Come To Work Rest
hi
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
more
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
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
do
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
foreign