a W S O N. Fantastic. Thank you very much for your time, you and I'll make sure that the links to blogology, 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.

Now, my pleasure entirely Chris, thank you But thank you very much for your time. It's been a pleasure. No, my pleasure, Tali Chris. Thank you. Thank you very much.