How could you flex your day to work with nature?
Two days ago, as it has been for nearly a week, the temperature where I live crept up to nearly 30c (88f), with not a breath of wind and very high humidity. Ok, so 30c in cayman is an average day, and I never suffered in the heat there for decades, but hey, Cayman has air conditioning and fans. London?. Nope. Now, as my working day went on, I knew I’d booked myself into a group bike ride for 6:30 that evening.
Around 5 pm I stopped and thought about doing that ride. As The Specials would say: TOO HOT! (one of my favourite bands of all time, see live video of them performing that song here). So, I cancelled my place on that ride, then also moved my first video call of the day from early morning to later.
This then enabled me to spend that evening staying as cool as I could, then I got up early and went for a bike before the day heated up. I can tell you, riding at 19c is WAY more pleasant than riding in nearly 30c heat! Even so, I only rode for about an hour, as mid-morning I knew I had a walk booked with a client.
So, this view is about 600 feet up at the midpoint of my ride, looking back towards London (though the tall buildings aren’t visible due to the heat haze!).
Five days ago I wrote: “Working with (your) nature“, about flexing our work schedule with nature, and with our own nature. Happy that I modelled this by shifting from a hot, evening bike ride to a cooler, morning ride. Thanks to some consciousness and thought, I shifted what would have been a draining and exhausting hot evening ride to a cool morning one. I then went to walk with my client and then had a truly energised and productive rest of the working day, rather than what would inevitably have been a day of exhaustion and lack of energy.
How could you flex your day to work with nature?
PS what also occurs to me is the insanity of the application of the six most dangerous words in business (otherwise known as “we’ve always done it this way”) in operation when people working in the centre of London simply keep going into their office in a heatwave, where the Tube can get well over 40c. Pre-covid this was simply what people did! Now, as we increasingly look towards the future of work, taking learnings from Covid remote working and even climate change extremes, may we see employers focus more and more on working with nature and flexing our workdays as I was fortunate enough to be able to do.