Come To Work Rest

i’m dr norina and i’m a sleep expert

i’ve spent over two and a half decades

helping

tens of thousands of people around the

world to get a good night’s sleep

but today i’m not talking about sleep

i’m going to talk about

why we need to come to work and rest

why am i talking about rest why is a

sleep expert

talking about resting in your waking

hours

is it because once my mother used to say

to me nerina you’re so

restless why don’t you sit still

and in fact i had terrible sleep

problems which continued until my early

thirties my mother was taking me

from one doctor to the next as a baby i

just couldn’t settle

i was so restless got to my early

thirties

got really ill started on a healing

journey

learned what it was all about hey presto

i can now sleep

really well but today let me remind you

i’m talking about rest

why let me just dial the clock back a

bit

okay so i am a physiologist

decades ago i studied uh physiology at

king’s college london

and i was in a laboratory with a white

lab coat on i was a theorist if you like

i was working with tissue culture

samples pipettes

96 well plates i was measurement

i was theory but i realized pretty

quickly that actually i wasn’t

really about being an academic i was

much more interested

in real live human beings so after a

series of jobs

after my academic qualifications were

achieved

i ended up in uh city of london square

mile

in a pretty dumpy little clinic in the

basement

in moorgate executive health screening

clinic

where i was measuring the health of city

professionals bankers

lawyers accountants insurers

and something started to

how do i say it didn’t make sense to me

what i had anticipated from my academic

studies

was really mismatched with what i was

picking up in the laboratory

so we were doing things these were long

executive medicals you know platinum

level

medicals were measuring blood pressure

weight heart rate spirometry breathing

patterns

um body fat levels in those days

euphemistically we were calling it

tranquil thickening you know to measure

the

the body fat levels around the middle

and i was taking blood i was a

phlebotomist as well so i was taking

blood from my clients

and um measuring the blood fat the

triglycerides

ldl hdl and the cholesterol levels but

sometimes even without doing the

analysis

i could see from the sample of blood

that i’d taken

that there’s going to be a lot of fat in

there and

what was this about the truncal

thickening it’s a very euphemistic term

for too much weight around the middle

the truncal thickening and the blood fat

why was that elevated because these

people were walking around at a speeded

up rate

laying down armor if you like body fat

blood fat armor against the pace of life

i remember saying to my

boss at the time malcolm what’s going on

with these people why are these

city people walking around in a state of

survival

so the academic in me woke up got

interested

started paying attention to the world

around us bearing in mind this was over

25 years ago

what was happening then what was

happening in the world over two and a

half decades ago

what was happening technology

technology had landed on the scene and

we had those kind of dom jolly

type phones do you remember huge great

bricks now of course we have these

wonderful devices

these smartphones but we we all became

completely

and utterly seduced with the technology

we thought it was going to make life

easy

so our inboxes were bombarded it was a

relentless flow of incoming data traffic

we were constantly

online relentlessly

mental constantly in front of our

screens constantly on our devices

and we started to work in a relentlessly

linear fashion go go go go

collapse at the end of the day keep

going till you get to the weekend and

then you spend the weekend surviving

keep going until your holiday and then

as soon as you go on holiday

you get sick with some kind of itis

which is why i was always telling my

clients

take at least a two week holiday you’ve

got one week to be sick

and one week to actually have a holiday

so we were getting sick

and um the health and safety

executives started paying attention

because there are a number of

cases landmark cases going through the

courts notably

john walker northumberland county

council he sued the council successfully

for stress at work suddenly duty of care

stress at work was on the agenda

the employer had a duty of care so

leaders managers

were being told you’ve got to look after

your staff so they don’t get mentally

ill

but at the same time there are all these

conflicting demands globalization

meant that everything was speeding up

and people had this push to go faster

and faster

and people were getting sick i noticed

that there was a need to talk about

sleep

not least because i also wasn’t sleeping

so i started talking about sleep got

sick

solved my sleep problems by the way

and then eventually i started making

making a name for myself as being an

expert who talked about sleep and energy

because i was noticing that there were

some people who were really

really good at managing their sleep and

their energy levels

and they weren’t genetically gifted it

wasn’t about gender or how much money

they were earning

it was something to do with the choices

that they were making because bear in

mind i was measuring the health

of people at all sorts of levels within

organizations

chauffeurs chief executives everyone in

the organization

was coming through my laboratory

something was happening there were

people who were making clever

choices and they weren’t getting sick

what were they doing

so i started patterning this i started

becoming obsessed with this

these choices i started writing about it

lecturing on these choices teaching

these choices as well as doing it myself

and getting better and better and

healing

my own sleep problems my own

restlessness

problems and then

i got head hunted to work at this clinic

in the city psychiatric clinic where

ironically

that was the place where i’d been ill

and spent a month there all those years

ago

i was head hunted to work there to run

sleep and energy programs for people

with severe

mental health problems i wrote my first

book tired but wired

for people who had put their head on the

pillow and their brain was

fizzing and buzzing so much they just

couldn’t sleep

and so i started talking even more about

sleep while

knowing at the same time but it wasn’t

the whole picture

the sleep industry was growing and now

it’s a you know

billion pound industry we’ve never been

perfectly placed to get a good night’s

sleep you think about

the engineering that goes into our

mattresses our pillows

our weighted blankets our duvets our

egyptian

thread cotton sheets our blackout blinds

scented candles aromatherapy oils

hypnosis tapes meditation apps

wearable devices we’ve come such a long

way since the hunter gatherer is

sleeping on a mat of leaves in their

cave and yet

we can’t sleep and that’s because

getting a good night’s sleep is amazing

there’s a reason why we’re designed to

spend a third of our lives sleeping but

it’s not

the only solution to this global problem

that we’re facing

which is about the fact that we’re

running in survival mode living in the

wrong part of the nervous system

because we’re not managing what we do in

our waking hours

we need to come to work and rest so let

me talk about the physiology behind this

you’ve heard of the circadian rhythm the

24-hour clock it’s an

oscillating cycle we expend energy

we recover energy and we sleep

almost more important than this and this

is the bit that i really really want you

to pay attention to

because this will profoundly change your

relationship with your energy levels

and your sleep and your ability to truly

enjoy those

best bits of your life

built into this circadian rhythm is a

shorter rhythm

of about 90 to 120 minutes

researchers discovered the hum of this

rhythm

within the circadian rhythm in the 70s

but people don’t talk about it enough

the hum of your energy is called the

ultradian cycle

it’s the rhythm of your energy we sleep

with this rhythm as well we sleep in

90 to 120 minute cycles throughout the

night

light sleep into deep pure restorative

sleep

but also during our waking hours this

little hum

of 90 to 120 minutes continues

throughout the day

our energy pulses throughout the day

so there are times when we’re sitting at

looking at our screen

gazing at the inbox looking at the to-do

list and we glaze over we get tired

and we reach for yet another caffeinated

drink hey no wonder the caffeine

industry is

soaring along with the sleep industry

for another cup of coffee but what we

need to do

is stop rest do something

unrelated to staring at a screen

do something unrelated to thinking and

relentlessly trying to throw information

into the working memory

in the frontal lobe and by the way the

working memory is this

newly evolved in relative terms part of

the

of the frontal lobe which acts as the

reservoir

for incoming data traffic so

you’re sitting here and you’re listening

to me hopefully

and if that information is going it’s

going into your working memory

which after about 90 weeks to 120

minutes

i’m not going to talk for that long by

the way but after that amount of time

this reservoir becomes overly filled

becomes filled up

and we cannot take more information in

and we go into a kind of

trance-like state called the hypnagogic

trance where we glaze over

we cannot take more information in

actually we become a little bit kind of

gormless

but so many of us because of this

relentless linearity of the way we work

we just keep going we keep

going even though we’re running on a

battery power that keeps

falling off we’re running on sixty

percent battery power

fifty percent forty percent oh i can’t

concentrate i’m falling asleep

i’m just gonna go and get another cup of

coffee i’m just going to stare at my

device and hope that that dopamine hit

is going to wake me up and i can

concentrate a bit more and get the job

done

but actually what we need to do

is simple

we need to rest we need to stop leaning

in we

need to stop over efforting trying so

hard we need to lean back

breathe deeply get

up move come to work and rest

when i say this this phrase to leaders

and companies

because i work on a number of leadership

programs

they will often say to me what tell my

staff

to come to work and rest no especially

those companies that

uh run their businesses on the principle

of billable hours what you’re telling me

to tell

people to come to work and lie under

their desk or cancel a whole day’s work

of course we do have duvet days and

enlightened organizations some of them

do that but am i saying tell people to

come to work every day and lie under

their desks and fall asleep at their

desk for hours on end

no actually the working memory operates

on a cycle of about 90 to 120 minutes

our physiology

operates intermittently on this cycle as

well this pulse

so there’s a simple solution to

maximizing

energy productivity and then being able

to get amazing deep sleep when you go to

bed at night because your brain isn’t

fizzing with the information of the day

simple solution i love keeping it simple

the world is so complicated

we don’t need to be told massive great

complex solutions

what we need is to keep it simple

and this is what i love about the work i

come to work and rest every 90 to 120

minutes

rest do something restful even if it’s

just for

three to five minutes

get up move

change the focus of your gaze

breathe get out of your head

climb back into your body feel your feet

on the ground

walk up and down a flight of stairs if

you’ve been staring at a computer

for three hours without moving the most

restful thing you can probably do

is ten burpees or ten press-ups or ten

star jumps

do something unrelated to being

relentlessly mental thinking

thinking thinking and the reason why

there is a global epidemic of not only

insomnia

but mental health problems it’s because

we’re over

exercising and exhausting the mental

muscles of the brain we need to give

them a break

athletes know this they need to build an

intermittent recovery

why are corporate athletes so bad at

doing this stop

rest when you come back to your task you

will have renewed

mental focus research shows that even

taking a break a mindful break of three

to five minutes breathing

moving eating something healthy

drinking something non-caffeinated

hydrating even doing that for a few

minutes

can increase mental performance

cognitive performance

scores significantly measurably

task recall word recall increases

when you do that so come to work and

rest every 90 to 120 minutes

get up move eat

drink nourish yourself deeply think of

someone you love

look at a picture of someone you love

hug a tree

smile at someone hug someone someone who

wants to be hugged

who you know engage with people remind

yourself

that you’re a human being not a human

doing

come to work and rest and you know what

you’ll sleep better at night and you

probably won’t need me as a sleep expert

oops

the key to getting a good night’s sleep

actually

is to from the minute you wake up think

about the conscious

choices that you’re making

sleep well it’s about living well

it’s about loving well come to work and

rest

thank you for listening

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