Season 2: Episode 4 - Healthy habits to become more productive with James Hewitt

Episode Transcript

(00:14):
Hello everyone, and welcome to London'sLeadership Podcast. Today, I'm speaking with
well, I hope it's not toosoon to say, but doctor James Hewitt.
When you released this, Fernando,he will be a doctor. How
many weeks from now? Well,since I've done my bib verside, hopefully
in eight weeks. In eight weeks, because he's just completed his PhD in

(00:38):
performance sites on the and the subjectof the thesis was the relationship between well
being and performance in the workplace.So the soon to be James Hewitt is
with us and today we're going tobe talking about the top three tips to
perform without burning out. And Imet James a few weeks ago at an
event and he really impacted me withhis with his wisdom and knowledge on how

(01:02):
to perform well. And this issomething I always try to do. I
try to learn as much as Ican on how to one the best that
I can. So I thought itwould be really helpful to speak to James
the day on the podcast. SoJames, tell me what first drove you
to have a passion for performance scienceand well being and all those things.

(01:25):
Well, thanks you for inviting meand I'm really looking forward to speaking with
you, and that's a great questionto kick us off. So my journey
into performance science began more than twentyyears ago. I used to be a
full time racing cyclist, but Iwasn't the most talented athlete. I'd moved
to France to pursue that career,which is what you did in the early
two thousands, and realized that itwas going to be tough. So I

(01:46):
became a very early adopter of applyingemerging scientific research new technology to try and
make the most of my potential.And so I did quite well based on
what I think I was capable of. But during that time I started to
gather people around me, people whowere interested to learn about all these strange
tools and techniques that I was using. And in the end, I took

(02:07):
a very pragmatic look at my cipingcareer in my pal mares, which is
your list of cycling achievements, andrealized that I was probably going to be
a better scientist than I was acyclist. So I decided to go back
to university. I studied sports science. Eventually, like many failed athletes,
I became a coach and during thattime I started to work with a range

(02:28):
of different clients, some elites andprofessionals, but the majority of the people
that I worked with were amateurs.They were people who had very demanding jobs
in London, whereas based at thetime, you know the usual suspects in
road cycling, management consultants, financeprofessionals, technology workers who for some reason,
in addition to working for eighty hoursa week, decided they wanted to

(02:49):
go and race one hundred and eightyklometers at the weekend. But during this
time I realized that unless I couldquantify the load associated with their working life,
I wouldn't be able to plan therephysical training effectively. So that led
me down this path of trying tounderstand knowledge work better, apply different tools
and frameworks from more kinds of domainansfrom neuroscience and organizational psychology as well as

(03:12):
sports science, to try and understandknowledge work and quantify in particular this relationship
between effort and recovery and how thatcan support or inhibit sustainable performance. And
in the end I had what feltlike a revelation, which was that I
could view knowledge work, where wethink for a living, as a cognitive
endurance activity in a similar way thatyou might think about cycling as a physical

(03:32):
insurance activity, and that's really inspireda lot of my work and research to
this day, which most recently hasended up with me doing a PhD and
just finishing that where I looked atthis relationship to well being sustainable performance in
some really demanding workplaces around the worldreally fascinating, and I thought I was

(03:53):
thinking, Oh, as I wasspeaking to that, I thought, Oh,
what would be something really really helpfulfor people and practical for them to
take away? And you came upwith this. You said, Oh,
let's look at our top three tipsto perform well without burning out. So
why don't we get into that.Why don't you tell us a little bit
about what you've learned and how wecan apply that to our personal lives.

(04:17):
Yeah, hockey two. So youknow, I think as a bit of
a background to this, one ofthe things I'm really interested in is what
capabilities support high performance in the workplace. And there was a study done on
this a few years ago where theylooked at nearly one hundred and ninety thousand
people in eighty one companies around theworld and found that four groups of capabilities

(04:38):
explained eighty nine percent of the differencein performance between strong and weak organizations,
and these four were identifying trends andseeking different perspectives number one two working efficiently
and productively to achieve results, threesolving problems effectively, and four being supportive
and emotionally intelligent. And two areasin particular really underpin performance in those four

(05:01):
capabilities. One is sleep and theother one is our ability to focus effectively.
But as a third I also wantedto talk about nutrition briefly as well,
because we all eat that week andthere's a lot of people who are
really interested in this question the bestway to eat, if there is such
a thing, so I thought itmight be helpful to cover that as well.
So maybe we could talk about itin that context sleep focus, nutrition.

(05:25):
I can give you a few headlines, maybe a few stats because you're
probably gathering that are like stats,and then some practical tips in terms of
what we can do to take thattheory and put it into action. Let's
do it, because I've heard somuch on sleep and I always battle with
it, like I never know isit better to go to better at the
same time and wake up at thesame time, or is it better to

(05:47):
get a whole way hours or isit there to not break up the cicadia.
So I would love all your helpon sleep. I want I realized
sleep is so, so, soimportant, but it's often the first thing
that goes, Oh, I justneed to stay up a little bit later,
or I need to wake up alittle bit later. It's a thing
I always try, I always tendto sacrifice, but I realize it's really

(06:10):
the thing I probably need the most. So but you correct me if I'm
wrong, Tell me what what what'sthe science behind sleep and how we can
how can we improve in that area? I think you're right, Ferlando.
I mean my view is that theevidence is so strong we could argue that
sleep is the foundation for sustainable highperformance as well as almost every aspect of

(06:30):
health and well being. There's stillsome mystery around sleep. One of the
most fundamental pieces of evidence we havefor how important sleep is is that if
you deprive a living organism of sleepfor long enough, it dies, so
we know that you need it.But there's lots of more sophisticated studies that
show why sleep is important for wellbeing, for health, also for different

(06:53):
aspects of those. Cognitive capabilities andleadership capabilities are described and now the way
to that didn't suggest that adequate sleepmeans sleeping for seven hours per night,
And so if we sleep fewer thanseven hours per night, generally you start
to see this breakdown in cognitive capabilitiesalso our physiology as well. Now there

(07:15):
is some variation, so normal healthysleep might vary between seven to nine hours
for people, and it's basically inthis statistical normal distribution. So you've got
most people who need the seven tonine and then which results in the recommendation
that many people may suggest we needeight hours per night, but the reality
is most people at seven to nine. There's this incredibly rare genetic mutation we

(07:38):
call a polymorphism on a gene calledDEC two, which means that a very
small proportion of people can perform adequatelyon around six hours of sleep on not
very much sleep. But that geneticmutation is exceptionally rare, and I would
say to people, if you thinkyou've got it, tell me what happens
when you go on holiday on vacation, because generally the people who a short

(08:00):
sleeping when they go away on holiday, they start sleep more. Whereas if
people have genuinely got this polymorphism,then they're always short sleepers, but anyway,
that's open bit of their theory.Nonetheless, despite the fact that we
know it's really important, estimates suggestthat about twenty to forty five percent of
people around the world are sleep deprived. But in terms of leaders specifically,

(08:20):
one study found that sixty six percentsaid that they were dissatisfied with how much
sleep they were getting. And thisis a real problem because poor sleep is
harming some of leaders most critical capabilities. For example, when we don't sleep,
problem solving ability decreases by about sixtyone percent, again, one of
those four capabilities that really differentiates thosehigh and low performers in terms of leadership

(08:43):
effectiveness. Research specifically into leaders sleepalso reveals that when leaders sleep for five
hours rather than seven hours per night, they're rated as less inspirational by their
teams. And there's a number ofreasons why that could be we can dig
into it, but essentially it relatesto us not really communicating as authentically and
people being able to detect that.Thirdly, and perhaps more worryingly, when

(09:07):
leaders demonstrate that they don't value sleep, their team members are more likely to
exhibit unethical decision making behavior, andagain there's several different reasons for this,
but the bottom line is is thatsleep is absolutely essential for health, wellbeing,
performance, and it's particularly important forleaders. So what can we do.
Let's get into some tips well,and you hinted that some of these

(09:28):
already. I think one of themost helpful things that we can do is
to try to go to sleep andwake up at as a consistent as time
as possible. So you know,there's a recent consensus statement that suggests that
sleep consistency is almost as important assleep duration. So ideally we would get
seven hours of sleeper night at least, but in a perfect world, we'd

(09:52):
go to sleep and wake up atas a consistent a time as possible.
Now I recognize that that's not alwayspossible for people, so you practically,
what I suggest is try and keepsome kind of sleep log and get an
idea of how consistent your sleep timeis normally, and just try and make
it slightly more consistent. You're notgoing to achieve perfection, but can you
If there's maybe an hour and ahalf of variation in your sleep and wake

(10:15):
time, maybe try and get thatdown to one hour. And maybe if
it's one hour, maybe you couldgot it down to half an hour,
that would be absolutely amazing, buttry and reduce that variation and prioritize that
consistency. That said, if you'renot able to sleep for seven hours per
night, at least during the week, then the evidence does suggest that it's
better to have catch up sleep atthe weekend than not to catch up,

(10:37):
so that lying on a Saturday ora Sunday, it's better to have that
than not have it. Even thoughthe kind of gold standard that we'd like
to aim for is a really consistentsleep and wake time, so adequate time
is the first sit at least sevenhours for most people consistency. The third
thing I'd say in relation to sleepis to considerate what we call your light
diet. This is how much lightyou're exposed, and we don't often think

(11:01):
about this, but light is actuallythe most powerful signal for setting and maintaining
a stable circadian rhythm that's our bodyclock. And there's some practical recommendations for
how bright your environment should be,but bright light in the morning after waking
seems to be particularly important, becausethirty minutes of bright light exposure immediately after

(11:24):
waking is as effective as sixty minutesof intermittent light exposure that's spread across the
first three and a half hours ofthe day. Now, if you want
to measure what bright light meetings,then you can actually get an app for
your phone which will measure light intensityand you measure it in something called looks.
But if you're a real geek likeme, and if you haven't realized
that already, then you know you'reprobably not listening carefully enough. You could

(11:46):
also use a light meter. AndI've got one of my desperately to show
you as I thought might talk aboutthis, and so this is a light
meter, and they're pretty cheap gettingonline. And so you can see,
for example that here in my officeat the moment, it's about three hundred
and fifty lucks sitting right here.So the recommendations are that daytime indoors,
it should be more than two hundredand fifty lucks. Three hours before you

(12:09):
go to bed less than ten lucks, so you really want to darken it
down, and then nighttime for sleepless than one loucks. And there's a
rule of thumb. If you cansee your hand in front of your face
in your bedroom, then at nightwhen you go to sleep, then the
room is probably two lights, sothey'd be my top tips for sleep.
What do you want to dive straightto focus? Or have you got any

(12:31):
questions or coming? So no,I think that's really and bright light that
does it. Obviously the sign isthe best. But does it have to
be the sign or can it bejust I'll switch on the lights as soon
as you wake up. Well,it's better to switch on the lights than
not switch them on. Certainly,ideally get outside and even on a cloudy
day you might get act of sayten thousand lucks outside, so you know,

(12:56):
getting kind of going for a briefwalk fifteen it walk outside in the
morning, you know, even stretchthem out to thirty minutes if you can.
And if people have got you know, dogs or pets, they're probably
already doing that. But you know, there's a really good case for trying
to get outside and prioritize that brightlight. But if you can't, you
can get light mimicking bowls and andif you don't have light natural light mimicking

(13:18):
bulbs which have got the kind offull spectrum, then just switch on all
your lights. Again, there's agold standard, and then there's making it
practical, and how long after youwake up does it make it effective?
As you say so, so ideallywhat you'd like to what you want to
do is to get thirty minutes ofbright light exposure immediately after winning immediately Okay.

(13:41):
Yeah, However, then if yougot sixty minutes of intermittent light exposure
over the first three and a halfhours, then that's as effective. So
ideally you get more value for thelight to put it that way, by
getting it earlier. But if youget that bright light during the first few
hours of the day, it's stillgoing to have that beneficial effect brilliant.

(14:05):
So ideally sleep seven or more hoursa night. Ideally go to bed and
wake up around the same time.Keep a little log to see what your
schedule's like and try to bring thatdown a bit. And ideally God's standard
is you wake up and go walkoutside for twenty to thirty minutes. Even
if it's cloudy. It might notlook like there's light, but there is,

(14:26):
and it will it will pay dividendsto help you with your sleep,
really really good. Yeah, let'sgo on to focus so much there already,
but and I hope that really helpseveryone listening. But let's go on
to focus. I think that's goingto be helpful too. Well. Focus
is a huge challenge for many knowledgeworkers. It's some evidence indicates we're interrupted
once every eleven minutes. It thentakes twenty three minutes to get back up

(14:50):
to speed on the original task.Seventy percent of our emails are opened within
six seconds of receiving them. Fortytwo percent of people even admit to replying
to emails in the bathroom. Thenumber of our weekly meetings has increased by
more than one hundred and fifty percent. So it's no surprise that, according
to some research, sixty eight percentof people say that they don't have enough
uninterrupted focused time in the workday.And this is a problem for several reasons.

(15:15):
One because the evidence suggests the moretime we spend on email, the
lower air productivity and the higher astress. And it's also estimated that distractions at
work are costing businesses thirty seven thousanddollars per year for managers and twenty one
thousand dollars for general staff. Solet's get straightened some tips. What can
we do about it? Well,I think there's three things that we need
to try and do. The firstis to try to increase the quality of

(15:39):
our focused effort where it's going tohave the greatest impact. The second is
to reduce the inefficiency that compromises productivity, and the third is to try and
learn how to recover proactively. Bythat, I mean takes some breaks in
the day. So for that firststep, by identifying where you can have
the greatest impact and really apply thatquality focused effort, I encourage people to

(16:00):
try to identify what's called your chronotype, which is that tendency towards morningness or
eveningness, basically the part of yourday when you feel at your best.
So if you're an early bird,then try to schedule some uninterrupted time for
focus during that peak period of yourday, which is probably in the morning.
If you're more of a night outyou feel better later in the day,

(16:22):
more at your peak and more alertlater on, then maybe you schedule
that focus period later in the day. But it's really important that you try
maybe a couple of times a weekto engineer an environment for focus. Eliminate
distractions, switch off email if youdon't need it, have a clear priority
in mind in terms of the thingthat you're going to work on, and
maybe block off one or two hoursto focus on your highest priority task,

(16:47):
and then when you schedule that timein your peak period, you engineer your
environment for focus. You might considerusing something like the Pomodoro technique, which
some people might have heard of,which basically involves breaking that time down to
twenty five minute blocks of really intensefocus, sustained attention, with five minutes
of recovery. And it seems thatthat can help us to get started,

(17:08):
get into a period of focus,and then also maintain that energy for longer
if you if you're able to extendthose pomard roads out, you might even
be able to focus for an hourbefore you need a break. But as
a starting point, if you're tryingto get back into finding that uninterrupted period
focus, really trying to retrain yourattention, twenty five minutes can be a
good place to begin. So Ithink that's trying. Yeah, I think

(17:33):
that's just really really helpful, andthat's really helped me. I mean,
I don't actually believe there are anynight els. I think if you're I
think everyone should be an early bird, to be honest, But obviously I
think there are probably some. ButI also think that this that what you're
saying is has transformed the way I'veI've done I guess what cal newpoorl would

(17:55):
call deep work. Yeah, exactly, And I've tried to just find us,
find the time and make sure thatI know exactly, Oh, this
is the hardest thing for today.This is the time that I'm going to
do it in and I will notlook at WhatsApp, at email, at
text messages, at social media untilthat task is completed, or at least

(18:18):
today's portion of that task is completed. And that does so many things.
It makes me more productive because I'vedone the hardest thing, but it also
makes me proud of myself because afterthat two hour slot of deep work,
and however many pomodoros I do,I leave that morning feeling like I've won
today, or the admin becomes easier, all the random tasks become just simple

(18:44):
to do. Is because I've alreadywon. But whenever I leave that most
important task, I'll do it whenI come back from work, I'll do
it after the gym. It's neverquite as effective. I always feel like
I'm on the back foot and itnever turns out as good. Is really
really helpful for everyone listening if you'reable to put that, do the hardest
thing first. Put the big rockin first, and Pomodora's I think,

(19:08):
so I could never extend the Pomodorathat I think even twenty five minutes I'm
looking up. I'm like, okay, surely it's on twenty five minutes and
it's only on like nine. Andthen I need to just keep hyping until
but really helpful. So what elsewould you say? So find out if
your morning or evening carve that timeout exactly. And then I think the

(19:30):
second part is to try to reducethat what I call email bloats, that
digital debt, all those emails.And there was a great study that actually
synthesized twenty five years of research onemail and it came up with four email
super actions, And just very briefly, the first one is to rethink promises
to respond rapidly. Sometimes we areour own worst enemy by making those kind

(19:53):
of promises. Secondly, set expectationsabout when you'll respond with email signatures.
Thirdly, batch your email used tospecific parts of the day rather than letting
it kind of spread over the wholeday. And Fourthly, switch off your
notifications and do an experiment, maybetry and check your email once an hour
versus as often as possible, becauseyou know, when did we suddenly start

(20:15):
to treat email like instant messaging?I'm not sure, but we can take
back some control. So the secondarea is where email actions. I think
the third area in terms of thisfocus block that we're talking about now is
to try to get rid of unnecessarymeetings which might be able to free up
some time for focus. So again, you know, I've got four top

(20:36):
tips for that because I've been thinkingthrees and fours, and the first thing
is to try to identify low valuerecurring meetings. Secondly, related to that,
remove those low value meetings and sooften, if you've got a standing
meeting in your calendar that's got fewerthan five attendees, you probably don't need
the kind of the consistency of astanding meeting. You might be able to

(20:59):
be a bit more flexible about whenyou need it or not by being able
to interact with those people a bitmore organically. Thirdly, reduce so move
weekly meetings to fortnightly or fortnightly meetingsto monthly. And fourthly, shorten to
an experiment convert sixty minute meetings tothirty minutes and thirty minutes to fifteen minutes.
And one company did this and they'vefound that they were able to save

(21:22):
eleven hours per employee per month.And related to this, companies that create
these dedicated focus periods for knowledge workers, it's estimated that they could gain about
four hundred and sixty eight billion dollarsa year. So there'd be my kind
of top tips for focus. Andyou know I did mention proactive recovery,
and that's really about after these focusblocks, try to do something that's going

(21:45):
to restore you again. It couldbe getting outside again for a short walk,
seeing some nature, interacting with someoneabout a non work related topic and
rather than just letting the whole daymerge into one. And if you did
that, I think there could besome real bad and if it's not only
economically but also for our well being, really helpful. And I think so
much of what you said. Ithink it can be hard if people can't

(22:07):
manage their own diaries, like ifthey get meetings, if they if they
get But one of the things thatyou can do is you can manage your
own how you focus, how youreply, like how you how you respond
to your text messages, how yourespond on Instagram, how you respond on
email. You can you can blockthose things, like I'll respond to everything

(22:32):
from one till two, and thenI'll respond to everything from from four to
five, and then I just willnot look at anything until the next day.
That way, it frees your mindup to be more focused on the
things that really matter. It willallow you to creatively think. You won't
be constantly in response mode. Thatthere's this boredom is actually something that we're

(22:56):
not really aware of anymore because we'reconstantly engaged with with things that just excite
us or and it's always at thepress of a button, so we're not
used to being bored. If we'rea queue, we don't know what it's
like. But actually, so manycreative ideas come when we're bored, when

(23:18):
we're standing, when we're when whenwhen another part of our brains engaged,
it actually begins to think about thethings that are on our mind, but
we've just pushed back because it's thewe're constantly thinking about something else, And
those sparks of boredom are actually incrediblycreative. I found that whenever I allow
myself to be bored that the ideathat I was looking for in the deep

(23:41):
work time that didn't come because Iwas forcing myself to look for it comes
in the moment that at least expectedit, when I allowed myself to be
bored. But if my mind's constantlybusy, that creative genius doesn't come out.
So you have to create spaces whereyou can be board to allow then

(24:03):
that deep work time to really bearfruit. And then the next deep work
time is even better because I justhad that great idea yesterday blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah, and youkeep going. But if you're constantly responding,
constantly and constantly in RESPONSI mode,it's much harder for that to happen.
Yeah, I totally agree. Andyou know, there's some great evidence
to back up what you've just described, and there's a phenomenon I probably didn't

(24:26):
say it. I probably didn't sayas scientifically as you would. That's great,
that's great, and I think it'ssuch a great observation. So often,
some of this research that I talkabout is so intuitive, and it's
like, well, you know,people have for hundreds of years have been
talking about you go for a walkto improve your creativity and get ideas.
So in some ways, it's like, why do we even look into this?

(24:47):
But this is just the kind ofperson I am. I'm curious about
the evidence that provides a different perspectivein mind you it kind of just complements
the personal experience. I think they'reboth really valuable. Yeah, it's really
good. I'll just measure this onething briefly, this thing called random episodic
silent thought. That's what I wasgonna say. That's what I just had
that on the tip of my tongue. But yeah, I thought I just

(25:10):
I wouldn't say it because we're gone. Yeah you wanted you didn't want to
steal my glory, did you exactly? I thought, you're the scientist,
you're the doctor. I'll let youkind of. But that what you describe,
you to go for a walk whenour mind isn't focused on anything in
particular, and that does seem tounlock these creative reservoirs, and we're much
more likely to experience these breakthroughs andthese moments of insights. So I think

(25:34):
often one thing I'll say often isthat idle time is not a waste of
time. Yeah, to really valuerest and time to switch off. And
also that like with social media,I just try to all those things like
create blocks and there's another great bookby cal Newport digital Minimalism, and just
create time in your diary if youyou don't have to completely restrict, like

(25:57):
take yourself off a bit, butjust like, oh, I'm only going
to look at it from this timeto this time. I'm only going to
respond from this time to this time. And that way, oh, you
can look forward to it. Butthen in the other time you can be
present and engage with the people thatyou're with. You can allow yourself to
be present, to think, tobe bored even but it's idle time is
not wasted time. That's very good, James, And that's also something I

(26:21):
need to put back in practice.Sometimes I go through cycles where I'm like,
oh, I've got all these thingsin line. Then slowly I'll start
looking at Instagram a little bit moreslowly I'll start replying a little bit,
and before you know it, I'moverrun because it's taking control. But it's
it's always us having to be proactiverather than reactive. I think that's really
helpful for us to perform agree AndI think it's very natural to experience these

(26:41):
these ships where sometimes we'll feel moreon top of these habits and other times
not so much. But I thinkthe key is is that we just establish
where our boundaries are, accept thatthere's going to be some variation between them,
be aware of where we are,and then when we notice that things
are starting, you know, theInstagram, direct messages or whatever it can
trolling us more than we're controlling them, then die back a lookle bit and

(27:03):
put some of those boundaries in place. But it's very natural. We're never
going to experience this kind of perfectbalance. That's just not how humans are
built. Yeah, well, James, actually, you know, I've found
this conversation really helpful. And Iknow we said we'd give them three tips,
but I think these two tips onon sleep and focus might be really
are really good takeaways, and maybeyou can come back at another point we

(27:26):
can talk about nutrition and then anotherthing, because I think you'd be I
think everything you've said is really really, really helpful, science based and really
practical. Would that be all right? Yeah? Really happy to do that.
So, but how do people engagewith you? How can people reach
out to you? James? SoI'm quite active on LinkedIn if people are
on there, so people can findme Just James here it on LinkedIn,

(27:48):
and I post content like this andwould welcome the opportunity to continue the conversation
there. I've also got a website, so James Hewittt's Performance dot com,
where there's blog article was going deeperonto these topics. And I've also got
a newsletter where again I kind ofshare research that I'm coming across, that
i'm reading, that I might bedoing, And so feel free to connect

(28:10):
with me on any of those platforms, and as I mentioned, would really
welcome the opportunity to hear your thoughtsand continue the conversation. Brilliant, Thank
you so much, James, Seeyou next time, everybody on London's Leadership Podcast