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Why sloths have it sussed
Feb 27, 2023
Did you know sloths’ faces are naturally shaped to give the impression they are always smiling?
Whilst they look like the ultimate time-wasters hanging out lazily in trees chewing like teenagers with a bad gum habit, sloths’ habits are in fact perfectly designed to maximise their energy and minimise time spent on unnecessary activity. They avoid doing anything that doesn’t contribute to their two main goals: survival and reproduction.
I came across these facts while putting together my talk Healthy Brains: positive habits for thriving at work in which I argue for being more like sloths (who at least make it down to the bottom of their tree once a week) and less like hamsters (spinning on their wheels and getting nowhere).
I came across these facts while putting together my talk Healthy Brains: positive habits for thriving at work in which I argue for being more like sloths (who at least make it down to the bottom of their tree once a week) and less like hamsters (spinning on their wheels and getting nowhere).
I’d shared these sloth facts with my family, so I was delighted and highly amused recently to receive this fabulous mug as a birthday present from my two grown-up stepchildren:
I’ve written about my experiences as a recovering ‘time-addict’ before, so regular readers will know that, along with the majority of working professionals (especially those with any form of caring or parenting responsibilities), our time can feel like an unseemly race to get the important work done, keep on top of the less important but far ‘noisier’ urgent stuff and not drop too many spinning plates when it comes to life admin or family needs.
So I read with interest this Behavioral Scientist article about a new book called ‘Subtract’ by Yael Schonbrun and Leidy Klotz, which explains that we default to adding not subtracting, a habit that intensifies the more we have on our minds. It literally takes us more effort to stop and think about what we might stop doing in exchange for adding something new onto our to-do list.
This echoes many comments I’ve heard from working professionals about their workloads always expanding and new organisational initiatives regularly being launched but few, if any, ever being stopped early and woefully few conversations about how much time it actually takes to do the work required. These are examples of what I call our cultural ‘time blindness’ manifesting in the way we manage work, workloads and working time.
Subtract’s authors recommend maintaining a ‘stop doing’ list alonside our ‘to do’ list, and if we’re not sure what to subtract, then to go back to deeper questions about what kind of life we want to be leading – and I would add, what kind of person we want to be.
I argue that we don’t just benefit from doing this in our lives but across teams and organisations too. By developing ‘time intelligence’, groups can realise a far better return on the cumulative time everyone invests in work. The almost 3,000 participants in the UK’s recently completed 6 month pilot of the 4 day working week are celebrating significant benefits such as 39% reporting less stress, 71% reporting lower levels of burnout and 37% reporting improvements in physical health. Importantly, the 61 participating organisations reaped benefits too with average refvenue rising 35% on previous years and staff attrition down 57%. Much of the increased productivity came from streamlining operations and processes, eliminating wasted time and automating more standardised, routine tasks as former 4 Day Week Global CEO Joe O’Connor explains in this 2 minute video clip and on an upcoming episode of my podcast The Business Of Being Brilliant.
So as we head into March and longer daylight hours, I’m popping ‘subtract’ nudges into my calendar and notebook, setting up a ‘stop doing’ list and putting some extra effort into making sure those lighter evenings don’t simply turn into more hours chasing my tail or glued to my laptop.
If my family start to notice that I’m hanging out more, loafing around with my mug in hand, then I’ll be beaming like a time-rich sloth too.
So I read with interest this Behavioral Scientist article about a new book called ‘Subtract’ by Yael Schonbrun and Leidy Klotz, which explains that we default to adding not subtracting, a habit that intensifies the more we have on our minds. It literally takes us more effort to stop and think about what we might stop doing in exchange for adding something new onto our to-do list.
This echoes many comments I’ve heard from working professionals about their workloads always expanding and new organisational initiatives regularly being launched but few, if any, ever being stopped early and woefully few conversations about how much time it actually takes to do the work required. These are examples of what I call our cultural ‘time blindness’ manifesting in the way we manage work, workloads and working time.
Subtract’s authors recommend maintaining a ‘stop doing’ list alonside our ‘to do’ list, and if we’re not sure what to subtract, then to go back to deeper questions about what kind of life we want to be leading – and I would add, what kind of person we want to be.
I argue that we don’t just benefit from doing this in our lives but across teams and organisations too. By developing ‘time intelligence’, groups can realise a far better return on the cumulative time everyone invests in work. The almost 3,000 participants in the UK’s recently completed 6 month pilot of the 4 day working week are celebrating significant benefits such as 39% reporting less stress, 71% reporting lower levels of burnout and 37% reporting improvements in physical health. Importantly, the 61 participating organisations reaped benefits too with average refvenue rising 35% on previous years and staff attrition down 57%. Much of the increased productivity came from streamlining operations and processes, eliminating wasted time and automating more standardised, routine tasks as former 4 Day Week Global CEO Joe O’Connor explains in this 2 minute video clip and on an upcoming episode of my podcast The Business Of Being Brilliant.
So as we head into March and longer daylight hours, I’m popping ‘subtract’ nudges into my calendar and notebook, setting up a ‘stop doing’ list and putting some extra effort into making sure those lighter evenings don’t simply turn into more hours chasing my tail or glued to my laptop.
If my family start to notice that I’m hanging out more, loafing around with my mug in hand, then I’ll be beaming like a time-rich sloth too.
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Making change stick. Recently, I’ve been tuning in regularly to the 'Just One Thing' podcast by Dr. Michael Mosley. In each 15-minute episode, Michael delves into a single, manageable change that can enhance our health and extend our lifespan. Thanks to him, I’m keeping up my green tea ritual (that was a quick win), incorporating daily planks into my exercise routine (right after my morning run - oof) and reheating leftover carbs. I’m a bit of a podcast butterfly and I’m wondering why this podcast has stuck firmly now as a favourite. Besides Dr. Mosley's warm and reassuring tone, I think it boils down to 3 things. Firstly, focusing on just one thing feels refreshingly attainable. Let's face it, we're bombarded with complex self-improvement strategies daily. Who wants a whole industry of new ‘to do’s to implement, remember and track? Secondly, the changes are entirely within my control. I don't need anyone's permission to start planking in my bedroom, even if it does provide my husband with daily amusement. I can make these changes tomorrow, better still, today. Thirdly, the advice is specific and the outcomes are clear. I know precisely what to do and whether it’s working. Whether it's keeping my blood pressure in check or reducing blood sugar spikes, the benefits are measurable. Now, shifting gears to my work life, I find parallels between Dr. Moseley's approach and my Time-Intelligent Teams workshops. These workshops aim to enhance teams' productivity and enjoyment at work – to help people to invest their time more effectively. We focus on one collective and one individual change that are within the team's control. Through reflection, brainstorming, and laughter, teams identify actionable steps to work smarter, not harder. The feedback from these workshops has been resoundingly positive with managers reporting improved communication, higher levels of commitment to the change and more cohesive teamwork. Of course the power of ‘just one thing’ is that once you’ve mastered that one change and it has proven it’s value, it simply becomes part of how you do things. Which leaves you free to cast around for the next ‘just one thing’ that could also have a transformative effect. And another after that. That’s why, to my amazement, wall squats have joined my daily exercise routine and I’m evangelising about the benefits of cooked tomatoes. I just need to find Michael’s episode on why sticky toffee pudding will reverse the ageing process…..
How are those 2024 goals looking? If you’re the type of person who loves setting New Year resolutions and making aspirational plans for the coming 12 months, but then feels downcast a few weeks or months later when all those intentions look over-ambitious or have fallen by the wayside, then this blog post will cheer you up, I guarantee. Because I’ve discovered a better way to start the year: by recognising that we’re already living our future today. Let me unpack that. People today say they are time poor and the stats shed light on why: work intensity has increased steadily over the past 20 years, leisure time has fallen - plus we don’t tend to use it wisely - and we spend more of our time parenting our children than previous generations, or caring for elderly dependents. When we’re time poor, we tend to feel under pressure to get things done, stay on top of things and keep all those plates spinning as efficiently as possible. We’re always thinking about what’s coming up next and the future that we’re working towards. (My vision of the future? Older me is effortlessly churning out bestseller books from an idyllic coastal eco-cottage, in between bouts of sea-swimming and long clifftop yomps. What’s yours?). The problem is, that future is always slightly out of grasp. So we keep on striving to get there. Hand-in-hand with tomorrow-chasing is beating ourselves up about the big things what we haven’t achieved yet or on a smaller scale, tasks we haven’t ticked off our daily or weekly to-do lists. I had a great 2023 – busy, healthy, enjoyable – but reading back over my mid-year plan was a frustrating litany of ‘not done’, ‘not done’, ‘not done’, from my updating my website to launching my new Time-Intelligence online diagnostic for teams and organisations. Hal Hershfield, Professor at UCLA's Anderson School of Management and author of Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today came on my podcast The Business of Being Brilliant in September. He advises ‘ not to always live life for tomorrow’ and to ‘ have some self compassion and self forgiveness. It's really easy to beat ourselves up because we're falling short of the things that we said we wanted to do. And that's not really fair to our present selves’. What we don’t typically pay so much attention to – or even notice at all – are all the things we’re already doing today that are to be celebrated or that quite simply, we find enjoyable or rewarding. As Hal says ‘ I think we do a disservice to our future selves by telling ourselves that we're working for them, but in reality we're missing the present and then what sort of life does that add up to?’ I notice the same unhelpful tendency in organisations, where we’re equally future-obsessed. As soon as one project is over, the next one begins. We sprint from one deadline to the next without pausing for breath or taking time to reflect, appreciate, learn or reconsider. It’s a common refrain I hear people say in my Time-Intelligent Teams workshops . It’s a chronic case of organisational impatience, and it’s not a recipe for long-term, sustainable high performance. So what’s the antidote? It’s to ask ourselves ‘are we there already?’ This question is reminiscent of the dreaded ‘are we there yet?’ that every child asks, usually 10 minutes after leaving home (yep, you did it too) and that makes every driver want to scream. But ‘are we there already?’ is different. It invites us to reflect on what we’re doing today and the outcomes we’re bringing about. It helps us to see afresh the seams of richness layered through our work or home lives that we’ve been neglecting to notice and whose absence we’d sorely regret. By asking ‘are we there already?’ or ‘am I there already?’, we can look differently at what we spend our time on today and appreciate those things we do that are working well for us right here, right now. In other words, the ways in which we’re already living our future today. In my #timeintelligence workshops, I help teams identify all the positive aspects of the way they work that is enabling them to deliver on their goals, often under intense time pressure and resource constraints. In parallel with celebrating these strengths and successes, we look for changes within their control that can help them overcome the challenges or frustration and make best use of their time at work. So instead of setting some traditional resolutions, why not try setting some ‘living my future today’ resolutions? By listing a few things that you already do and would like to continue doing/do more often because they bring you joy, respite, connection, growth, inspiration, fulfilment, contentment or some other benefit. Here are some of my ‘living my future today’ resolutions: 1. Doing a short writing sprint every day to make sense of some half-formed musings, explore the seed of an idea or untangle a mental confusion. The world makes a bit more sense after each sprint. 2. Playing the piano every day that I’m at home, because I find it a magical antidote to a racing mind and it brings back treasured memories of jamming on the piano with my father. 3. Keeping up my daily running streak (today was day #1,151) because I love it and I want to stay mobile and independent until I’m headed for the next world. 4. Sticking with my ‘Review, Celebrate, Plan’ habit where at the end of each week, I review how the week has gone, celebrate things I feel proud of and plan for the week ahead. Cup of tea and large slice of cake in hand. 5. Saying yes to coffees and phone calls with friends even when work and life feel too busy and I’m tempted to say ‘not this week’. I never regret making the time. Why not ask the same question to colleagues in your team? Your close friends or family? It might spark a new kind of conversation. And you might well discover that your future has already arrived.
Pause the hamster wheel and set a more thoughtful course for 2024.
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