Hello, Pete. Hello, Jen. I sense a pep in your step. Oh, yes, you do, because it's that time of year. It's time for Jen's annual running episode. And the crowd goes wild, what the listeners couldn't see was both of us drumming our tables with a drum roll, because we knew what was coming. I'm excited. The annual running episode, some sort of profound wisdom undoubtedly that you had, whilst out on one of your summer runs, this is the long and the short of it. OK, Peter. First, let me just say that this summer has been a little different than previous summers in that I made a commitment to do my Mark Fisher fitness workouts three times a week, in addition to my running. So my running has been less of a daily thing and more of it in between my Mark Fisher workouts, which already is just like, oh, it's kind of fun to change it up. But that's not what I actually wanted to talk about today. Right, right. So when I run, I use an app called Map My Run. And it tells me how far I've run and how fast I'm running. And typically, I run basically the same distance, and then I turn around and I run home. So that's pretty routine. So the other day, I'm out on my run, and I'm six minutes into my run. And maybe this is TMI, sorry listeners, but I'm six minutes in, and I'm like, oh, no. I just got my period. [LAUGHS] Shit, shit, shit, shit. Better turn around and run those six minutes home and take care of business. So I run home, I deal with what I need to deal with, and I'm like, ugh. Well, now what do I do? Because this whole thing has been upended. Well, I guess I'll just keep my app going, and I'll just run for the normal distance I run and then turn around. So I'm just going to not run very far now, because I've already ran 12 minutes, and now I've taken this break. It's interrupted. Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK, so I head out the door, and I start running again. And I get to the point where I'm like, and now I should turn around, and I'm like, actually, I have a lot more energy. I'm going to keep going. So I ran twice the distance that I run during a typical run, because I took a little break, an unexpected break, and then suddenly had a second wind. And as I was running that extra distance, I was like, I think this is the episode. [LAUGHS] This is it. I think this is it. Life lessons from the run. So I mean, so many things to say. Firstly, I think we're going to make a playlist in this week's Box of Goodies of the Last. Let's say it's like four or five years of running episodes, because they're so good. Yeah. And we've had listeners contact us saying, I can't wait for Jen's annual running episode. So this is it, folks. So I hear the wisdom from this being something around the reminder of the benefit of taking a wee break. Yeah. Not a wee break is in a bathroom break, but is it a little break? A little break. Or a bathroom break, as it were. And so I mean, I kind of feel cold out already. And we haven't even talked about it. Yeah, I mean, that was a big takeaway for me, was like, I am the kind of person, or maybe up until this run, I've been the kind of person where I'm like, I could just keep going. I could just push through. I don't need to stop. And this forced stop actually replenished my energy unexpectedly to the point where I could go twice as far with just this little break. And it made me think of, in my career collective, that online community we have with the studio, we do these things called Productivity Power Hours, where we do 25 minutes on. This is, you know, the Pomodoro Method. 25 minutes on, five minutes off. 25 minutes on, five minutes off. And that five minutes really does replenish your energy for the next sprint. Yeah, it's also like a little doggy treat for our brain to be like, all you need to do is just 25 minutes, then I'll give you a little break. Then you can go and stare at a wall, or scroll your phone for five minutes, or go and stand outside in the sun for five minutes. Like it's like, don't worry, there's a reward there. You don't have to sit there for four hours and work, or you don't have to run for 60 minutes straight up. Maybe I'll just run for 12 minutes, and then have a little break, and then we could run a little bit more. So one of the random things that came to my brain was, I guess a cultural difference that I know to be true with certain Asian countries and also European countries, I'm sure there's others I'm missing, where there's an embedded culture of afternoon siestas, or like afternoon naps. And I'm sure many of our listeners have been traveling in various parts of the world, where all of a sudden, at like two o'clock or three o'clock in the afternoon, all the cafes, all the restaurants are shut, all the shops are closed, and they close almost like entire towns at the same time to have a nap, to have a break, to rest. And I just feel like there's probably some ancient wisdom in that that you just rediscovered on your run, that we, you know, overly caffeinated productivity culture that we live in, certainly in Australia and in parts of America, where, I don't know, it's like that's become a weakness, so we've forgotten that breaks are a good thing. Why can't we say that breaks are a good thing? Why does that feel taboo? - Right, well, you know what I find kind of fascinating about this idea of taking a break is that, if I hadn't taken the break, my assumption about myself was I actually can't run that far, and so I had no realistic sense of my own potential or capacity in that regard because I had never worked a break in before, and that kind of blows my mind when I think about sort of blowing that out over my whole life, and I'm like, oh my gosh, where else do I not recognize my own potential and capacity only because I haven't given myself a break? - Wild, wild. I'm trying to think, I'm sure I have so many examples of this, I mean, you can't even think of them, I guess is the point is, where are we telling ourself a story about what we're capable of? That is perhaps limiting because we're not either giving ourself a break or just trying something different. We're setting our ways of this is the distance we run, or this is the path that we take, or this is the way that we run a meeting or facilitate a workshop, and how are we limiting ourselves? Where are we limiting ourselves? Because that's been our posture. - I agree. Okay, so here's an element of this break that I've been trying to figure out how could a person actually do this for themselves? The thing that was a critical ingredient here was that it was a completely unplanned, unexpected break. - Yeah. - And because I wasn't planning on it, it affected me in a specific way. And in thinking about this, I realize I have done this for other people, like as an example, if I'm directing a show, I will sometimes, (laughs) I'm laughing 'cause it feels like such a non-sequit or when it happens, I will sometimes just turn on Uptown Funk by Bruno Mars in the middle of rehearsal. We'll have a four minute surprise dance party, and then we'll get back to work, and it can be such an energy shifter and such a refocancer, but it's because I'm sensing something in the room, and I'm like, these people need an unexpected break. What I don't know is how to give something unexpected to myself, how could I actually make that happen? I'm like, could someone please invent a random alarm clock where it just goes off at a random time of day, and it's like, do a five minute dance party or walk outside or something random. People with tech skills, make me that app. - Make Jen that out, I'm sure it exists. Okay, so you've reminded me of a, I'm sure if it's a catchphrase, I don't know if my wife has a catchphrase, but she says this line often, which I have tried to incorporate into my own life, which I think speaks to what you're talking about, which is, I'll often hear my wife say, oh, I need to change the energy in the room, which is her way of saying, I'm in a funk, or I'm stuck, or I'm trying to force this thing, I need to change something something needs to give, or if we're hanging out with Ollie and Ollie starting to get frustrated, or what's the word I'm looking for? - I think the words you're looking for are, acts his age. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. If he's starting to act his age, I.e. one, we might go, oh, we need to change the energy, like let's go for a walk, or let's go outside, or let's change which room we're hanging out in. And so, this little reminder that she gives herself and she often says it out loud, feels helpful in the sense that we can give ourselves that prompt, but it doesn't quite answer your point, which is, how do you add some randomness to it? So that requires you to recognize, oh, I'm stuck. In a funk, I need to change something, and you're suggesting that we need to almost randomize when that happens. - Yeah, I don't know how to do that, but given the option, if in that moment you had said to me, would you like to take a five minute break, 12 minutes into your run, I'd be like, why would I do that? No. - Yeah, I would. It's so funny, 'cause if you have that to me while I was running, I'd be like, oh, that'd be like cheating. I'm not gonna-- - Right. - I'm here to run, I'm not here to walk. - Exactly, and then, of course, I'm like, oh wait, I, in years past, have run to this app where there's a coach like yelling at you while you're running, and very often, couple minutes into the run, she'll say, okay, slow it down and walk for two minutes. - Interesting. - I'm like, oh, that is one way in terms of running to do that, but like, what about lifing? - Yeah, okay, slow it down and nap for two minutes. Oh, all right, I'll do that. - Right. - Hmm. So, the Olympics are on at the moment, and I'm trying to figure out which sport, which event is a beautiful example of incorporating rest, breaks, timeouts into it. - Mm. - The team sports are the ones that come to mind, I was watching the women's hockey last night. Sadly, the Australians lost. And towards the end, as it's getting close and time is running out, you see teams take like random timeouts to regroup and regather and take a break. So I guess they're intentional in the center, the coach might be calling them, but maybe they're random for the other team, and there's a recognition that regrouping as a team or taking a deep breath and taking the momentum out of a game is a really important way to maybe try and wrestle back some momentum or to give oneself a chance to refocus. So the sports metaphors are all around us. Like you said though, how do we incorporate this into life? - Well, now I'm having a totally new thought, which is maybe I misread the entire situation to begin with. Maybe it wasn't the rest, maybe it was the randomness that I was responding to. And when I think about the work I'm doing with creative people, how do I get the best work out of them? I often throw something they weren't expecting their way. And then when I do that, I will often follow that up with, and if that exercise felt useful in the moment, here's how to do it at home on your own. I wonder if I actually look for opportunities to inject some impulse spontaneity and randomness rather than making it all about rest. Is there perhaps a different takeaway that feels like something I could action or put into place? Take some ownership of. - Yeah. I like this thread and I feel like randomness is so hard to incorporate because inherent in it is that it's so random. So I'm having a hard time grappling with how I would inject that into my life. However, the word that I feel more excited about is variety. Is what I feel like you're describing is, and you told this in the story, you usually run the same distance for the same amount of time in the same way, or maybe your time differs slightly depending on how fast you're feeling that day. And so there's a routine there, which there is many benefits to having routine and structure. And I feel like what you're recognizing is the variety of unintended variety in your sense, but adding variety, whether it's to a workout or to the way that we approach a creative task, feels like it could unlock certain things that we hadn't considered before. And maybe that's an obvious thing to say out loud, but I mean, there's a bunch of neuroscience about when you're commuting to work, traveling in different ways to get to that, like taking a different route or change different parts of your brain because you'll connect different neural pathways. And that's actually a good thing for your creativity. So like adding variety is a healthy way to stimulate one's brain. - That's what I'm hearing now. - I agree with that. And I also think, I think both things are true. 'Cause I am immediately coming up with the things that I do to create randomness. For example, I'm gonna do it right now. Folks, you've heard me do this before on an episode. I go to my contacts and I randomly scroll. - Oh yeah, she's doing it right now. - I'm doing cell phone roulette right now, friends. And then I look at the screen. Is there someone on this screen that I would like to reconnect with and send a little message? Yes. My friend slash client, Ali, just appeared on my screen. And so I am going to say to her, was just scrolling through my phone and saw your name period. It made me smile, period, love you, period. That's it. And then I hit send. - And she literally just did that in real time. That's so cool. - And it's random. That is like random and spontaneous. And that makes me feel good. - Nice. - And then I also do this thing called drop the pen, which maybe I've spoken about on an episode before. I don't know. Have I ever talked about drop the pen? - I feel like I've heard you say it, but I want you to demonstrate it. She's holding a book in her hand, team. - Yeah, so I do this with actors all the time where I will take a book. So let's say someone's working on a piece in class and I will open the book, drop my finger, which makes no sense why I call it drop the pen, but I drop my finger. And what I just landed on is if they say yes. Those are the words my finger just touched. So if I'm working on a scene with someone, I could say to them, what happens if the other character says, yes, like what if that is what's at stake? We'll find a way to use it. Or I turn to another page and I drop the finger and I just landed on don't even try to manage it. How do you incorporate that into the scene? - Oh my God, this is random. I like this. This is fun. I don't think I've played this game with you before. - So I think both things are true. We need variety so that we can keep things exciting and fresh and we need randomness to give us ideas that we can't even control. - Right. Well, I feel like hearing you describe randomness as a good thing is at least for me, landing in an even important way. Because I feel like one could easily tell themself a story when things don't go to plan or when your run gets interrupted that, oh, it's inconvenient, it's annoying, it's a pain, it's disruptive, it's ruining the thing that you were trying to do. But what you're actually saying is how do we look for the gift in the random? How do we look for randomness as a way to actually make the thing we're doing even better or more enjoyable or more fulfilling or more surprising? - Yes, yes, yes, yes. Well, Pete, I'll be going for a run in the morning and while I don't wish to have the same literal experience, I will happily look for opportunities to be a bit more random. Maybe I'll take a right where I usually take a left and listeners, I'll see you in about a year for this next episode of Jen Has Thoughts While Running. - I speak for everyone when I say we can't wait, and we can't wait, and that is the law and the short of it. (gentle music) [Music]
