Richard Watson

How to be Productive without Being Busy

If you think you’re busy, stop for a second and consider your frantic forebears. 200 years ago, 70-hour working weeks were common and there were no days off, except sometimes Sundays.

People had none of the time saving technologies and easy conveniences that we now take for granted nowadays either. So why do we think ourselves so busy all the time? Moreover, what might we have lost by filling our days with activity? Might we achieve more if we did less, did certain things more slowly, or fooled around and wasted time from time to time?

This talk aims to challenge an emerging epidemic of busyness around the world and offer people a way out from endless meetings, pointless emails, digital distractions, and
work cultures that both overwhelm and undermine us.

Unleashing the Imagination: How Places Influence Perception

We have long known that different physical environments and sensory inputs (sights, sounds, smells etc) are good for our mental health. The sea, for instance, is well known to be restorative. But other physical places, spaces and even objects are good for our thinking too and can be practically used to unleash our imaginations. Walking, alongside rest, for example, has been used throughout history to stimulate original thought. Many of the world’s greatest thinkers, from Aristotle and Darwin to Mozart and Einstein regularly took walks in order to think.

This talk aims to uncover the hidden art, science and intuition behind how different places influence our thinking.