 kept going down this road of what drives people to innovate and took me into this world of creativity and this was fiddling in my brain about outdoors and walking and what does that do. I naturally ended up at this research place with all these papers on my desk of this stuff which eventually ended up in the book. Gary Pratt is my guest on this episode of Inside Ideas brought to you by 1.5 Media Innovators Magazine and sponsored by the Aloha's Regenerative Foundation. Gary is the co-founder of Ear Switch, an innovative sensor technology startup. It was previously entrepreneur in residence and a teaching fellow in the entrepreneurship at the University of Bath where he ran an accelerator program that supported high tech, high growth, digital startups in the areas such as Media Tech, R, VR, and AI. Gary has held senior positions in the pre.com tech world across the US and Europe and is the co-founder of Teachit, a leading educational digital content provider. The creativity factor, his book, which I'm holding up right now here, offers scientific and practical evidence for the entrepreneurial creativity with advice on the mechanism habits and techniques that develop the skills. This unique holistic guide will provide you with a newfound awareness of your creative potential and how it can lead to business success. And for all those in the United States listening to this podcast, January 24th is the US book launch. So it's a global book and it's exciting that a lot of people will have access to it now. It's important in these times since COVID and Brexit and all the things going on in the world in the publishing industry to have multiple publishers and distributors around the world because with new laws and regulations, especially in the EU, it's been difficult to get books. But I'd like to welcome Gary to the podcast and thank you for being here, Gary. Thanks Mark. I'm lovely to be here and to meet you and have a chat. I'm excited to meet you. When I get books or publishing company semi books of their authors or and approached it all to discuss different things, it's really important for me to read the book and go through and understand the principles. And honestly, I have to be very honest with you, the creativity factor just here by judging the book from its title. I was intrigued, but I wanted to make sure I read it before. So I do a lot in innovation, creativity, education and to speak with a lot of authors. And so I approached it with a very skeptical eye. Not even probably 15 pages into it, you had me sold. I was hooked and I read it in a day and enjoyed it thoroughly and went back and re-read it again to get some touch points on things that we could discuss here today and also some really crossover connection points for your work, for the science behind it, for what you've come up and created in this work that I see a lot and a lot of my colleagues and other authors and people that I've dealt with over the years and how that's emerging. So first, I want to start out asking you to set up this moment and time what brought you to write this work. I know what it is, but those who haven't read the work don't know what it is, but it has to do with a little story as well. So I'd love for you to tell us that and I know if you can. Yeah, absolutely. I think before I do that, start maybe at the other end a little bit and then come back to that. I had a UK book launch and last month and I'm very flattered that all the people came to the book launch, even though England were playing football. So that was nice, but I gave my speech and only a short speech of about 10, 15 minutes and I finished it by saying none of the words I said were my own. I gave a speech using all the quotes or a lot of the quotes in my book and I think that's pertinent that I think the science in my book is all out there and I was just bringing it together with the fit what I'd learned myself really. I'm absolutely riding off the back of a lot of other science journalists, authors and thinkers, which is probably always the best way, I suspect. But to your point, yeah, I tell a specific story in the book, but I guess it's the reality is it's there was a lot of those stories, but the one that I think you're mentioning is I'd actually you mentioned teacher in your introduction, which was a fantastic entrepreneurial journey for me and my wife and we'd sold that and which I guess is people think is a success. Are you exit a business? And I guess it is in a way like a lot of exited founders you send flounder around thinking what's life now, but I went back to my roots and I studied as an archaeologist my undergraduate years. I'd always tinkered around, I always got my trial out each summer and done a bit of archaeology, but I went back and studied for a masters and to put myself out of my own comforts, I started signing up to speak at conferences and soon realized that was absolutely terrifying. I'm a business background, yeah, you talk at things and I was found quite confident doing that and suddenly into a new world with really critical peers in the academic world. It was a terrifying thing, but one story was I was talking at one of these in Edinburgh in Scotland and just happened in luck in hindsight that it was a very busy traffic day. I'd flown into Glasgow airport and my taxi got stuck in traffic on the way to the conference and I had almost no time until I was due to stand on stage and normally I would have got there and probably like lots of people before a business meeting or speech would find a quiet spot in a cafe or an internet cafe or a hotel lobby, keep reading their notes and trying to make it go in and that was what you did. Suddenly I faced this, I'm not going to make it so I just got out of the taxi and walked there and almost, it sounds, but it was almost walked straight in the door, got my lanyard, walked into the lecture theatre, a couple hundred people in this lecture theatre, walked on to stage, plugged my USB in and had to give my speech because there was no time to go to the toilet or to look at my notes and it was brilliant. It was the best speech I've ever gone. There were some scary academics in the audience which if I'd known they were there and spotted them before would have sent the cold shiver down my spine, but it was definitely the best presentation I've given and I got great feedback and the rest of the conference happens, socialized, heard other people's speeches and it was only reflecting afterwards that I realized I was an idiot and I'd always used walking for the thinking. When I was running teacher and before and throughout my whole life I'd always thought, my brains addle, what do I do, I'll go for a walk, but I'd never really put the two together and thought of it as a proper thing to do in business. So that was the beginning of it really and I'll let you ask me no question maybe on the top, but really the next stage was I jump around, I got my masters in archaeology and that was great and I was sort of a nice tick for myself, but actually I then went back and when I was at the University of Bath or before my jobs at the University of Bath I started PhD in the School of Management. It was actually a PhD to do with Phoenician expansion into the Western Mediterranean which is so Bronze Age business, but actually it took me down a rabbit hole two things, one the rabbit hole of which I guess quite happens when you're researching kept going down this road of what drives people to innovate and took me into this world of creativity and this was fiddling in my brain about outdoors and walking and what does that do. I naturally ended up at this research place with all these papers on my desk of this stuff which eventually ended up in the book. Also certainly put me off a PhD which I realized writing a book was much better because you don't have to listen to those peers and write 80,000 words that no one's going to read. Hopefully it's 50,000 words that some people will read. So that was the sort of journey to start the process. I love that. That's a fabulous story and it's also what really connected and resonated. In my work a lot, I work with nature and agriculture and environment and I always say that it's hard, but that agriculture farming domesticated human beings. So before that time we were hunters and gatherers and we walked and we were outside quite a bit and then at the age of agriculture or farming which is now looking back at upwards of 13,000 years or more there are even some suggestions now through archaeology which is also unique that could be as well as 20,000 years ago to some respects and in that process yes it took a lot of time but then we became more sedentary. We spend a lot of time in the home and not as much time out there harvesting and turning the ground and also our impact on climate change but there's a reversal on that saying that I say it as really work has domesticated us to be imprisoned in these boxes today and sit behind these computers and look down and take not only a different form of ergonomics but huge domestication of trapping of human beings on the way we work and it's like the more hours you spend behind the computer or confined in a conference room or in a building the more productive or effective you are in some respects and I understand some of your thoughts and theories through your research and also in the book how you feel about that trend as well do you also believe that work has really domesticated and trapped us into a kind of a failing system as far as what we're experiencing in our world and what's going on and not just in tough times like covid or brexit or things come or lockdowns come that that confine us but also that this way that we've set up our world of work has really is a trapping in many ways as far as you also in the book address ROI and so I'd like to kind of see how you tie those together or what your thoughts are yes there was a lot to unpack there Mark I'll start with a quote that's in my book which I've pretty much commandeered from John Lecaire which a desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world and I think there's a lot packed in there but you're right there's I think that we're going to look back on this period I say it in the book it's a quote from another personality Michael that will look back a bit like we currently or previously looked back at the Victorian work workhouses and mills and and it's all the physiological side all of our evolutionary side all add up that this is not the place we do we're not productive we're not creative and we're not we're not well doing it there's lots of bits in there that add up to that but as you say it's the trap that we've been told that is work and I think one of the calls I'm trying to send the book is that we're sat at a desk now I'm sat at my desk we're not going to get away from that and our computers as tools to do work but deep work and when I say deep work I especially mean thinking creativity thinking about innovation whether that's for your business or yourself I think they they both happen that doesn't generally happen at a desk and I think we all absolutely know that but we're trapped in this is not classic work hard play hard you work time me time and I'm starting to think that it's all me time yeah but whether you're working or playing or with your family or doing other things which wouldn't be counted as work I'd like to see a time when that's all accepted as part of work if you like I wanted the book to be accessible for business people owners venture builders to start to explore that because it's a hard call to get companies to say everyone can be wherever they like working outside walking up a mountain because there is there is productivity done and you mentioned the ROI side of it but I think if you focus that return on investment in those really deep bits of business which are thinking about the future imagining what the future is going to be like your strategy how you're going to innovate how you want your staff to think creatively at all levels that's not necessarily coming up with the best new product or service it might be just how I do things how I feel better in my job all those things add to productivity and in the book I go into some of the I guess the accepted specifics all the science is coming out about the benefits of a four-day week and and that not affecting productivity people are more productive because they get time to spend on other things I tell a story in the book about a senior googler that I talked to many years ago about their 70-20-10 rule about how they spend their time and the smaller percentage supposedly about thinking outside the box and innovating and I think Eric Smith's idea was that would be people working in the office still and coming up with new ideas because they didn't have to do that to do this and John who I spoke to said I said what do you do with your time he says I just go home and at the time it seems really strange to me I thought that's not what they expected but actually I think if he went home or walked through the park or went for a run or did something else I think he was probably bringing more to the party than the people who felt they had to go to a room to be creative so I've come full circle in that that is work I try to put a lot of methodology in the book as well to frame that but I've put that in because I do work outdoors with teams and when you're having those conversations about what are we going to do for those three days in the wilderness I can go through the science there's plenty of science in the book about some great academic studies about how your creativity increases over time and about how those traditional methods of brainstorming don't work so I can normally talk to companies about the benefits of doing it but then it's what are we actually going to do and then really I want to say is let's just go for a walk and see what happens they want some structure and that's totally acceptable so I built methods through my own practice and working with people but answer your point I think is where they then see the ROI you know what they the feedback is generally clarity of thought that all those ideas bouncing around which are always there and people have them and they're on lists it helps them properly process that as a group or individually so that's a massive that sort of clarity as I think one of the big things and that leads directly into sort of business strategy and I guess you asked a question some science why does that happen and I think back to your point as to evolutionary history there's a whole section on the book I know you've read it which is we were actually this is what we were designed to do we are designed to be cognitively enhanced endurance athletes were designed to be outside moving in nature doing things thinking on the fly it's what we were designed to do and your point that maybe the agricultural revolution suddenly put slap started to close that door on that and in the 20th century slam that door shut and said stay inside your box and then you go outside for your your bit of exercise at the end of the day to de-stress so hopefully I'm just trying to nudge that door open again and yeah it's really interesting because there's a couple different camps or thoughts there's a big camp that is talking about the future of work and you mentioned a four-day work week there's Tim Ferriss who talks about a four-hour work week and how do we get out and how do we be more effective with our time and be more productive and do that and then there's another camp where it's we need you to clock in and out when you get to work and when you get out of work when you go on break we need you to clock out we need to manage every minute of time that you're here yes we're thinking about productive ways that you can do your work so what we've done is we've done an open office space with no cubicles but everybody sits in this open transparent space but you have to go and check out your computer or you're never guaranteed the same sitting place the same day if you get here early before everybody else maybe you can have the same place more than once a day if you do that and there's these kind of very strict rules around freedom or openness or this future of work and in the innovation space in the technology space we've really been talking about the future of work for a long time but that's all we've done is we've talked about it and we've created some ping pong tables and lava lamps and some foosball tables and bean bags and stuff but we really haven't truly prepared the infrastructure the human resources and the policies for that true future to arrive and what that really looks like in what you just said there are three areas that I want to touch in because you've already at early in the in the stage of our podcast opened up not a can of worms but three things where we can really go deep and I want to touch on those one of them is I don't even know if I should bring it up but I'm going to because I'm a troublemaker I'm a rebel is brexit so brexit specifically for the united kingdom you're in the united kingdom is the fact that they've created a system there where they're they're upset about jobs and there was a racial factor in there migrant workers food workers and things a past it's changed now we on the fourth prime minister of the fifth I can't remember it's so many but but what happened is it was really about taking jobs about outside people coming in and working so often what happened is two things the covid and the pandemic and also the brexit at the same time and now those people were no longer there and nobody in the united kingdom jumped into those jobs and the infrastructure the future of those the way those jobs functioned were filled in a specific way by specific people wonderful people but that's also an outdated model and so I think there are some huge tumultuous things that that we saw and experienced because we actually have jobs that are not so desirable but yet we feel like it's a burden on society or something and we make a hat a rash decision like a brexit to change that but then very few I think it's even less than one percent of those who voted for brexit jumped into those jobs that now were left empty to be filled what is that telling us and I don't want you to be too controversial but I want to say why do we see that how does that happen and what does that tell us about the future of work not just about being outside but the way we've created that work gosh another big questions I guess that there's two things there isn't there plenty more than that but okay I guess covid more than brexit fundamentally changed how people work and that's definitely something people are starting to come to grips with the new mentions there's leaders and teams who want everything back to normal please and that brings in the issues of brexit as well so nothing is normal anymore is it in this country but for the rest of the world as well and covid's made most things not normal so that's actually I want to caveat that I'm not just picking on you it's not just the united kingdom there's yeah there's different forms of brexit and things going on all around the world but I'm just I because that's where you're at and I think you've actually run into this so I would love to hear more about it yes so the covid side absolutely changed the nature of work already and I guess it's how is hopefully using that as a positive platform to question how we work and I think there are lots of companies now doing that and it absolutely bring pressures of the leadership in the sense of trust letting go how do we communicate as a team and I think most of us are fed up of to some degree of this type of communication and and definitely I'm getting a lot more interest in in teams wanting to use the outdoors as a place just to communicate and there's lots of benefits in using that in terms of hierarchy is breaking down and having different conversations and plenty of science around that the brexit point that I think is fundamentally more worrying in a way because I think we a lot of companies will find their way to at least question how work happens because of covid and maybe that's a real positive at least there's a big question mark is is the way we did things right has what's happened ruined us and for a lot of companies it hasn't and it's opened up new doors so I think there's a lot of positive out of that side of things there's a sort of jingoistic approach of covid I think is a dangerous thing in a global market full stop isn't it and probably not to talk about politics pressing that my politics are that's a bad thing and I know it's not for everyone how does that affect the future of work having conversations with different people there's a story in my book about adam kahana who very high level sort of facilitator who helped governments here you still want to store in the book is about Ecuador and and helping disparate groups communicate and come together and now he uses the outdoors it's why it's in the book as the walking and talking as a tool but the fundamental bit there is that there's so much more to be gained from cross-cultural cross border work and communications again a lot of us work for companies which are global so it seems absolutely nuts in this modern world that there's this jingoistic political approach to shutting down borders as far as working is concerned not to get the details of the practical impact outcomes of that for the country in terms of work but yeah I don't want to in the reason I mean I bring it up it wasn't political at all but it's a telltale of our work infrastructures our work the way we work a setup to be in a lockdown situation set up to be in a situation where sometimes even the borders are closed and does that open up new job opportunities for locals and are they willing to take those jobs so it has unemployment now that all those jobs I think it was between 400 000 migrant employees workers a year clear up to 600 000 migrant workers a year to the united kingdom for food jobs for farming agriculture food processing grocery stores hospitality work where those jobs all filled as unemployment back down and the way it ties to nature walking and outdoors is because I said I mentioned the fact migrant workers they're not people born and raised in the united kingdom they are traveling from their home countries from other places around the world to be there to work because they don't mind those type of jobs and regardless of the decision made was the infrastructure of that work prepared and the answer is no and then obviously and that's why I brought it up but there's two other reasons other things that I wanted to dive into is obviously there's a there's a lot of humanity that spent a lot of work time before work and after work preparing for work and I I don't know how you phrase this or how you look at a lot of people who work Monday through Friday they're saying oh I have the Mondays it's a Monday and there's this whole thing that they spend the entire weekend or even all their Sunday preparing for the Monday to go to work because they dread it and some people they've got to get rest and go out and exercise on those evenings or mornings or the weekends just to prepare to be mentally and physically ready to do a job whatever their job is and that and I and then there's a during especially during this time there's 86% job dissatisfaction around the world and what people do for work and that's why a lot of them are spending so much time preparing before and after just to go to work and so I want to hear from you what are you seeing what's the research what have you discovered is this true what how do we fix that how do we say boy I work 40 hours a week but I also spend another 10 to 20 hours just preparing to go and back so it's really 50 hours and that's time that I could spend when my loved ones are working on myself to do what I want yes I guess there's top and bottom end to that isn't that how leaders and companies should view success and productivity and absolutely employee well-being should be a should be a central KPI shouldn't it the KPIs that are reported at the board table of sales or if you're a tech company engagement or whatever and absolutely of the belief that employee well-being should be a core KPI because if you get that all the others will work out and putting aside any business of bad apples wrong people in wrong jobs you know there's always going to be that but as a general rule I think some measure of KPI of well-being at the top level and accepting the findings of that not just as oh we did well this month and whatever our measure would be is up 2% but actually why what do our staff need so that's part one I think that's important and I would do a lot of work with fantastic company in the UK called teacup I mentioned a few times in the book but a lot of the learnings from sport and high performance in the sense of if you're going to be a high performing athlete you need to think about your whole existence holistically is not just trained and will have plenty of books about this you know but now a league of course people also have to think about obviously about diet and nutrition but also about just relaxation and meditation or whatever it might be it's a very holistic view so they try to bring some of that science through a project actually at the University of Bath where I've got to know them into an absolute measure of that but I think the interesting thing they do and I'm not trying to sell them I'm saying is a principle so you get the board get the KPI's but actually their approach is very individual to the so you're not trying to back to your point it's not the answer to making our stuff happier isn't building a games room the answer for mark might be something very specific and that's what it's trying to do so I think acceptance of that's important and then if you have organizations that accept that they then gives the freedom for should give the freedom for individual employees to break that pattern you talked about I have a presenter 233 more but the important bit is and again there's plenty of science to say even a 20 minute walk without your tech in nature or being out in nature for 20 minutes and when I take teams out I do a very short I don't do forest bathing I call it forest dipping just sitting out in nature for five minutes silently as these real short routes to the sort of default mind mode of your brain and which just puts you in one in a good mood which is always good but it frames you to do much better at your job so I think there are little things that individuals could do and I was actually just this morning reading an article in the in the Guardian here in the UK by a great journalist called Joel Snape who was lamenting the new resolutions of people doing ice bucket challenges or whatever deep things to reset their body and he started with the premise that I don't want to do those they sound hard I'm quite lazy and did some research and found out that actually one of the issues with and I'm not trying to knock these things one of the issues for going for a really taxing bicycle ride or running a triathlon or doing really the hard stuff that people try to cram into those short weekends because they're hard at work they're great for your fitness and your body don't get me wrong but they're not actually that great for your brain yeah you'll be better just to slow down and take an extra 20 30 minutes walking to work with your phone off before you sit down at your desk I think that would have much more benefits than probably anything else but the employers need to allow people the time and freedom to do that and realize that it's beneficial and I think the individual bit for you that might be doing it at 7 am for someone else it might be doing it at 9 30 10 am I worked a long time in education you mentioned teacher and education never changes your policy and governments tend to really not change education over any length of time little things change there's loads of reports in education that schools shouldn't start at 8 am plenty and plenty of science that that's really bad for kids brains whack them into school in the UK anyway in school at 8 working at 8 30 doing maths questions and then in the afternoon you do some PE some physical there's plenty of science that says that should be entirely the other way around perhaps that's kids developing or still the same people as we were when we were kids so I don't know if that answers your question but I think simple things the individual can do but I think what I'm really keen on is and mine's only one way walking in nature but I think the that's the acceptance that employee well-being in its deepest sense not just some gift vouchers and a spruke basket as massive payoffs for companies I agree in the discussing the future of work anyway as a big talk topic for a lot of my colleagues and what I've done over the years and you mentioned innovation and you mentioned the key performance indicators so KPIs I think that one innovation is basically futurism it's about the future it's about how do we do impact innovations for purpose and it's a very transformational transitional tool to get us there and involves a lot of creativity but when we get into this key performance indicators I tend to cringe a little bit because it's a past performance indicator it's history it's gone and we can't predict the future based on history it usually ends up repeating itself and then in the same conju the same guys of KPIs you also mention this high performance athletes most people will have 40 years at least of work and to expect a high performance athlete for 40 years 40 hours a week in an old infrastructure is a recipe for failure we want people who are regenerative that are around for a long time and that also those businesses around for a long time instead of just the annual reviews and the boards and did they meet those goals and the goals get always get higher and harder and they're constantly in this competition factor I think if you're a high performance athlete which most whether it's Olympics or any other sport those are short careers most of them start young and they're only 10 years long it's very rare that you see oh yeah as football player for 40 years and was fabulous all along never got traded whatever the athlete is tennis players something happens where they get an injury they get old someone younger who's worked their sorry their ass off it just replaces them that's not a very bright future it's not one of work because which is sad because work supports our life it supports our family it pays our insurance and makes sure that we're healthy and happy and so with that mindset of key performance indicators and we're we need to perform like a key athlete that means that we've got to do a lot of free work and this is what I mentioned before before we go to work and after just to to maintain that level of action and I just wanted to make that comment based upon what you said but it ties into the second point that I want to do can I just ask question on that mark sure please take I totally agree that I guess most athletes in elite athletes are going to peak in there like you say teams and late teens 20s depend on the sport would you think there's is there a peak time for let's say creative innovators is there a peak time because it's probably not when you start out is it is your peak performance 10 years if you've kicked into your career or I guess it's very variable isn't it it's really variable and so there's been numerous studies on that as well most of the studies that I read as the biggest innovators are almost towards retirement age it's the Frank Lloyd writes the minister Fullers the Fritz Hof Capra's the Lynn Margolis's the Carl Sagan's the that's about the later what wiser years of their life that they start to do this and there are many young innovators the that have spent a lot of time to do that Elon Musk the Thomas Edison's and that but most of what we see is is the I hate to say it's not even golden years but they're up there I wonder if that is obviously experience plays a part but I wonder back to your point about that future side but absolutely you don't get anywhere without imagined futures and you find ways to generate what the future could be you think that is that experience which leads to that or is it age freedom just leads to your ability to imagine the future better I don't know interesting question yeah I think it has a lot to do with in those younger years we're just competing to catch up to get up to speed with that collective intelligence that has been learned around the world whether it's the Elon Musk's or the young innovators even younger innovators of our time the violent slaves who do the ocean cleanup project or I'm trying to think some of the other younger innovators they spend a lot of time to just get up to speed others or also have a form of a genius factor in them as well and so they're early adapters and pioneers of the thing but they're Bertram Picard Dr. Bertram Picard the first man to fly around the world in the solar impulse airplane he's not a young man but he's an adventurous Richard Branson started out in younger years but he's also getting up there in years and I think some of these stories is there's that understanding of the way the world works and it's not just sheer wisdom but it's that experience that the more we interact with nature the more we have that symbiosis with nature and harmony with our natural world and we imply those models into our life and into that we realize it's a better model it's not just a better model for life it's a better model for business instead of being extractive and capitalistic which all have a limit to growth yeah there might be exorbitant amount of wealth or growth or GDP but eventually there's a time where that it just runs off and collapses and and goes to an end and I what in your book you have a lot of wonderful examples and this is to the to the third point that I wanted to bring up is you have the former CEO of Patagonia Launchon Chandray here I can't even never say his last name fabulous guy spends a lot of time outside for many years didn't even have a cell phone does a lot of telephone conversations but most of this time is outside thinking climbing walking then you have the Tim Cooks and the Steve Jobs and who this barefoot hippie relaxed techie and walking around a lot but also create a working environment that is somehow tied to nature there's a lot of walking there are big huge campuses where they walk around they have different form of connection to they're trying to bring the nature inside in some respects but they're also building these huge campuses that they need to walk around and communicate and go to this department or that department to engage with their people and that there's a lot of not just outside forest or outdoor nature walking but there's a physical movement in the way they've structured their organization that a good part of their day is spending that local commute that office or campus commute of how they do their work which I think is really interesting and I wanted to address that because most of the successful people even Tim Ferriss I mentioned him earlier a four-hour work week he spends a lot of time kind of walking and traveling around focusing on health and being effective use of time he spends a lot of time on podcasts and behind the computer as well but it's a lot less than those walking meetings and those discussions and the retention of his mind and the knowledge is a lot of that work occurs and creativity that innovation occurs through communication and retention in one's brain capacity that then when they get behind the computer or when they're cooking the meal or when they're trying to produce the computers or do the production that it's then exactly know what they need to do and it's done it gets done and that actual work or productivity time is more effective whereas if you spend I'm in Germany so if you look at a government worker in Germany they probably spend not even four hours an entire week on actual work and the rest of the time is just off drifting and going to the coffee machine and the water machine and not really actually doing the work because the whole setup is so confined the way we work is so weird this leads me to two things so I'm also a techie I also have one of my first degrees in computer science and I love technology and I kind of sense that not only are you an educator but you have this techno-lust or techie kind of background even though you said your degree was an archaeology right am I correct is that true? Yeah yeah so I never went to work as an archaeologist I worked out in the states actually in tech in the yeah from sort of early 90s so yes absolutely it's there and now dives back in to be co-founder of a new tech company so yes absolutely. In the ties of that last the three things that you brought up where I mentioned Pantagonia Outdoors and Steve Jobs and Boyland Slate Ocean Cleanup Project a lot of big innovators and companies and front runners they're doing a lot more planetary services which are tied to the outdoors and cleaning up our environment and nature they're doing a lot more regenerative agriculture permaculture they're doing a lot of companies that how can we make our built environment better our world cleaner and there is still that form of technology but most technology mechanization and heavy industry we're trying to get into AI and to mechanization so that it's automated which inherently would give us social distancing would let robots take over menial jobs and tasks that humans shouldn't be doing anyway can't do it as effective anyway and give us something of more meaning and creativity for the future work but the reason I bring up techie and educator and you can answer you can dive more into that third question but this really ties to it so I am a big bit of if you believe something you're an innovator and that that you also live and breathe it or you find tips and tools and tricks and you've included those in the book but I want to go even further so in your experience as an educator you get to the classroom and how is your classroom set up mostly in chairs and mostly a student sitting down and sometimes even the professor sitting down where they probably should be standing lecturing showing slides presentations standing up and that how do we see that environment change and your techie background how do we see that environment changing as well in the area of ergonomics and this is so that we can bring that outdoors and that walking in a different form of doing business for the future that ties to the outdoors and walking and bring that into the future of work and my I guess the statement for you to now address that is we are in the Anthropocene of chairs there are six to eight chairs per person on this earth that means minimum 60 billion chairs on our earth we go from sleeping in the bed to standing up sitting at the table to eat breakfast maybe sitting in the shower the bathtub to shower sitting in the bus or car to go to work then we go to sit to get to work then we sit down to add our work and add our desk we sit down to go to lunch and it's taking lives off of our time out and life away from us as human beings on our health on longevity of life but it's also changing the future we're becoming more sedentary in the way we do things how do you think as someone who believes the science and has done that how can we change those environments so that in the future you're not going to be saying hey we need to go outside and walk and do working meetings and team buildings outside that we change the future of work to shorten it to those four-day work weeks to shorten it to those things to have that more productivity and effectiveness in the way we do things as you see i'm standing now i lecture a lot i speak all over the world and i've been standing for over 28 years i have standing desk before that time i used to turn a garbage can upside down and put my computer on top of it and people looked at me like crazy but sitting as the new smoking our world and we need to figure out ways to get back into just natural ways a better lifestyle once you've answered that kind of talk to me about what your research and what you've discovered about that i want to really the next question because i want to set it up because we're going into this journey of this work-life balance and i want to have a little discussion about that what your thoughts and studies and what you've researched and what you talk about in the book as well okay firstly i left at the uni last year to join the year switch and it'll join up in this what i'm going to talk about now so my last unit i was teaching at the university of bath was computer science post grads actually and i was teaching a course on entrepreneurship so basically that the idea was being cynical the uni's idea was stay here do more research and maybe think about your own business don't go and work for facebook or but the idea was we did a got them into groups and got them to take an idea and put it through the mill to see if just conceptually is there a business in here what would i have to think about etc so it's a fun course so i had 180 students signed up to that course and to your point i stood up in the front of a big lecture theater with the slides on so i stood up and walked around i think out of 180 the most people who ever came into the lecture theater now was about 35 everyone else was sat in their student rooms streaming it so it was live streamed and recorded to ping ping everyone's watching it campus here most of the student accommodation or a lot of it is on campus so some of them were probably in their rooms 200 meters from where i was stood up and delivering the lecture so i found that very strange so that's one thing so that's a hard thing to break isn't it so they are sat not only just sat someone in the lecture theater to have made the effort to come but some of them have literally just sidled out of bed and stuck their headphones on and sat there so it's hard isn't it to know how that could change and i suspect obviously the big driver of that was covid that everything suddenly was live streamed but to take that a big leap forward i'm not going to talk much about about e-switch but the startup we're involved in was actually designed for good to help people with things like motor neurone disease ways of communicating and fighting with the world when they've lost all their muscle control whether that's severe cerebral pausing using a muscle in their ear so it can start with great things but the tech was moved on quite a lot and one of the areas where the key areas for us is is ar so is controlling controlling things you're viewing in ar now we don't make the tech the tech's got a long way to go because but i like the concept of ar as a freeing thing now putting aside the the risk that it's taken over by be a moth of advertising which will always be there but if i'm being a bit outtrusted i can imagine a world where you can be out in the in nature with all the benefits of nature of moving your body and the sciences you've read in the book are our optimal speeds as a specific speed of walking which gets you in this default mode which makes your neurons fire you're not moving too fast and there's great physiological history it's our most efficient leading speed and you link that to the another great study book by benjamin baird called inspired by distraction which is one of the first papers which took me on this journey was our brains are at their most creative not when we're working we're doing a really taxing task so not i'm gonna i'm gonna do this i'm gonna write this book i'm gonna sit here and tap and read loads of stuff and not when we're just relaxing lying on the sofa our brains fire most in this little bit in the middle of a slight distraction doing a slightly distracting task and luckily walking in nature and all that goes with it in terms of where your feet are going the fractal patterns of what you're looking at all instantly it's a shortcut basically to get you in this state i can foresee a world where that is work you've got some smart glass on and you are having a conversation or you're partaking in something or you're learning something so you are free to do that whether you're walking through the city through the park whether you're up the atlas mountains in morocco so that would be my dream that that is that technology allows that freedom but gives universities or employers the confidence that those people are learning participating working i think technology can help now maybe that's a dream too far but i do quite like ar as a concept i think it's got a lot going back to where i started that ar in terms of people with disabilities and assistive technology is a fantastic thing in terms of allowing as one of the inspirations for this which was a young man called jonathan bryant who who's got severe cerebral palsy can hardly move any parts of his body he can't talk and he wrote a book when he was 13 called i come right as in e y i using his eye tracker and the call for the book as he said was i haven't got learning difficulties he's a really clever guy i don't have learning difficulties i've got communication difficulties and the education system is putting me into this learning difficulties i've got no problem learning i just can't communicate i think ar and new york's starting to get hopefully the tech does excite me especially when there's some good but i also see it is place in the future of work that it could have a place to allow people to not sit at their desk to move around and i think they personally but also the organizations they work for would seed productivity are all the things they want to see as a result of that because combining those two things or combining all those things the fact of movement and what that does to your brain fact of looking and being in nature rather than in some square rooms and walls and doing something not just totally relaxing is a powerful set of tools together maybe proper the deep tech in ar does have a place in the future of work i also really wanted to maybe thought what your ideas of more how do we create the future of work in the ergonomics i touched on the ergonomics as well up up until recently there's not a lot of schools that have the opportunity to stand and have a standing desk for students where we're in their education whatever level of education even higher learning there's not a lot of opportunities for that and we're boxing in the future of our things and i wanted to tie that to this work life balance how can we talk about it can we offer these solutions that you're you have the science you have some really good facts that the ROI is so much positive if we combine nature walking the outdoors in our life experiences but no matter what tool we found is the world is our country our city our state that we live in prepared for the future of work based on policy infrastructure are those new companies are there companies new companies popping up around all over the place like apple or boy lint slate or these new office buildings that you see these campuses for the future of work to be ready to help people transition into that to even to get there can we do know in germany it's almost impossible to have a four-hour work week to have to be considered to have a permanent or a full-time contract they have they have clauses in there it says 38 hours 36 hours something like that is the minimum to be have a permanent full-time contract and if you reduce that you can't who came up with that stupid rule so what i'm trying to what i'm trying to say is policy regulation governance for businesses or infrastructure how have we looked at that and then how do we get that built environment of schools or the future of education the future of technology to to be conducive of that are we just talking about these innovations or these great tools that have actually existed forever but there's no way to put them into true practice because it's a fighter uphill battle i'll give you one example that maybe can tie to that that i had someone say boy i'm i get so tired and i get neck pain by sitting at work and looking at this computer this was probably 11 years ago how can i get one of these standing desks back then they had these cardboard monkey desks that you could put on your desk and to raise it up to stand and it says boy i'd like to have my workplace be a little more ergonomic and feel i'll feel better and they did started doing that at home and they knew it was effective they said my work won't let me they won't pay for it they won't let me change the office furniture i can't bring in they they said i have to go to the doctor and get a physical therapy note that i need a standing desk in order to do it and i think the world's gotten much better in that respect but we come up with these practices and our work-life balance is totally out of place we're living a separate life or at work or functioning much different at work than we actually would function at home and so i want to know your thoughts and what your insights that you see in that direction as well yeah i'm not confident that policy makers will do much about it in this country anyway i think it's got to be people's push hasn't it i think you need enough companies thinking differently that best staff start to choose those companies and demand them that's probably always the best way so that we have to get enough innovative companies to embrace new ways of doing things eventually it hopefully becomes the norm but at least it allows enough people to question other companies ways of doing things i hope your books a little bit of that i'll tell there's a fantastic company near me a quite big tech agency so they're not you know not an apple not huge but they made the decision actually during lockdown so they have an office very traditional office it's quite nice office they're not in the funky way but they built about 20 minutes from their office in lockdown they built a forest office so they now have two side office and the forest office is covered so you're you are but it's not heated so you're outside but they fitted it with they have fitted it with desks and wi-fi so maybe there's a step for them to go and they have veg beds and other stuff there and so it was definitely it was a response to covid how can we start to work together without going into the office and the socially distance but post it all the feedback from staff and themselves is this is the way we now want to work so you have a choice you go to the physical office part of the day you want the 20 minute walk to the forest office and work there you want to take your meetings there so they're definitely on that step of having been forced to experiment with something to realise that this works and the staff like it i do see the shoots of it happening in some companies i guess i'm more cynical perhaps i'm more cynical about the big companies the campus approach here is the massive new google building being built in right in the center of london and kings cross and campus and i've been in the building next door and look down on it and it's a it's a sort of skyscraper on its side and you can see they are building green spaces into it but i suspect it is basically still be a workhouse inside really i'm more cynical of big companies i think innovation does tend to come from smaller companies so i'm seeing the shoots of that which i think is quite interesting to the work life balance bit i think i was back to where i started i think it's that acceptance that's almost part of the same as such a whether or a four hour or a 36 hour back to your hunter-gatherer work life was the same thing yeah my work was my life my life was my work it was all outdoors and i know we're not going to get back to that but the sort of concept that it's wrong to go and sit in a box for eight hours shut the door and then my life begins and i think that's been a problem for a very long time so i don't know what the answer is mark i think there's you need more smaller innovative companies just trying different things but i think people have to push it really and like okay i see people are starting to push it in their own ways employees but we also have to be aware that i have this conversation quite often about the work i do and um just why i try to make it accessible because there are lots of jobs where it is just really hard to do that will be NHS frontline staff in the UK they're not going to get there 20 minute walk probably so what's the answer for a lot of those jobs i don't know i think you could take a long view where you know you have more staff and you allow them to work more flexible time in shorter hours so they can regenerate and replenish themselves but i suspect their actual time at work still going to be pretty intense although i guess a lot of them aren't sat at a desk in the chair staring at screen in Germany they have in Germany they have this thing it's like a prevention health thing for all employers that there's i think it's 40 hours a year and a certain amount of 500 euros it's probably even gone up to 1500 euros a year now and monies for prevent prevention to improve your health at work or has to do with ergonomics and training and outdoors and making sure that you're preventing any future issues and part of that is this just health and outdoor bathing and out being getting outside and better breaks and better work structure but i see so many tools throughout your book that you give on thinking outside and that your 233 rule and as you talk about the stories and the factor of that what is your hope or dream and desire for those who read the book is it just to i'm not even gonna say what is your true hope and dream desire of those who read the book to to take away and be able to do that i know you do your own walks and you also do team building and things as well which is super for creativity innovation and that as well but is there can you give us your own some eyes of what your takeaway is for everybody yeah i think it's twofold oh for individuals i think i've hopefully honed it in that 233 rule which is let's just make it really simple about spending time in nature do the methodology if you like but i think if you just and i've adopted this now for a long time and you know it really works is you know if you can spend and just say i'm michael easter was actually just from an idea of theirs i've tweeted a bit but 20 minutes a day outside in nature ideally walking without your phone three hours every couple of weeks on a proper let's call it a hike i think i'd be ideal but you're giving people's of just again out in nature and the really powerful one and all the science rags up is once a quarter go somewhere for three days where you're going to spend almost all of that in nature because the what that does to your brain increases exponentially in day 38 you read this as a great experiment that happened in in the states with roof actually where you know the levels of creativity and you can take that as a proxy for lots of things but it's getting your brain in a really nice default state the creativity is a measure of that rise incredibly on that third day so i hope for individuals regardless of who they work for it's just a good equivalent of your five a day conventionals just something you can build into your life and you will feel better you will have more ideas if you want more ideas and you will have more clarity of thinking by doing that if you want to do the methodology and this is i guess the business bit is i think it is i've spent years being forced let's call it forced i always questioned it to use the business canvas and you're sitting in a dull room trying to work with an early stage company about their strategy and innovation and it's awful so i think the business is my call is a book about meeting room in a soulless hotel thinking you're going to have some loose guy thinking and fantastic new ideas just don't do it anymore it's it does not work take that outside whether that's with a facilitator like me whether that's on your own and don't get me wrong i'm not saying you don't end up writing some things on a flip chart or capturing some stuff but that's my call to the business just don't do that anymore that we've got to do in a wayday next quarter and this is our agenda in terms of most people's genders on those is future looking they tend to think oh those strategies we're going to think about in the next year just don't do that take that outside so those are my two ends businesses stop that behavior of looking some horrible course or training room and for individuals just yeah just spend more time in nature without your tech and you will properly see the benefits and hopefully there's a middle ground will those come together and affect some future of work change before we get off this work-life balance i want to get your inputs or your feelings as well i asked people a lot of the time what are the models that they're operating in in a typical day of their life so is it a very capitalistic or an extractive model are they part of a religion or a culture do they have a family life and a work life and what are all the different models that they live in a typical day and it's usually more than three models every single day in their life but at the very least this too it's usually this work model that's what they do at work and who they are at work and it's what they're what they would like their life at home to be and those two models or those two work in life are usually going in different directions and it's also a way for you humanity to be disconnected from nature but it's also a way of almost feeling this bipolarness that we're two different people in the same day we're going in two different directions we're just doing the job because we need it to pay the bills and we need it to give us the lifestyle and healthcare and the food that we need on the table but when we're at home we don't want to see any work colleagues that we just want to spend time with our family or drinking a beer watching soccer or whatever we do maybe we're an athlete maybe we do sports maybe we do go out into nature but when we are we're not thinking much about our work because we want to forget about it we want to have it be a nine to five job or a position that we don't have to put them a lot of thought into it after but that creates this inner turmoil in humans that you know we hear we've heard about it for decades I'm sure you have this work life balance and that's why I bring it up because when we get behind the science of it when we get behind the realities of it are we living a psychotic life are we living a bipolar life or trying to please two masters at once just because that's what we need to survive and how can we instead of this work life balance how can we create a lifestyle that even if we work for a tech company even if we work for a production company that requires us to stand on an assembly line for eight hours a day or seven hours a day that we can still have this lifestyle that we've created of joy and happiness we feel connected to nature and that and I think those are the tools that I would like to know you feel about it but how can we apply what we're getting from this book besides the 233 rule to really bring that into a new paradigm of how we create that that lifestyle of the future of the innovation aspect that we talked about earlier that how do we reach that true future because I think that's eventually where we want to be we don't I don't want to make your your writings or your life obsolete but I would like us to not say hey are you connected to nature are you doing environmental social governance are you doing sustainability are you are I would like that to be the way the world works in the future I would like instead of talking about the future of work we actually create a different paradigm of the way the world works in the future that is connected to nature is connected to environment we realize that big organism that we see outside the organism of life and nature that is the best model for our organizational structures and our organizational models that we see at work and I'd love to hear your thoughts and reflections and maybe tips that you can give us yes there's a lot there isn't that I make it simple yeah it'll always be a lot it'll be complexity in systems but I want to hear it I'm sure just reflecting personally I'm sure I'm like as you started that like most people I have a lot of people I have a family life I have kids and older relatives and I have a number of jobs which I think suits some people doesn't suit other people I often say I'm a natural tinker it suits me to have four different jobs as opposed to one and maybe that's a maybe that's a good reflection for a lot of people maybe that is a way to think about your work and life differently is maybe there's a time coming when there's been a lot of talk hasn't there about the people not having one career but having four in their lives now may I guess it's been it's been driven by people living longer I think there's another way to view it that actually you change your brain changes and maybe you should embrace that and there's always all these discussions are always partly parking economic priorities aren't they that as you said you do need to earn money to pay bills yeah I think very personally I've always given myself the freedom to be curious in terms of work and allow that to take multiple forms and not that stress me but definitely for me there's no doubt that just nature and the outdoors is the medicine for that and there's a movement here in the UK for social I'm sure it's not just the UK social prescriptions and walking is now one of those so there's a trial actually in my local area of doctors prescribing walking for people but it's missing the point isn't it because whenever you prescribe something is because you've gone too far down some problem of health so back to the same point I think is that your nature is a really powerful thing to have in your life for all sorts of purposes so that's always my first call and whatever form that takes I talk in the book about my time as an archaeologist and he was locked in archaeology in terms of academic thought etc but actually working outdoors it's a bit like being a farmer and there's a lot to be said about it that's probably why your brain works well in interpreting what you're doing to a bigger side of that I think it's interesting isn't it that you think about the big policy things happening in the world in terms of the meetings like COP we had COP Glasgow a while back here and supposedly all of the movers and shakers in thinking about the environment and on a global scale basically took over every hotel room in Glasgow didn't it and yeah it was crazy flew in their private jets aren't it to my very small point of a company saying don't book a ballroom going through something which connects you with nature because you'll get a lot more out of it that just seems madness to me that's the way that thinking is trying to happen I don't know if that answers your question in any way yeah same the same way I just I was at COP 26 in Glasgow and I actually stayed a little bit about an hour and a half or maybe a more it was about two hours away from Glasgow and how to drive every day to get into the COP but it is sheer madness and I just came from COP 27 in November from Egypt in Shaman shake and it's sheer insanity what occurs there and has very little to do with outdoors and the nature although we're talking about nature and environment how we protect it and do it's that there's there's always this thing that brings us back to the time behind the desk the time behind the computer the part that how do we do those negotiations how do we write the proposals and or do the things that are necessary to fulfill the mission or to fulfill the order to do the job that we need to do and those can't they can't always be done in nature but I believe that connection to nature or to being outside gets you into the thinking that the origins of everything of products food resources the environment that we're talking all starts outside in nature that's where the resources come to build the computers that we're talking on to build the internet the fiber optic lines or the satellites they're all created from resources outside and they're mainly the wiring and cables are outside buried or above ground one way or the other and the to disconnect ourselves from food or nature or the way the world really works or those models it is a big mistake and that's why organizations have that limited growth or that collapse factor or disruptive factor is because they lose sight of their supply chain and how those long processes work but also that our infrastructures around the world are out of date and keeping up to speed with our exponentially growing world and how the world really works and that's why earlier I mentioned how can we get those policies in line that we can still do work we can still have a job and we can still be productive but how do we combine it more with nature how do we make sure those policies and those things are in place that when we innovate and say boy you know what working just four hours a week is a hell of a lot more productive than 40 hours a week and here's why and but then we come up with this idea and the science behind it and then the policy of your government or where you live or the infrastructure is not it's not broadband is not a human right for you to be able to work outside in nature or the employment laws are not set up to be able to do that so no matter how great we find the science or that the infrastructure and the policy and governance of that system is not ready for that transition and so forces us back into almost the definition of insanity of how we're doing how we're living as human beings I just think it's so crazy that we can create our work from life that those aren't one one thing and they have been one thing for many decades and eons it's just since the industrial revolution where it's really changed last 200 220 years changed into that a really separation of reality from where we should be and it's affecting a lot of our health our health care and systems like that I love your book and the science and what you talk about the tools and this connection and what aha moments and what innovations and creativity emerge by doing the practice as you talk about I believe it's greater tools and by no means to force you in any ways to go beyond what you created this beautiful work or in your examples and the journeys that you take us on in the book but I I'm always trying to push the boundaries how can I get great thought leaders like you and the people you write about in the book to think about how do we really get that transition how do we make that connection to the future our world needs to go into and then automatically that environmentalism that when we're connected to nature and the outdoors I don't think you're out there on your walks and your hikes out there throwing your plastic trash everywhere hopefully you're leaving the world better than you found it the nature better than you found it and you're saying hey we need to protect and preserve it and when I do work go back to work I'm going to realize boy how much energy and stuff I really got out of being in nature and I want to preserve that I want to restore it and regenerate it and I think that affects also how you are when you're at work and that's the reasons I bring that up do you have anything to say about that I'm sort of thinking about an experiment now before you articulated the sort of four hour work where you're four hours of productive work spending the rest milling around coffee machines chatting I wonder if was brave enough to accept that so will you get if you let someone free to free them from the shackles of that office and let them be in nature do what they want would you get eight hours productive work I think you'd get a lot more to the truth is that actually more productive if you really break all those shackles and I guess there's companies which are embracing post-covid the work from anywhere but you that's also a big infrastructure when you think about it that the post-covid or even covid time that they're embracing it but is it up to speed heard stories people were getting ergonomic issues by working from their kitchen table or their bed or their sofa that they were starting problems and then companies started to ship computers and better routers so that they could do work from home and chairs to the home but then people were like all over the world were saying we don't have broadband as a human right I don't have enough broadband for my kids and my wife and myself to work from home I don't have enough rooms computers freezing cold yeah yeah exactly so there's so many things you hear in entrepreneurship and serial entrepreneurs and startups always hear about beach money or this digital nomad go work from the beach and go work from anywhere in the world and that and it is possible but there's also a reality factor of the infrastructure of where and how that work looks like most of those people aren't producing food or farming or building computers or writing code for software or whatever there is those people are creating social media content or writing books or doing different things where that type of a lifestyle is generally managing a family at the same time exactly they're not traveling around with a bunch of kids and a wife and a dog and living on the beach one week in the next in the forest it's reality set in but what are those realities of the future the hardest question I have for you today I'm going to drop it on you now if that's okay unless you wanted to talk a little bit more about my musings of how do we prepare the future it ties to that I want to ask you the burning question wtf which is what's the futures but I want to twist it in in a little bit of a different way what does a world that works for everyone look like to you gosh what an easy one isn't it what does a world that looks like that everyone for work but what does a world that works for everyone look like for you how utopian can I go all right it's up to you that's the thing it's not what your job your family it's up to you what does that look like I like globalization when I love the european project I think open borders is a great thing for humanity and this is parking whatever economic issues but that would absolutely be there for me we should be able to go wherever we want to go and work wherever we want to go work so that's that would be in my utopian bit of my utopian future we are as we talked earlier we were born out in nature and part of nature so accepting that from that work life side of things and maybe it is that sense of allowing people so not everyone can work wherever they want but I'm opening the borders so people may be able to choose that but maybe they should be allowed much more to work however they want and yes there'll be constraints of people's personal lives and families and whatever else they're dealing with that nine to five forty hour monday to friday is what's wrong I think for your point of going back to even if you go back to the point of the agriculture revolution the people were suddenly more sedentary and working but they still had a rhythm to their life which was driven by nature was driven by what they were growing what they were nurturing what they were planting feeding their families it wasn't we go out in the fields and do the same thing every day and I think that would be what I'd like to see work changed to and businesses changed to and the one of the easiest ways to start to explore that is to embrace the natural systems and regenerative regenerative systems because we all start to realize that works and you start to realize that most businesses do to some degree follow that even if they try to inflict the same thing every week if I'm working young tech really not a fan of the Wednesday stand-up or the I'm not against meetings at all but it's that absolute rigid this is what we do at the same time every day or week just agile scrum the meetings the yeah just seems nuts nuts to me so maybe those two things open all the borders and allow work to be much more of a natural thing as opposed to a constrained thing I don't know how we do that when I said earlier I really do think food and agriculture and animal agriculture domesticated us it wasn't the other way around that we domesticated it I think it really made it so that we had to say stay put and do the harvest and do the planning and do the do the things and much more became much more of the beginnings of this sedentary type of a lifestyle and the type of farming we did really also has created a ripple effect but I love I love your wine I'm also in alignment with that that's a I've only gotten that answer to the question what does a world that works for everyone look like is open things up without nations and borders and this division of humanity one from another to go around the the thing I would like to ask is that the question to what you said is kind of says not everybody can work anywhere why why is that what job would require or what job is it that somebody couldn't work anywhere I think that any job that you mentioned no matter how shitty we think it is or how bad of a job it is or how if it's screwing on a screw on a conveyor belt for eight hours a day just the same repetitive thing however boring or the boardroom you have that section in your book about the boardroom like the boring company it's a boring type of situation most of the time that can be done anywhere in the world and the interesting thing is before the beginning of the industrial revolution local economies local practices and production and manufacturing were the key there was a lot more small hold farmers and producers and manufacturers on a small scale leather goods food products whatever you could think of that build these little local economies and they disappeared to the big cities they disappeared to big industrial areas and now those people who the younger generations that we also talked about and are called they left their small town cities in that to go where bigger opportunities are right and when they did all those local manufacturing production left as well and so now a lot of people get the imports from other places the large areas and actually you could take your bakery your leather production whatever you want to do or produce or manufacturing to pretty much any area or island of this world and just start your own business or start your own local economy to contribute to other beautiful locations of the world Bali and Fiji or your dream as Alaska Iceland Greenland who knows yeah that's a dream and then you've created a lifestyle you're creating your own economy and saying not only am I making and producing and doing this somewhere else that I'm always wondering the big migration we've seen over the decades where there are some people from beautiful places of the world that are coming to cold Germany or to cold places of Europe they live in what I would consider a paradise but they're leaving because the social infrastructure the healthcare the pay is not as good but they just left that paradise to work for the almighty dollar why couldn't they create their own economy their own production what they want there in a flourishing lifestyle connected to that nature where they are because usually after they've made that almighty buck or that wisdom creeps in they tend to want to return back to that home spot anywhere that beautiful place that they were at I'm a huge fan of Mark Twain Samuel Clemens and he had a huge writers block in his life and it was run he was writing the adventures of Tom Sawyer Huckleberry Finn and he just had this writers block he couldn't do it and I'm in Hamburg Germany and have lived in Germany for a long time my mother was German in that and I heard the story because I attended I went to Heidelberg University as a graduate that Samuel Clemens was there with his priest or preacher doing his tour to raise money because he had money problems a lot so he would lecture and talk and do things as well so he was in Heidelberg and during the day he and his priest friend they would row up and down the river there in Heidelberg and visit the different castles up along the river and that activity of rowing and going up and walking through the nature into these castles and what in Germany they call burgs or big fortresses and things that they have a lot of in Europe broke that writers block that he had and when he writes about the Mississippi and being on the river and that and the big steamboat captain it was triggered by this creativity of being in Germany told different language beer food and they experienced that at that time in a total different place in the Mississippi River as well that he writes this but it but that there's many reports in his autobiography and that was actually Germany that in a different location that broke that writers block and that we've talked about globalization and nature and connectivity that's just some creative things that you would say wow that how in the hell did that happen you know total different place the best now American novelist you'd ever see in stories most successful and it was all solved in a total different country a little different language looking at castles on on I believe it's the Neckar or the Rhine River I can't even remember what rivers they are that he wrote up and down is unbelievable but you also have that experience in the stories in your book as well on similar things with Legos and other things that like to you've reached into this creativity aspect as well absolutely and yeah I didn't put Mark Twain in the book but actually I did read about him a bit in researching it and he's not alone there's a fantastic actual another book by Frederick Gross called The Philosophy of Walking which delves into a lot of thinkers and writers and I talk about Nietzsche quite a lot in the book who had very similar experiences whether they were blocked or whether it was just when they were engaging in nature and walking and doing other things outside where their finest work came from so you know I think that speaks to that you that de-evolutionary physiological bits that's no doubt things spark in your brain and connections are made and new ideas happen in that happy mix of walking's a way to do it but being in nature and being slightly distracted in doing something not too taxing but not totally relaxing is a magic place from a scientific point of view so I think absolutely I can totally understand why that happened so I delve into some of those stories and my not so profound stories of walks I've done and have had a profound effect on me and there's a couple in the book some of them are to do with challenge some of them to do with sensory perception I tell the story of one where I couldn't see more than about 10 meters all day in the Welsh mountains and it was like being in a sensory deprivation tank and it was an amazing experience I'm quite a fan of mixing the outdoors with sometimes challenge but I think what's more important is new places and there's a real powerful thing about being a different culture so I lead a lot of trips and I take a lot of people to Morocco simply because I think there's another bit about being out of your cultural zone so I find that interesting but it can be as simple as getting lost going somewhere totally new I've got a great friend in Norway Toril in the book who purposely gets lost and talks about the benefits of that and your sort of yeah your sort of inbuilt GPS is suddenly clicking like crazy and that's part of that neurologist Shane Amara talks about just a luck of evolution that the same bit of our brains that are to do with imagination are also our internal GPS which is the same neurons firing when you're trying to navigate somewhere new but also we're a key to imagination so there's a lot in there but I think what that also leads me and I talk quite a lot in the book is that I think there's a myth that creativity is just thinking and yes it's almost the opposite I think that doing these things your thoughts happen but despite you it's not sitting down to think but actually creativity is much more powerful if it involves lacks of play of making art whatever that might form that might take that adds to it I have a number of techniques I do with teams and the play on that and the one that really works well and I can show you some amazing videos from this from teams I've been with where I on the first part of the walk I get them all to just find an item it doesn't I don't give them any rules they just have to find a natural item on their walk so you end up with leaves and twigs and moss and all sorts of flowers and then at some point in the walk I get them into teams and they have to it depends on what performance but let's say you have to tell a story about someone on your team or your company using these items and it's one of the things which gets the best makes the good videos because normally some of them someone in there's quite amusing and does something amusing but actually some of the some quite deep insights come out of that and I think that's something to do with Kings happening but through a different sort of medium and the classic one which again I quote in the book is Lego when I say that I think the best innovators are conceptually people who never stopped playing Lego with their friends doesn't mean they have to be doing Lego now but there's it's that concept of sitting down with something without an idea of what you're going to what the outcome is going to be with other people is a really powerful way to think about creativity but you can use twigs and leaves and doesn't matter rocks. Yeah I've seen that as well I was in in Copenhagen on this youth island and we had a bunch of twigs, moss, leaves, flowers and we had to build this ecological city of the future just out of the the materials presented it and the amazing creativity and the things that people come up with we were having these these plants create energy and stuff and just these processes that could thrive out of that it's just astounding. I only have two more questions for you and then we're done I really appreciate you diving deep into not only just thinking outdoors and creativity and touching on parts of your book the intent of our discussion was never to read or give away the entire book we want to encourage people to go out there and read it and see how it applies to their lives and if they also have the aha moments that I did which led to maybe totally different questions that you hadn't thought before or heard before on how can we get to those futures because I'm totally with you on outdoors and thinking outdoors and I'm an environmentalist and I love walking in nature and encapsulating and building those things into my daily life and routine creating a lifestyle out of that instead of me conforming which I'm not a big conformist into a lifestyle to be a robot or mechanic or work in some kind of environment that I wouldn't enjoy and I would encourage and empower others to do that same factor and that leads me to the last two questions so I've really appreciated that if there was one message or maybe even two message that you could depart to my listeners as a sustainable takeaway that has the power to change their lives what would it be what's your message well could I come up with something pippy now I have used this one before it sounds a bit jokey but I think there's something in it which is that bunking off is the deepest work you can do okay now I'm not from the United Kingdom bunking off you gotta explain towards me oh bunking off working just the deepest work you can do drifting or just you're bunking off okay that's a good one I hadn't heard that one before I love it and I think that's that's true when you get out of your head or what the moment is that's when these moments of creativity really come I love that that's a fabulous piece of advice what have you experienced or learned in your professional journey so far anthropology to technology to professor to entrepreneurship that you would have loved to know from the start you've had quite the journey you're still on it what would you have liked to know from the start what would I have liked to have named from the start I sometimes ask it's not my question but with walking I ask people sometimes if they want to meet their 18 year old self or their 80 year old self it's a related sort of question isn't it what would I want to name from my professional my professional life from the start so I'm gonna I'm gonna take a while to answer this you'll have to edit this yeah I ask this to a lot of people and most people say nothing because I really like the journey the journey has taught me a lot the other thing that I hear a lot in the way I answer this is I wish I would have learned it sooner I wish I would have started sooner if I would have known all this what I know now I would have started much sooner but this journey has been a development of discovery and learning things some people wouldn't change anything those are just maybe spark how you would answer that question definitely I've enjoyed the whole journey and it's it is easy to think that I wish I would been doing what I'm doing now earlier but I probably couldn't talk it's all cumulative and it's Lego bricks yeah the my my building now is a part of all of those not that I did this much I struck out self-employed in my late 20s so I didn't work for the man if you like for much of my life what would I have done maybe some of those especially that's bits before and maybe things since I think I could probably could have even been braver and if you're not if it's not working for you whether that's the company the job whatever get out sooner there's there's always something else you can do so and I think to your point you mentioned earlier that's thinking the trap is my pay packet or my and those things are important but yeah yeah there's a times where I could have been braver and said this isn't working just walk out the door it's not going to be the end and maybe that would have led me somewhere different but no I think yeah the journeys wish I had more time I'd quite like to have I have dreams like everyone's dreams I'd quite like to have been a professor of archaeology and just done that my whole life but I probably wouldn't have been when it came to reality of doing it day in day a month in month out yeah I can see that as well a lot of my younger life I spent tens of time outside I think that's it's not an easy transition I told you that I've been standing for over 28 years now but I had it easy I did a lot of farming and I had a lot of family businesses that were outside and things that I did that were involved in that so the transition was a lot easier but I know other people that I've seen in working situations there start with health problems headaches or whatever it is and to make that transition it's not something that happens from one moment to the next everybody's different and takes time to make that transition and so I know some people that made it from sitting to standing in three weeks and others made it in a week and others made it in a year so it's where they kind of have to train themselves it's just everybody's different but yeah change is good if it wasn't we would still be wearing those stinky diapers that we were right after our birth and it would be a shitty outlook but change is a positive thing and we all have that power to do that we're should be empowered to create our own local futures however we want it and quicker we realize that I think that we unlock the things that you talk about in your book so Gary I really appreciate you sharing the creativity factor with me and speaking to you thank you for sharing and letting us all inside of your ideas wow and I've pushed the boundaries with you so I've really tried to get your ideas to come out so I love that you've says I think this and I would do this and my personal experience because that's what I want to hear I want to hear about the journey that you've made so far and I thank you for letting us all inside of your ideas been a sure pleasure and that's all I have unless you have anything else to add. That's been absolutely pleasure Mark and everyone's different in all their ways of working and thinking when I put that to my book there it also is an audio book where you know it's not me speaking it's a nice professional voice actor apparently he's got a very soothing voice it's good to take on a walk maybe just a question for you then Mark because I've asked I did a survey in my book of asking people where do you have your best ideas if you had to answer it? My best ideas are always outside absolutely and I'm more of a mountain person so I like mountains and forests as well but I really it's not talking above 3000 meters but I'm talking above 2000 so I like that too that's the top of the world feeling and yeah and that very much me as well although yeah some people can't get out they will find intimidating but yeah so I'm always drawn to mountains. Other things like mountain adventures this year to come? Yeah I hope so I hope you have tons of them I really also like working on the farm I like getting my hands dirty and soil underneath my fingertips and being grounded to growing food I think that growing food is like printing your own money and I just a good friend of mine gangster gardener Ron Finley said that and I just think it's so true if we create our own things and do the toils of our own hands we can create our own economies and really have beautiful futures it's been a sheer pleasure thank you so much Gary have a wonderful day and I'm excited to release this podcast. Thanks mom.