Phone Separation, Modern Wellbeing, and Sleep

Welcome to the 31st edition of our "Skills for the Future of Work" newsletter - that is one for every single day of the month if you are so inclined! Every edition marks a different week, but it's always the same drill - a tip you can use to make yourself more effective every day, followed by an insight and finally our favourite new thing.

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Alright, let's get going!

The Tip - We need to talk about your phone

OK, so this probably will not be easy, but we need to ask you a question. Do you have a healthy relationship with your phone, or is it tending towards the...obsessive?

If you are never more than a couple of feet away from your device, maybe the relationship has got a bit out of hand. This week, animated Paul discusses a quick three-step program you can use to help you gain more of a healthy separation.

The Insight - The Evolution of Wellbeing

If you get benefit from practicing yoga, you should probably thank a woman called Indra Devi. Devi was born in Latvia in 1899 as Eugenie Peterson. In the 1930s she became a student of the yoga guru Tirumalai Krishnamacharya in India, but after training there she travelled extensively, introducing yoga to political leaders in Russia and China, before travelling to South America and perhaps most influentially, Hollywood in 1947.

Devi's yoga studio in Hollywood attracted many famous students, including Golden Age Hollywood stars like Greta Garbo and Gloria Swanson. According to Michelle Goldberg's book "The Goddess Pose", it is really down to Devi that many of us think of yoga as a system of wellness for the modern age. And yoga continues to develop all the time - with changes in how we practice it (Hatha, Vinyasa, Yin), where we practice it (Hot Studios, Paddleboards, Wineries) and even who we practice it alongside (yes there is something called Goat Yoga you can do these days).

A huge amount of what we think of as yoga today would be unrecognizable to previous generations, but why is that? Yes, yoga studios constantly innovate to find new audiences, but there is something more to it than that. It turns out any wellbeing practice (such as yoga) develops because our need for it develops.

If you would like to understand this more deeply, think about how different your interactions are with the world from even 2 years ago. And if you are not sure about that, find some old e-mails or LinkedIn posts.

Today, you almost certainly sit down way more than anyone in your field used to. And inevitably, you are interrupted by a continuous stream of targeted information which immerses you in a virtual world, separate from real life. The result of all this is likely a different shaped body with a different mind. This is a mind which is now optimized to absorb large amounts of information from multiple sources, but which is significantly less aware of its immediate surroundings. "Yoga for Everyone" exists because everyone needs yoga (or at least something like it).

So, what does all this mean for you personally, or for your team/organization? We think it means something very important. If you are using the same approaches to manage wellbeing than you were years ago, you are probably missing the mark. Our challenges are unique, our bodies are different, and even our brains are measurably different. So, it might be time to revisit what worked before, and create tests to see if it will work again.

Our Favourite New Thing

Of course, a massive part of wellbeing is determined by the amount of sleep we get. There are a ton of hints and tips out there on how to improve sleep, but as with most things related to our wellbeing, it's important to understand what works best for us as individuals.

Russell Foster (a professor of circadian neuroscience at the University of Oxford) has written a great new book on the topic, called Life Time: The New Science of the Body Clock, and How it Can Revolutionize Your Sleep and Health. As you read it, you will probably have a few realizations on what will help you get to sleep, stay asleep and even manage jetlag. Highly recommended.

About Us

BillionMinds brings you this newsletter each and every week. But that’s not all we do. We also help organizations become future-proof by build a workforce of adaptable, resilient employees.

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