Why We Are So Tired All The Time

so there’s a talk i was going to give

before the calvin 19 lockdown there’s a

talk i’d like to give which is an

epic tale of change and hope and there’s

a talk i think i need to give which is

very specific to this time and place we

find ourselves in now

so let me start telling you this is not

a zoom background these are real trees

this is a real sky

and i’m in a real place somewhere called

abbey fields in colchester in essex and

i’ll tell you a little bit more

later why i chose to be here because

it’s an important part of what i want to

share with you

today so about nine months ago i was

invited to take part in

ted x colchester and i was very excited

by that i’d spent

10 years doing research into how the

world was changing and why the world was

changing

research took me all the way around the

world and i i presented it into a book

and particularly about what we could do

as human beings to thrive in this

emerging new world that we find

ourselves in and that’s kind of why i

was invited to talk at the event and i

was

i was excited about that and then of

course covered 19 came along

the event was meant to be in april 2020

and understandably and quite rightly

it was cancelled and then about a month

ago the organizers came back to me and

said

why don’t we actually do them online why

don’t we record the talks we were going

to give and we can present them in a

different way and i was i was excited

about that and i

started to prepare and i started to

practice now i’ve done a lot of speaking

in my time and i

i found that um that this new thing i

was trying to do was

was kind of difficult i found it

difficult to concentrate

and particularly i began to realize how

tired i was

as i started to confront that i realized

it wasn’t particularly about preparing

for giving a talk just how generally

tired and exhausted i was finding myself

i was kind of hacking through every day

and i started to talk to my friends and

they were kind of reporting the same

thing and very quickly i realized just

collectively we’re exhausted

i started to wonder about that then i

took my first major trip

you know i’m down here in essex and i’m

from yorkshire up north so i hired a car

and i

drove up there and i found the whole

thing kind of overwhelming and difficult

and

at first i thought well it’s just

because i haven’t done it for a while

but really when i thought about it i

thought i shouldn’t be

this tired so that’s really what i want

to talk to you about today which is

why are we so tired all the time more

crucially what can we do about it

and so it goes back to some of the

research i was doing into

neuroscience and how our brains work and

if you look at the history of

neuroscience it goes right back to stone

age man

stone age man performed this procedure

which called was called treponation

people that must have been experiencing

some kind of mental illness they would

punch a hole

in their skull using a piece of flint

which seems pretty crude by today’s

standards but

if you look at fossil remains it looks

like a number of those people

lived for quite a long period of time

after that which suggests it might have

been

successful but it wasn’t until about

2500 years ago that we really started to

get into it

and a greek philosopher called

hippocrates came along and his

suggestion

which today doesn’t seem that radical

was that we did our thinking

in our brain before that we’d assume

that the thinking went on in our bodies

which is

kind of interesting because that is

coming around again now that we’ve

actually started to understand a little

bit about how the body works the

new new kind of research is suggesting

that we do

thinking in our brain but also there is

stuff going on in our body too which

points to

unconscious kind of activity which which

is crucial i think to what i want to

talk to

about you today so that’s the way we

thought and for the next

two and a half thousand years the

assumption from man was that we had this

brain

and in the brain thinking happened the

victorians particularly got very

interested in this and they started to

take dead bodies and take them apart and

pull out the brain

and cut them up and put them in for more

formaldehyde and

if you go to any victorian medical

museum you’ll probably see a brain

in a jar but in the 1970s we started to

see things a bit differently

digital electronics had come along we

were able to kind of look at brain

activity and electrical activity in the

brain on a far more

granular level and what neuroscientists

began to realize that was that the brain

wasn’t this fixed object

it was changing and is reconfiguring

itself all the time

something you get got called

neuroplasticity

and the phrase that emerged during that

time was that neurons that

fire together wire together

so in other words as we started to think

about things and we started to take

action

about what we were thinking about those

neurons began to kind of form

bundles and we began to realize that’s

kind of how

habits formed at the same time

though some research that was done in

the university of california pointed to

something

very interesting which even today most

of us haven’t really kind of got our

heads around

what scientists in the university of

california in san francisco did was they

started to

try and record the time lag between when

we had a thought to do something

and when we actually did it and what

they found

was quite disturbing what they found in

the majority of cases

was that the neuron that fires to do

something happens before we think about

it now that’s one of those things you

just need to think about a bit because

using our brain our brain his brain’s

work what

so in other words the neurons of fire

for an action happen before

our thought now what this pointed to is

that

our idea of free will and our idea that

we’re actually doing things consciously

isn’t actually correct it was so radical

that for about 20 years it kind of got

put on the edge of science but again in

2007

scientists in the max planck institute

in in germany

did a similar but more detailed

experiment and categorically proved this

to be the fact so what this is pointing

to

and why it’s crucial to why we’re tired

all the time is an awful lot of what we

do is unconscious

an awful lot what we do is habitual and

that’s the crucial thing that i realized

what’s happened over the last few months

is all our habits

all our unconscious processes that we’ve

developed over years and years over the

course of our life

have been disrupted so if you look at

what happened to me i had my work and i

used to get on a train and i’d drive

different places i’d get up in the

morning and i’d

i’d uh quite often have a ritual where i

would go outside

i’d do yoga classes i’d do other classes

there’s different places i went

i had a whole series of things i i did

that suddenly

i couldn’t do no wonder i’m so tired

because what i’m now having to do is be

conscious of everything i’m doing

85 to 90 of what i was doing beforehand

was a series of habits that i was just

triggering and suddenly i’m having to

think about things

now that was hard enough into lockdown

but at least i was in the constraints of

my house and at least the rules were

quite

kind of clear but now as we’ve moved out

of the lockdown

where the rules are a lot more open to

interpretation suddenly the world seems

like a really dangerous place

so my trip up north is a really good

example and once upon

a time i would have got in the car and i

would have driven and i would have been

listening to the radio and

when i drove into a service station even

though i was conscious of what i was

driving

there’s a lot of things i didn’t need to

think about i would get out

i would get the petrol pump out i’d put

it in the car i wouldn’t actually be

having to think much about that i’d walk

into the filling station

i’d join the queue i’d pay but suddenly

the world seems dangerous and i’m having

to think about it should i do this

and should i touch this and should i do

this i’m having to think

think think all the time so what’s

happened to most of us

is suddenly we’ve moved from a period

where 18 90

of what we’re doing is habitual we’re

not having to think about it to

pretty much everything we’re having to

do having to think all the time

and negotiate we’re not triggering those

patterns

so we’re actually fighting against the

wiring in our brain

this explains why a number of people i

think have wanted to rush back suddenly

to go to

mcdonald’s or coffee shops i was really

surprised when the lockdown

ended around the corner from where i am

there’s a drive through

costa and there’s this huge long queue

and i’m like why would people drive

and queue for like hours to get a paper

cup of coffee or tea

something they probably have learned to

make at home which they can’t go into

the cafe to

sit in a car park or in the back of the

car why is that

and it’s a pull to the familiar it was a

pull to the habitual

so what we’re having to do is broker all

the time which is why we’re so tired

so what’s the solution to this well it’s

three things

and it’s why i’ve decided to do this

outside you know

we spend a lot of time in our rooms in

our office particularly if you’ve kept

working

you know on zoom at your desk the first

thing is to do is to go outside

get outside get into the great outdoors

and allow your brain to expand allow

yourself to be in places that are safe

and feel safe because only when you’re

in a safe places you can let your guard

down you’re not having to worry all the

time

the second thing is to give yourself a

break i mean give yourself a break

emotionally but quite literally give

yourself a break

one of the things we’ve tried to do is

we’ve tried to port what we’re doing

beforehand

into this new paradigm we find ourselves

in we’re trying to run hour-long

meetings that we used to run

as an hour-long meeting online and

that’s just dumb we need to give

ourselves more time

we need to give ourselves more space we

need to be more concentrated

in what we’re doing we need to recognize

how difficult it is

but the reason i chair about this

because the big opportunity here

is we were in a world that a lot of us

realized was working in a way that we

weren’t very happy about

a lot of us saw this as an opportunity

for change

and what’s happened is all our habits

have been broken

now there’s a pull to go back to how

things were i keep hearing now we need

to get

back we need to get back we need to get

back but the great opportunity now is we

can create new habits because breaking

habits is the hardest thing

it’s why it’s so difficult to lose

weight to get fit to stop smoking to

change your diet whatever it is

we’ve broken those habits so if we

really do want to create a world that

works in a different way a world that

we’re

happy to be in collectively and

individual

individually we have the opportunity to

create new habits

and that’s an idea i think is worth

sharing