0:00

Hey everybody. This is Addison Barry,

0:02

and you're listening to the Osio Labs podcast.

0:04

The show that explores the question, "how can

0:06

we create sustainable businesses that care

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for people and make the world a better place?"

0:11

On today's episode, I'm joined by Blake

0:14

Hall. This is episode

0:16

number 10, about the rhythms

0:18

and schedules of work. Everyone

0:21

is familiar with the 40 hour work week and even

0:23

the latest chatter about four day work weeks. Blake

0:26

and I are going to dig into where the work we

0:28

came from and what that means for real people

0:30

trying to live lives that don't always line

0:33

up with the nine to five grind. We

0:35

take a look at some of the natural and personal

0:37

rhythms in our lives and how that affects our work.

0:41

I guess a good place to start

0:43

off is just some context for why

0:46

I even wanted to do this podcast because originally

0:49

it was Because I want to

0:51

talk about the four day work week and just sort

0:53

of flexible schedules at work. And

0:56

then I was thinking more about,

1:00

even outside of the work week, like

1:02

what are the rhythms and

1:04

schedules and things that affect us like throughout

1:07

our lives, throughout the year, and I was

1:09

particularly struck by it because it's

1:11

the middle of winter, like we're approaching the

1:13

solstice, the winter solstice here in a little bit.

1:16

It's quite dark here in Denmark and

1:18

it affects me. It changes my, my

1:20

energy. And so i've been thinking about well, how

1:23

does what does that mean for work? Like how

1:25

am I showing up for work in these circumstances?

1:28

And you and I had been talking about this a little bit and

1:30

I think it's a The four

1:33

day work week is huge. Everybody's talking about

1:35

it. It's All the rage,

1:37

since Covid in particular,

1:40

but I wanted to also just sort of expand and talk

1:42

beyond the 4 day work week.

1:44

Because while I think that's a great conversation.

1:47

I don't I think it's still extremely limited

1:50

in terms of what we're even talking about. Why

1:52

are we talking about? The amount of

1:54

time that we're at work in

1:56

particular. So I

1:58

think to start off with, I

2:01

just wanted to do a very quick

2:03

summary of how we got to the

2:05

40 hour work week. That is the standard

2:08

in most places today. A

2:11

lot of that started back in

2:13

the 1800s. And that's because

2:15

people were working more like 80 to

2:17

100 hours a week. They were working nonstop

2:20

and that was part of the industrial revolution. Before

2:22

that, people worked because they needed to, when

2:24

they needed to. Uh, especially

2:26

was a lot more cyclical.

2:28

right. Like if you're looking at something like farming,

2:31

in the summertime, there's more daylight, things

2:33

are growing. You know, when harvest happens, harvest

2:35

has to happen. So you work long days and

2:37

you get it done, but then in the winter, everything

2:40

sort of comes down and the whole rhythm changes.

2:43

But then with the industrial revolution in the

2:45

1800s, we had machines

2:47

that changed everything and you know, people

2:49

wanted to squeeze that productivity. And it was really

2:51

interesting that, so our

2:53

current 40 hour work week that we have

2:55

now. was legally instituted

2:58

in the United States in 1940.

3:00

So that's 80 some years ago.

3:02

And that didn't actually

3:05

get, established in Canada until

3:07

the 1960s. So

3:09

it's quite a bit later. And then the, the

3:11

article I was reading was, is actually from

3:13

a place in the UK. And actually, in the UK,

3:16

in 1998, they

3:19

now have a law that it's a 40

3:21

hour work week for workers

3:24

under the age of 18. But

3:26

it's 48 hours if you are over

3:28

the age of 18.

3:30

That blew my mind when I saw that.

3:33

yeah.

3:35

that was wild.

3:35

I was like, what? What

3:38

just, wow. sO

3:40

that's sort of a sense of like, you know, the timeline

3:42

for where this conversation has come from. And

3:45

also, I want to point out that you and I work

3:48

for an American company and so

3:50

our conversation is

3:53

based on the expectations

3:55

and standards that we have in the U. S. By

3:57

and large. I live in Denmark, and.

4:01

I mean, they have the standard 40 hour work week here too,

4:03

but there are, I don't know, sort of different expectations

4:06

around work environment and things

4:09

like vacation and stuff here. So, I

4:11

just want to put that out there as context

4:13

to that. We are definitely talking about

4:15

this entire conversation from

4:17

an American lens, a Northern hemisphere

4:19

lens, like, all of these things. So,

4:22

just to establish that.

4:25

So. It's just, it was interesting

4:28

because I, the, in looking

4:30

at the timeline to how we got to where we got,

4:32

Henry Ford actually started

4:35

a lot of this 40 hour work week thing

4:38

because people would normally working six days

4:40

a week or they were working eight, you know, 10

4:42

hours a day or something along those lines and

4:44

he actually determined that the

4:46

Extra productivity that you got out of those extra hours

4:48

wasn't actually worth it. Like it was not

4:50

significant enough to be worth it. And

4:53

so he cut his people to 40 hours

4:55

a week. And that's, that was like

4:57

a big push in, in the,

5:00

uh, the overall parade

5:02

to get us to where we are now.

5:05

And looking at that from, you

5:07

know, kind of a current day situation,

5:09

it's wild that one of the

5:12

titans of industry is sort of

5:15

the one responsible for limiting

5:17

the work week in that way. I mean, I can't imagine,

5:19

Mm hmm.

5:20

you know, Jeff Bezos, for example,

5:23

Deciding on a four day work week

5:25

for the folks working at Amazon

5:27

Fulfillment Centers. That just seems,

5:30

uh, very far fetched,

5:32

Yeah. And I mean, and it's interesting, right? Because it's

5:35

the same conversation where

5:37

you have, what is productive

5:39

time? How, how, what

5:41

are you squeezing out of a person?

5:44

Based on time versus

5:48

effectiveness versus, you know,

5:50

a million other ways that you could measure their

5:53

output or their value. And

5:56

there's this idea of, like, squeezing

5:58

is absolutely much out of a person's

6:00

time as you possibly can and

6:03

that there are diminishing returns. Like, it's proven

6:05

over and over again. They're just diminishing

6:08

returns. On that, in

6:10

terms of what is productive?

6:12

I mean, that's a whole other conversation

6:14

and I don't want to go down like the, the

6:16

productivity guru, you know,

6:19

realm of things, but it's interesting

6:21

that like, you know, so that

6:23

was like in the 1920s

6:25

or something. And he saw

6:27

a difference between 40 hours versus

6:30

48 hours. There was a significant

6:32

enough difference for him to make that decision. And

6:35

people continue to look at things now and like, you

6:37

can look at reports. It's like in an eight

6:39

hour office worker day, how

6:41

many of those hours are actually productive? And it

6:44

ends up being somewhere between like two to four hours.

6:46

Right,

6:46

And so again, it's sort of like, what is

6:48

productivity? Like, what is it that we're actually trying

6:50

to do here? Like, what are we trying to

6:52

get out of this, this magical work

6:55

day that needs to happen? And this

6:57

can change for different businesses, of course,

6:59

too, right? Like productivity for

7:01

our company is very different than

7:03

productivity in, a

7:06

factory for instance, or even in.

7:09

Knowledge work, there are a lot of places

7:11

out there that have billable hours. And

7:14

so that, that changes the

7:16

equation we're talking

7:19

about a bit. I

7:21

find it fascinating that we do billable

7:24

hours, that we

7:26

charge a third party

7:29

a dollar amount for

7:32

an hour of time, pretty

7:35

much regardless of what actually happens during

7:37

that hour of time.

7:38

Yeah, the whole, the whole concept of time

7:40

is money is sort of a fascinating

7:42

thing to try to dig into. Because

7:45

when you start looking at it, it's like, time

7:48

is money, ooh,

7:51

and, and what does that serve,

7:53

right? You sort of have Your average

7:55

worker who's selling their labor

7:58

in exchange for a wage to

8:00

survive. And then you have a

8:03

business owner trying to eat

8:05

as much productivity out of those hours

8:07

they're paying for, so they can make as

8:09

much money as possible and the business can succeed.

8:12

So depending on which lens you're looking at it

8:14

from the, the

8:16

time is money conversation can, can

8:19

be different.

8:22

And the metaphor for that can

8:24

sort of be. Kind of a, a tool to

8:26

exploit people, or it can be,

8:29

you know, a way to secure your

8:32

future, or it can be something

8:35

hanging over your head that makes you

8:37

anxious and nervous. There's all sorts

8:39

of feelings and kind of

8:42

thoughts that come up with the whole time is money

8:44

thing. And I think. A lot of folks,

8:47

especially in sort of American tech

8:49

culture in particular, don't

8:51

really stop and think about like where that

8:54

expression came from or what

8:57

the ramifications of saying something like time

8:59

is money actually are in terms

9:01

of impacting

9:04

the human beings that make

9:07

up a business.

9:07

Yeah. And I mean, it's a whole other road

9:10

of conversation is of course, just like capitalism

9:13

and, the using up of a resource.

9:16

And so time as a resource

9:18

that needs to be, or can

9:20

be exploited, can be

9:22

used and can be exchanged

9:25

for money to make money for those

9:27

in power, I

9:29

know you had mentioned, the saving time

9:31

book. And so we're not going to have

9:33

like a book chat about that. But one of the things

9:35

I found interesting was talking about the history

9:38

of clocks and the tracking of time.

9:40

And that also very much lines up with

9:43

the industrial revolution and

9:47

being able to coordinate things on time

9:49

and having these schedules that are imposed

9:52

imposed schedules. Thank you. Um,

9:55

instead of say, natural rhythms and schedules

9:58

that are happening, right? Like, our

10:00

day is 24 hours long. Yes.

10:03

In Denmark, right

10:05

now, my actual daylight

10:07

hours is about 7 hours. Whereas,

10:10

when we get to summer, it's

10:12

more like 18. It's a significant

10:15

difference in what an actual day feels

10:17

like versus being sliced into

10:20

24 pieces.

10:22

Right,

10:23

And so it just, that, that whole industrial

10:25

revolution, obviously, it changed a lot of things

10:27

and technology massively,

10:30

you know, it was a massive upheaval in

10:33

society and culture, but

10:35

I think we, we don't recognize

10:38

how much things that happened 200

10:41

years ago are still

10:44

the rails that we're riding on now, even

10:47

though our technology has changed and pushed

10:49

beyond that.

10:50

Right. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one

10:52

of my favorite quotes from that book, comes

10:54

kind of towards the end, but, I think

10:56

she's quoting someone else, but she

10:58

says that instead of thinking about time

11:00

as money, we should, we should say time Is

11:03

beans. And,

11:06

what she means by that is you can go to the store and

11:08

buy a bag of beans and make

11:10

them to eat, or you can use

11:12

them as seeds to grow more beans

11:15

and have that be sustainable. And

11:18

you can, you know, hand them

11:20

out to other people so that they can then make

11:23

their own beans. So instead of thinking,

11:25

thinking of time as sort of this zero sum

11:27

resource we can also think of time

11:30

as something that. You can treat

11:33

sustainably and, share

11:35

it with people and, make

11:37

more of it. I mean, I think, you

11:40

know, as time goes by that, like the time has

11:42

different qualities, right? Like you're talking about

11:44

the daylight hours in Denmark, but you

11:46

can also have

11:48

Yeah.

11:49

that you're wasting by doom scrolling

11:51

on your phone or time

11:53

that you're really engaged in a book. And

11:56

the quality of that time is really

11:58

different, despite the fact that. They

12:00

both might just be an hour according to the clock.

12:03

And I think that, that sort of mushiness

12:07

to how we experience time

12:09

is, is really interesting

12:12

just in our, in, you know, personal lives,

12:14

let alone when it comes to the workplace, because I

12:16

think the workplace really has the same mushy

12:19

quality of time, like you're saying a normal eight

12:22

hour workday has two to three hours of

12:24

productivity. That's, that's

12:26

pretty mushy. There's not,

12:29

it's certainly not eight hours of uninterrupted productivity

12:31

for. For knowledge workers,

12:34

folks outside of a factory anyway.

12:37

But at the same time, a lot of

12:39

knowledge workers, especially if they have to think

12:41

about billable hours are working

12:44

class, their, their income

12:46

is directly tied to their

12:49

productivity, their output, the

12:51

same way that the factory

12:53

workers are. And I think it's interesting that.

12:56

That doesn't always get acknowledged,

12:59

by folks that are doing that kind of work. So,

13:03

yeah, the more you sit down and think about

13:05

time and the context and how

13:07

we perceive it, and all those sorts of

13:09

things, the, the deeper the rabbit

13:12

hole gets, I guess.

13:13

Totally. And you know, speaking

13:16

of mushy time, it reminds me,

13:18

so, because we've had a four day work week now

13:20

for two years, I

13:22

guess. But when we first

13:24

did it, like I, I first introduced

13:26

it and was like, what do you all think?

13:29

And everybody's like, well, yeah, of course I want to

13:31

work less. But. I

13:34

mean, like, is that gonna work like,

13:37

you know, so we agreed to have

13:39

a trial period and then we were like, okay, well,

13:41

what we want to do is measure something so

13:43

we can see if it's working

13:47

and it was like, what are we going to measure? Like, it was, it

13:49

was such a mushy.

13:53

Exercise, because it was all like,

13:55

how do you feel about

13:57

your time? How do you measure productivity

14:01

in a non billable hours scenario? Like

14:03

it was just such a, gray, fuzzy,

14:06

I don't know, but it feels good,

14:08

so we're gonna do it, kind of

14:11

and, and in retrospect, like even,

14:13

even feeling like we had to do that

14:15

to justify it

14:17

Totally.

14:18

somebody is sort of an interesting

14:20

situation as well. Like, When

14:22

you're talking about something like employee happiness,

14:24

it's a, it's hard to measure because you're talking

14:27

about, you know, feelings and, and

14:30

attitudes and that sort of thing, but also

14:33

as a business, like we don't really

14:35

need permission from anybody to

14:38

do something like that. We can just do it.

14:41

We certainly don't need to provide

14:43

some sort of objective metric

14:45

that says less work is better.

14:49

It's just kind of

14:50

Mm hmm.

14:51

a choice you can make.

14:52

Yeah. What?

14:54

I think, I mean, like you were saying, the Industrial Revolution's

14:57

200 years old at this point. And if, if

15:00

the main benefits of that, as

15:03

folks, you know, write that history in

15:05

a thousand years, if the main benefits

15:07

of that are a

15:09

small segment of the population made

15:12

a whole lot of money, and that's, and

15:14

that's the size of the contribution

15:16

the Industrial Revolution made, that would be terrible.

15:19

And I think looking at the emergence of

15:21

AI now, it's sort of the same kind

15:23

of story. Like, are we going to use These

15:26

efficiency improvements and the technology

15:28

that we're developing to actually improve

15:31

humans lives, or are we just going to

15:35

turn out more crap

15:37

faster? And I think

15:39

that's a, that's a pretty existential question

15:42

that it seems like a lot of folks

15:44

are wrestling with and

15:46

probably answering differently than

15:49

Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

15:50

the industrialists did 150

15:53

years ago.

15:54

Yeah,

15:55

At least I hope that's the case, because looking,

15:58

looking back, it doesn't seem like that turned out

16:01

real great for the environment, especially.

16:05

so one thing I wanted to

16:09

explore with you on this call. So we have a four day

16:11

workweek. That's great. And

16:14

to clarify for, for people

16:16

who are listening, our four day workweek is

16:18

a 32 hour workweek. It's four

16:20

eight hour days. It's not a compressed

16:23

schedule, but we still have the idea that

16:25

you got to show up every week for

16:27

your 4 days. Like, you know, it's a, and

16:30

it just sort of marches and exorbitantly

16:32

on throughout the year. And

16:35

of course, there's vacations

16:37

and, and other, you know, holidays

16:39

and time off. But it's just super

16:41

interesting to look.

16:44

I'm curious if having.

16:48

Investigated the 4 day work week and

16:50

how that affects people's lives

16:52

and what we're able to do. And I

16:54

mean, and we also have, like, a, a

16:57

flexible day. So,

16:59

like. Each person determines

17:01

their working hours, and as long as they communicate

17:04

those, we don't say you have

17:06

to be available from this time

17:08

to that time each day. You

17:10

get to decide when you're doing your

17:13

hours. You need to go, you

17:15

know, pick your kid up at school, then, you know,

17:17

that's your break in the day, and that's up

17:19

to you. But how about

17:22

larger rhythms

17:24

and schedules that we were talking about earlier with, like, the farming

17:26

or day length and things

17:29

like that? Because

17:31

Seasons change

17:34

things, not just in

17:36

day length, or mental

17:39

health, but like for, for

17:41

instance for you, I know that you've got, like

17:44

your year, when you break

17:46

down a year, that looks pretty different

17:48

to my year.

17:50

Absolutely. Yeah, I, the

17:52

biggest difference for me is the school

17:54

year. As a parent, I

17:57

have a lot more, child care

17:59

situations to worry about in

18:01

the summer, just because we don't have

18:05

a large block of uninterrupted time

18:07

where my daughter's accounted

18:09

for, and kept busy by other folks.

18:12

So. Summers for me tend

18:14

to be quite a bit more

18:16

chaotic on that front, just in terms of

18:19

having large, regular

18:22

blocks of uninterrupted work time.

18:25

I can still find those, but I can't always necessarily

18:28

say, you know,

18:30

it'll be three days

18:32

a week. You know, some weeks it might be

18:34

I get two of those and other weeks there might

18:37

be zero and other weeks there might be five. It just

18:39

depends on on what's going on

18:41

at the time. So I certainly

18:43

look forward to fall

18:45

as sort of Time to

18:47

buckle down and get more productive and do

18:49

more kind of deep thinking types

18:52

of stuff just because I know for sure I can

18:54

protect that time in an easier

18:56

way. Not that I can't do

18:59

that during the summer, but it requires more work.

19:02

So that's a that's the biggest one

19:05

by far. And also, like you're you're

19:08

saying in Denmark, we're not that

19:10

far north and Green Bay, but we're, you

19:12

know, reasonably far north as well. So The

19:14

days do get quite a bit shorter and I do find my

19:17

energy level dwindling a bit

19:19

this time of year with holiday stress

19:21

and, and the extra darkness

19:24

and those sorts of things so I have to make

19:26

more of an effort to. Eat

19:29

a little bit healthier and, and

19:31

exercise a little bit more just to sort of

19:33

keep my, my baseline

19:36

where it needs to be. Otherwise things do get

19:38

slow and foggy and kind

19:41

of messy this time of year. So

19:43

I, yeah, I certainly feel like the year has

19:45

a particular rhythm, but I think if If

19:48

you don't have, children in a school

19:50

year to work through or

19:52

work balance against,

19:54

I imagine the year looks completely different

19:57

or it's not bound by the same. Mm-Hmm.

20:00

Right. Everybody's

20:03

got their own things

20:05

that are going on. And I mean, also, like, for instance, you

20:07

play golf, and like, other people play different sports,

20:09

and at different times a year, their

20:12

social and familial obligations just change,

20:14

based on seasonal

20:17

things that are, that are going on. And

20:19

it was interesting, Talking about like summers and

20:21

kids and so we have a team of

20:24

five people three of those

20:27

people have young children

20:29

and We were when we were doing our retreat

20:31

and planning the retreat we ended up choosing to do it in

20:33

September Which was later than I had originally wanted

20:36

to do it, but it was because it's

20:38

just easier to schedule that For people

20:40

who are like, Oh, God, please not in August,

20:42

like, you know, and it, of course,

20:45

that didn't occur to me because that is

20:47

not one of my rhythms. That's not a thing that I

20:49

am aware of. But I'm like, it totally

20:52

makes sense. And there's no reason that we can't just actually

20:54

take into account what's going on in people's lives

20:56

and making, making that more of a

20:58

company rhythm. Just being

21:00

aware of those things more. And it made

21:02

me really wonder. What else

21:05

could we do, or what else am

21:08

I not aware of, you know, in terms

21:10

of, of how we look at things, like,

21:12

we have a very classic, our, our

21:14

financial years, the calendar year, we,

21:17

we set our goals and do a lot of our work by quarters,

21:19

so we have Q1, Q2, and, and

21:21

I, I love boxes and organizing

21:23

things, so that works great for me in a lot of

21:25

ways, and also,

21:29

it's like, well, wait, but is that, Does

21:32

do we expect to get the same level of productivity

21:34

out of every single quarter out of every

21:36

single month and every single quarter

21:39

and like, you know, what are the things that are going on?

21:41

And we often have this conversation,

21:44

especially in Q4, which is this 1

21:46

coming into December, where

21:49

people are taking more time off. We

21:51

know there's the holidays, essentially,

21:54

our customer base gets really quiet because

21:56

everybody else is up. So, like, for

21:59

our company, for the business that we do,

22:01

December is a very quiet

22:04

month overall. Whereas for other businesses,

22:08

like retail, it's right.

22:10

That's the craziest time of year. So

22:13

I'm like, well, maybe Q4 is just

22:15

a different kind of quarter for us. Maybe

22:18

we can use it differently

22:20

in terms of our intention for the productivity

22:23

we're going to get out of ourselves as individuals, but like, like

22:25

what, how do we best make use of that

22:28

energy? Whatever that

22:30

is in Q4. Like,

22:32

what does Q1 mean to us? Like, what does

22:34

that feel like? I feel like And

22:37

I don't know the answers, but I feel like it's a,

22:39

it's an interesting question and it's something that I think

22:41

is, worth talking about and

22:44

figuring out. Like, are there other things that

22:46

we could be doing to give people

22:48

more flexibility? Like, some companies, you know,

22:51

would have a, a, a Friday's off during

22:53

the summer, for instance. Um,

22:56

and I mean, we already have a four day work week,

22:58

but, you know, does

23:00

it, are there

23:02

ways to shift around our expectation of what

23:05

works getting done during the summer? For,

23:07

and maybe not as a company, maybe just for individual

23:09

people and giving individuals the flexibility

23:11

to be like, you know what, in

23:14

December, I'm like toasted,

23:16

so I'm just not going to work as much in

23:18

December, but I don't have

23:21

kids and I have a lot more energy

23:23

in June so like

23:25

I'll work more in June and then you

23:28

know Blake can like chill it out

23:30

and like deal with the fact that his you

23:32

know Girl is getting out of school like,

23:34

you know, like are there ways to

23:38

work with the flow a little better

23:40

Right.

23:42

in terms of our expectations

23:45

I think the, an important first step in that is even

23:47

acknowledging that it's a thing. 'cause

23:49

I feel like for a lot

23:51

of folks at companies like that would be taboo

23:53

to even talk about. The

23:55

fact that like you're more productive at certain times

23:58

than others, which seems

24:00

obvious and true for probably

24:03

everybody, but it's not something that

24:05

gets brought up very often. So I think

24:07

I think sort of, you know, the classic

24:09

like recognizing you have a problem is the first

24:12

step in fixing it. Even

24:14

thinking about that and having the conversation, I think is

24:16

the first step. And I

24:18

do think that, the different quarters have

24:20

different rhythms, for our business and

24:22

probably a lot of other businesses also. But

24:25

the nice thing about the quarters is

24:28

it's a large enough chunk of time that

24:30

some of that messiness

24:32

can kind of smooth out a little bit. Like,

24:34

we're talking about a three month

24:37

chunk, so December does

24:39

tend to be kind of quiet and reflective,

24:41

but then, October

24:43

and November are a little more,

24:46

frenetic and frantic to sort of

24:50

get, get your things done for the year so that

24:52

December can be quiet, can be a little quieter

24:54

and, and more reflective. I think

24:56

it's nice to sort of have that. The smaller

24:59

cycles within a larger cycle to

25:01

kind of help manage

25:05

those ups and downs a little bit.

25:07

Yeah, it

25:09

would be just, I think, an interesting experiment

25:12

for people generally to

25:15

sort of track more

25:17

of what is my week

25:19

feel like? What is my, this month feel like?

25:21

What is this quarter? Like, what are those

25:24

rhythms for me? Like, you know, and like, and

25:26

people also just have personal. Rhythms

25:28

as well, right? I mean a

25:32

million reasons But

25:34

you know, there's a lot of physical things that

25:36

go on that completely affect productivity

25:39

and mental health and things like that That are

25:41

rhythmic. So

25:43

I mean people with a uterus know this so

25:46

It'd just be an interesting experiment to sort of really

25:48

figure out, like, what is, what is my

25:50

personal rhythm? And then,

25:52

sort of, how does that line

25:54

up with other people's rhythms within

25:57

any, you know, a company, or a

25:59

family, or a, you know, organization?

26:02

And then, how can you support each other with those

26:04

rhythms instead of trying to, like, jam everybody

26:07

into the same box, you

26:09

know?

26:09

Yeah, absolutely.

26:11

cool. A cool experiment to

26:13

try. So maybe that's the

26:15

next one after the four day work week. Mm

26:19

me a little bit of this past weekend

26:21

I was going through and looking through my

26:23

old bullet journals from

26:25

the last five or six years. And,

26:28

just before. Probably about a year

26:30

before the COVID 19

26:33

pandemic started, I,

26:35

saw somewhere online, someone who had a mood tracker

26:38

where they just, set up a little key with different

26:40

colors for the different emotions. And

26:42

then in the morning and evening, they

26:45

would just color in a little box with

26:48

how they felt that morning or that evening. And

26:51

I managed to keep that up for three years and

26:53

going back and looking at it, I

26:55

can definitely pick out some rhythms.

26:58

In the colors comparing year over year,

27:01

and it was interesting to sort of think

27:03

about that and then flip through and figure out

27:05

like what was causing

27:07

all of the stress that seems to happen in August

27:10

and You know, it turns out that it's

27:12

like the end of summer, back to school,

27:15

hurry up and get all the things done before school starts.

27:18

And that's pretty consistently, there

27:20

will be a week in August where I feel like

27:23

the world is on fire. every

27:25

year apparently. And I don't know that

27:28

I, I mean, I, I definitely feel

27:30

that and can remember it, but I wouldn't

27:32

have been prompted to think about it without having

27:35

a reminder like that in front of me. So

27:38

I, I, I get a little bit skeptical

27:41

of some of the personal measurement stuff,

27:44

just because it, it starts to travel down the,

27:46

the productivity guru and like,

27:48

Exactly. Mm

27:49

why am I, why am I measuring this or

27:51

why am I trying to do this? But, that

27:54

the mood tracker thing in particular felt

27:56

fuzzy enough that, I'm thinking

27:58

about going back to tracking

28:01

that again, starting next year, because it

28:03

was pretty interesting to look back on and

28:05

I'm not. I'm not great at doing the

28:07

whole diary type journaling,

28:10

so that was sort of a

28:13

low enough bar to entry

28:15

that still gave me some interesting information.

28:18

But I, I do think more, I do think more people's

28:21

lives are cyclical than, than

28:24

probably appreciate.

28:26

Yeah., one of the effects

28:30

of the Industrial Revolution is that we got extremely

28:33

disconnected from nature,

28:37

natural rhythms, generally,

28:40

and also personal natural

28:42

rhythms. Because that didn't that

28:44

doesn't fit the machine. So we

28:46

have to let's ignore that and

28:49

fit yourself into a machine and Yeah,

28:52

so it's just interesting to be like, oh

28:55

Yeah, that's like really a thing like

28:57

we're still humans and it's still a thing that

28:59

affects us every day Maybe

29:02

we should think about that

29:05

And there are side effects to ignoring

29:07

it, I think

29:08

Yes, very much.

29:10

And, you know, that's

29:12

a whole different conversation, but, I

29:15

think trying to just. Optimize

29:18

and squish yourself in a box that,

29:21

I don't want to blame Henry Ford for it, but, trying

29:23

to fit yourself into a productivity box and

29:25

ignoring all of the other complexities

29:28

of life, can be dangerous

29:31

in its own way.

29:33

We should probably wrap this up. It's

29:35

a good conversation though. I

29:37

certainly don't want it to end necessarily

29:40

this podcast Lots

29:43

of food for thought. Thank

29:45

you for thank you

29:47

for talking it out with me a little bit and

29:50

we can continue to talk about it. Sweet. All

29:52

Absolutely. Thanks.

29:55

Hey, so thanks for listening and let us

29:57

know if you have questions, comments,

29:59

or suggestions for what you'd like to hear

30:01

more about. You can find all

30:04

of the various ways to reach us on our website

30:06

at osiolabs.com. That's

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30:11

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30:15

Also, please make sure to subscribe to the podcast

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30:20

We'll catch you on the next episode.