If my spidey-senses are correct, there’s something in the air surrounding people working in the impact space. Conversations about time in nature, hobbies and creative pursuits are plentiful but amongst all of this, there’s an innate tiredness. An exhaustion that’s difficult to shake. Physically, our bodies respond differently to the heat, but it’s more than that. As 2030 dawns ever closer and temperatures rise inexplicably quickly, climate change feels more pressing than ever. But with a myriad of other issues present and policies at government and organisation-level not reflecting the urgency that many of us feel, the burden is starting to weigh-down on us.

A little digging later and it’s clear that it’s not just my spidey-senses. A recent study of 159 sustainability professionals found 62% to be experiencing burnout. In an industry where wins are hard-earned and the urgency and complexity of issues are difficult to ignore, sustainability professionals are increasingly susceptible to anxiety and stress.

A snippet of Shaunagh Duncan’s latest newsletter on LinkedIn

The weight of it all, the lack of budgets, political resistance present left-right and centre, is often too much to bear. We’re caught swinging between overwhelm and overwork, which leaves many of us feeling well, stuck.

What can we do about it?

If you’re feeling anxious about the state of the world, or wondering whether the way you’re working actually works for you then please let me reassure you that you’re not alone.

More people are questioning their screen time and curbing habits or making time for longer breaks in nature. We’ve seen the rise of adventurous offsites but what happens when the dust settles and the stress sets back in, how can we create a rhythm that means we can continue to face the fires head on, rather than simply turning away to avoid taking on more weight?

What’s more, we spend our days protecting nature, but wouldn’t it be nice if we got to spend some time in it as well? Whilst we can enjoy what we have?

That’s where consistent green time comes in.

My aim and personal mission with Nula is to help sustainability professionals build a working rhythm that allows them to both have the energy they need to tackle the mission that drives them whilst also creating a working life that feels inspiring.

It feels more important than ever that people working closest to the climate crisis stay connected to nature. When the work is systemic and bigger than any one person, time away from screens, space to think more clearly, and moments of connection can make a real difference, particularly to workplace overwhelm. It doesn’t have to mean a week off in the mountains, although that can certainly help, instead it can be something local and accessible that will actually make the difference.

Subscribe now

If this resonates then welcome! I’m excited to introduce you to something I’ve been working on:

The Green Time pilot

Designed for you, if you would like to prioritise nature connection into your working schedule, here’s how our pilot works:

• 6-week nature and wellbeing programme delivered by Redcatch Community Garden, a much-loved space in the heart of Bristol (or London if you can wait until Autumn)

• The session starts at 1pm on Wednesday 16th and lasts for 1.5hrs (although if you need to head off after an hour, you’re more than welcome).

• The group will start with a gardening session, supporting whatever work needs to be done, whether that’s in the polytunnels, picking potatoes, or planting some seeds. The team will be there to guide you.

• The next five weeks are up to you. Whether it’s nature connection, creative activities, more gardening, woodworking or seasonal cooking, you’ll have the opportunity to improve your wellbeing, build confidence, learn new skills and connect with others in a welcoming and supportive environment.

• Outside of the sessions, you’ll have the option to join the cohort and start building nature into your working life, rituals and routines that help you recognise stress early and find joy in the small bits of nature around you.

• Places are limited to 10 per cohort.

Sound like something you need?

If you ever feel like your best thoughts are when walking, this group is for you.

register your interest

Can’t make the September date? We have a second cohort starting in the Autumn in both London and Bristol, which you can register for through the link above as well

Finally, if you haven’t been to Redcatch and would like to get an idea of the space you will spend your time in, come along for a free breakfast on 2nd September from 8-9.30. Grab a coffee and a croissant, meet like-minded people and check in with nature before you start your day.

join us for breakfast

Subscribe now

Wherever you are

Look up for the Perseids: The year's best meteor shower peaks overnight on 12–13 August, and all you need is a dark-ish patch of sky and some patience. Get away from the streetlights, somewhere like Hampstead Heath or the top of a hill, let your eyes adjust for twenty minutes, and wait. The best time to see the Perseids is between midnight to 5.30am. Peak night 12–13 August.

London

Dragonflies at the London Wetland Centre The WWT reserve in Barnes is at its best in August, when the dragonflies are hovering over the water and the butterflies are flying out-and-about. There are a hundred-odd acres of lakes and reed beds with six hides to sit in, so a perfect way to get a bit of rest from the hot, heaving city. Open daily.

Bonsai treehouses in Oxford Square A small outdoor show pairing bonsai specimens with architect-designed miniature treehouses, out in the open in Oxford Square. Until 31 August.

CATS at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre A new production of CATS is on at the open-air theatre in Regent’s Park through the summer, staged outdoors in the middle of a Royal Park. Evenings through to 12 September.

Royal Academy Summer Exhibition An annual must-see, the Summer Exhibition fills the RA with well over a thousand works, hung floor to ceiling, everything from Academicians to first-time submitters. Until 23 August.

Greenwich and Docklands International Festival Seventeen days of free outdoor performance across Greenwich, Newham and Thamesmead, most of it theatre, circus and dance in parks and public spaces. Greenwich Fair brings street theatre and puppetry to Greenwich Park. 21 August–6 September.

Notting Hill Carnival This one probably goes without saying - a complete institution that signals the end of summer and the beginning of a new school year. Sunday is the children’s parade, Monday the main day, either way it’s about as far from a screen as a weekend can get - particularly as signal can sometimes be a little patchy with so many people. 30–31 August.

Subscribe now

Bristol

Bristol International Balloon Fiesta You don't have to go to Ashton Court for the best of the Fiesta (and if I’m honest, I probably wouldn’t recommend it either). When the wind's right the balloons drift straight over the city, and the 6am ascent, in calm air with hardly anyone about, is the one to catch. Climb Brandon Hill by Cabot Tower for the panorama, or cross to Clifton for the view over the gorge from the Observatory and the Downs. Greville Smyth Park sits closest to the launch, Victoria Park in Bedminster stays quieter, and my personal favourite is the view from Troopers Hill. 7–9 August, ascents around 6am and 6pm

Botanic Garden Lates On a few evenings in August the Botanic Garden stays open until 8pm, so you can wander the grounds and glasshouses at golden hour after work. There's a terrace with wine, cider and snacks from Chandos Deli if you want to sit a while. Thursday 20, Friday 21, Thursday 27 and Friday 28 August, until 8pm.

Chew Valley Lake Half an hour south of the city, a big open reservoir ringed with reed beds and two waymarked walks, the Grebe and the Bittern trails, the latter taking in a bird hide. August is when the first of the autumn waders start to drop in. Herriott's Pool at the southern end is the spot for the birds. Trails open year-round.

Open-air Shakespeare at Yeo Valley Organic Garden Illyria bring As You Like It to the organic garden at Blagdon, just south of the city, on the evening of 26 August. Ticket-holders can wander the garden before the show, so get there for gates at 6pm with a rug and a picnic. Wednesday 26 August, gates 6pm.

FORWARDS on the Downs Bristol’s end-of-summer music festival takes over Clifton Downs for the bank holiday weekend, with a line-up that includes some excellent female artists, including: Little Simz, Self Esteem and Tems. 29–30 August, Clifton Downs.

Summer Lates at the Roman Baths, Bath Fifteen minutes on the train from Temple Meads and you can have the Roman Baths after dark. They stay open until 10pm through the summer, so you wander the old stones and the steaming water by torchlight with a drink from the bar. There’s live music at weekends too, vinyl DJs on Friday and Saturday and an acoustic vibe on Sunday on Sunday. 20 July–31 August, open until 10pm.

Monday Pottery Club A relaxed evening class at Terra Studio in Montpelier, no experience needed, hands in clay for a couple of hours with a different theme each week. Over the three August Mondays, you will create candle holders, tapas dishes, then a mug. £20 including materials and firing, and you can bring your own drink. Mondays from 6pm, Terra Studio, BS6.

Share

Looking ahead to September…

If you’re feeling overwhelmed with the state of the world and the work you have in front of you, why not try a little more structured screen-free time during your working week? We’re running a series of 6-week pilots in the Autumn across Bristol and London, bringing together professionals in the impact space who are dealing with (climate) anxiety or stress. The idea is to connect likeminded individuals in their local community garden using nature as a tool to unwind whilst also noticing the shift in seasons. The pilots are 6 weeks each for an 1-1.5hr, starting on 16th September (Bristol) and 4th November (Bristol and London). If you’re interested in finding out more, you can find out more on our website or drop me a reply to this email.

find out about GSP pilot

Last Thursday was Outdoor Office day. By definition, a perfect day to organise an event or at least practise what I preach and later post about. I had even received a few messages from others suggesting that it would be a good day to tap into.

In reality… my calendar was back to back calls all day.

I had planned to head outside at 2pm for lunch but a call overran and a trip to the pharmacy meant all my best laid plans went out of the window.

I know that for the majority of people this is their everyday and they wouldn’t blink twice. A recent conversation with a Chief People Officer at a financial services firm in London reminded me that despite the importance of nature and other environmentally-driven programmes to their organisation’s mission, many employees arrive at 7am and leave at 7pm and do not think twice about it. What motivated them was money.

Perhaps unsurprising but it got me thinking again about one of my core beliefs: the best thinking doesn’t happen on a screen.

I know how true this is for me, and I believe it’s true for a lot of others. I’m better when I’m bouncing ideas off other people in a room. If I’ve got a problem to work through, it’s always better solved on a walk. More broadly, I sleep better and work better the next day when I’m off screens after 9pm, and time in nature is an absolute must for my nervous system.

This is not me extolling the virtues of a completely analogue existence - that’s not the world that we live in and I need my laptop as much as the next person with Claude and Granola becoming firm favourites in my life. It’s more that I believe that we need to reimagine the way we work and live in order for us to actually have the potential to thrive in this modern world, not just exist.

And evidence says the same. A 2024 study of 159 sustainability professionals found nearly 70% struggling to stay motivated, and 62% experiencing burnout in the past year. Which brings me back to that conversation in London. If you work in climate or sustainability, I take it as given that you know time in nature matters, not just for wellbeing but for the benefit of the work itself.

After a bout of severe anxiety and heart palpitations in 2022 and 2023, I’m motivated by a healthier work-life balance now. But it took hitting a low to step off the hamster wheel. That’s the part I can’t answer on my own: does balance motivate other people the way it came to motivate me, or do most of us only change once we’ve hit the bottom?

Subscribe now

As I contemplated these questions and their implications for my business with my coach, Ellen, we landed on an idea that not only avoids the screen-filled calendar clogging mentioned above, but hopefully might surface some key insights to the questions that have been going around my head over the last few weeks. So I’ve set myself a new challenge and am inviting you (or anyone you might think is relevant to join me) on a weekday walk. I’ll aim for 100, consecutively.

The first goal is for myself: make sure I schedule a walk during the working day for 100 days. At the beginning of each week I will schedule at least 20 minutes in my calendars (both for Nula and for my contractor role) and will report back how I fare with sticking to them. There are a few hazards that might trip me up, namely train travel. However, regardless of the destination, I’m determined to fit something in. It will be my own version of a Duolingo streak.

The second part is where you come in. If you work in climate, sustainability, nature, social impact work or just care about the state of the world, I would love to walk and talk with you. I want to understand what motivates you, what your biggest challenges are, what stops you getting away from the screen, and what helps you do your best work. I’ve got my own thoughts, but I’d rather hear yours, especially if they’re nothing like mine.

A lot of us doing this work are the only ones in our organisation who actively push for sustainable change, and there’s rarely anyone to talk it through with.This is why this challenge matters so much.

If you fancy a walk or know someone who would, hit reply or fill in the form and tell me roughly where you are or fill in the form below. Bristol or London in person, or a walk and talk on the phone if you’re further afield. I’ll get back to you and we’ll find a weekday that works.

sign up for a walk

Join the waitlist for the next Green Time cohort. If you work in climate or sustainability and your a people leader looking for a different way of doing things, it's a chance for you or your team to get outside and reset alongside people who get it. If you want to talk it through first, I would love to chat. Book a call here.

Share

Subscribe now

Why we’re here

A few years ago, COVID came careering into our lives like an enormous tidal wave. For a fleeting moment, the health and wellbeing sector understood what it was like to be in the limelight. New startups exploded onto the scene, revelling simultaneously in this new common language, whilst also wanting their fair share of the pie. And from the outside looking in, that pie (being our collective health and wellbeing) felt pretty expansive.

People revelled in the world of walking. Co-workers, once a chamber of their own secrets, felt empowered to share their stories of ill health because lo and behold, they weren’t alone.

It was normal, the relief in it all. Perhaps this was the start of something new, a revolution of sorts.

In the years that followed, there has been a proliferation of businesses that have burst onto the scene working to address particular elements of human health. Naturally, I’ve been keeping tabs on those that appear in the mental health space. And one thing is clear, there’s no shortage of organisations built off the back of a personal experience I’m sure the individual in question would rather have avoided.

These stories are inspirational - you read them and think ‘I know that feeling’ or ‘I need to try this.’ And it’s not just individuals, this newfound openness has caused profound changes across workplaces, communities, and friendships.

As time has passed, this mental health pie has only got bigger with the various long-term effects of Covid rearing their ugly heads. Yet somehow, I’ve noticed how the share of the pie that’s open to change is seemingly getting smaller.

Sadly, many of the promises made during Covid now appear hollow, revealing how much of the response was little more than a tick-box exercise. This mental health support was only ever seen by many leaders as a trend to jump on, rather than a desire for true transformation. It’s no wonder that the government created the Keep Britain Working Advisory Board to help get to the heart of the crisis.

However, one big question remains: Why are we so insistent on waiting until it’s too late? Have we not had enough suffering?

What’s going wrong?

That’s not to say as workplace wellbeing providers that we have got it right all the time either. A study of over 40,000 individuals across the UK demonstrated that the only workplace initiative to have an effect on wellbeing in the long-term was volunteering. Ultimately, we have designed for crisis delivery rather than preventative impact.

So how can we start to shift the dial and move the epiphany to pre-crisis and more importantly, who is already leading the way that we can turn to for inspiration?

I started mapping out this matrix to help visualise where the epiphany comes from, and, excitingly, who acts on it.

The stories of those who had reached rock bottom and built something from it were the first to surface. Hector Turner, the founder of Unplugged, suffered from severe burnout at a high-growth tech startup. After a 10 day transformative retreat in the Himalayas, it sparked the idea for a way for busy city-dwellers to reconnect. Arianna Huffington collapsed after a series of 18-hour days and broke her cheek, the wake-up call she needed that inspired her to step away and set up Thrive Global. After Simone Biles stepped away from competing at the Tokyo Olympics, the International Olympic Committee took action to expand mental health resources for Olympians, including dedicated support at the Games themselves. I could go on, but the foundation of each story is similar, whether it was an individual taking action on their own experience or organisations being triggered by others, sadly something major had to happen to create these shifts.

That being said, lifestyle designers are on the rise. Individuals that are encouraging you to take a look at the way you work and live and ask yourself whether it’s working for you. The renowned 4,000 Weeks philosophy from challenges us to reckon with our finite time. ’s ‘time with parents’ visualisation (you’ll know it if you’ve seen it) does similar work - forcing us to confront what matters before crisis forces our hand. These voices lean into a rumbling that is starting to reverberate across certain industries. Visuals like these are uncomfortable and that discomfort is the point. Through their work, they’re forcing us to question what the sacrifice is worth.

So, is the sacrifice worth it?

For many, it’s not worth enough. Freelance work in sustainability is on the rise. The terms ‘analogue’ and ‘connection’ are being thrown around left, right and centre, and creatives, like , the Out of Office founder who is creating a home for inspired living that “offers the tools, artist-led experiences and programming that help you see your world — and yourself — with fresh eyes”. These creatives are working with individuals to design their lives a little differently, to create space for creativity, play and rest. These ideas aren’t going away. Underneath it all, there’s a growing awareness that a different way of living is possible.

Perhaps this is why certain leaders are grasping so hard for the old way of doing things. But how many more organisations will have to lose key players to deal with long-term health issues? The energy of our people is simultaneously the most limiting resource and the critical enabler of action and output in our organisations. If we’re not healthy psychologically, emotionally or physically, we won’t be energised in the workplace.

But change is afoot, and it’s not just coming from individuals. The other day I saw Amelia Christie-Miller, the founder of Bold Bean, an organisation that is growing year on year, talk about the success of her part-time leadership team.

The four-day work week is on the rise, which is now being tested at local government level and internationally in Iceland. House of Hackney runs Nature Fridays, which does as it says on the tin; every employee spends Friday in nature. Plus there are a plethora of other initiatives taking place. The New Zealand government measures success by wellbeing indicators not just GDP. Wales has a Future Generations Act, which created preventative legislation for wellbeing, before the crisis.

This is not a critique of those responding in crisis, that would be completely hypocritical, as it’s precisely why I’m here. However, I want to ensure we get to help people before the crisis ensues.

That’s why I’m adapting Green Social Prescribing (GSP), a NHS trial that ran from 2020-2023 to support over 8,000 people across the UK, for workplace stress, anxiety and loneliness prevention, working with organisations to ensure that their employees get support before they need to opt out. Because the 46,000-person wellbeing study is right, most initiatives don’t work. The ones that do share something in common - they’re preventative, social, and embedded in how we actually work.

The NHS trial itself wasn’t preventative but the social system slotted into the GP pathway and the results are pretty convincing:

• There was an 85% uptake of the prescriptions offered

• The social and economic benefits are worth up to £11.94 return per £1 invested and most importantly,

• The findings on individual mental health were positive across the board:

  • Happiness increased from an average of 5.3 out of 10 to 7.5, above the national average of 7.4.

  • Life satisfaction increased from an average of 4.7 out of 10 to 6.8 (national average 7.5).

  • Feeling that life is worthwhile increased from an average of 5.1 out of 10 to 6.8 (national average 7.7).

  • Levels of anxiety reduced from an average of 4.8 out of 10 to 3.4 (national average 3.2).

But GSP is not yet integrated as a solution in our professional lives, nor is it one that is commonly known outside of the test sites in the UK. That’s why I’ve set up an individual pilot to show that workplaces can offer workplace wellbeing initiatives that work, particularly if your organisation promotes a social or environmental mission. Creating a mission-fit culture should be a priority.

We don’t need to wait until an issue requires a medical intervention. Let’s take advantage of nature and make it an accessible and affordable resource for anyone that needs it. If this resonates, whether as an individual that needs some support or an organisation looking to lead with nature, you can find out more about the pilot and register your interest following the link below.

Find out more

Ultimately, people want real change, not just talk. They want authentic, credible leaders and systems that they believe in. Knowing something has to shift is no longer enough in this climate, 2026 needs to be the year we stop waiting for rock bottom. The organisations and leaders who build preventative systems now won’t just avoid crises - they’ll become the proof that a different way is possible.

I would love to know, where does your organisation sit on this matrix?

P.S. If you don’t believe me, take a listen to Emma Thompson at the Sense and Sensibility press conference at Berlinale in 1996, reminding us to take a rest, enjoy the outside and look at a tree.

Join the waitlist for the next Green Time cohort. If you work in climate or sustainability and your a people leader looking for a different way of doing things, it's a chance for you or your team to get outside and reset alongside people who get it. If you want to talk it through first, I would love to chat. Book a call here.

Subscribe now

A couple of weeks ago it was mental health awareness week, a fact that I’m sure has probably passed most of you by. There are so many days, weeks, months to be aware of, it’s hard to keep up with them all.

But this one was an important one for me. All around me, I hear and see stories of people suffering. The shit show that is 2026 hasn’t helped the mood music either. Whether it’s work, or the absence of it, partners or lack of them, money, honestly the list goes on and so, anxiety and stress are rife.

I’ve plied you all with facts before, so I’m not going to bore you and if I’m honest, I think we’re all becoming numb to them. We’re not shocked that millions of people are unhappy. That the preventative measures could stop long-term absence in the workplace (and save billions).

We’re just tired. Tired of the noise, tired of the talks that lead to nothing, and for those of us working in the impact space especially, constantly having to do more with less.

So how do we maintain momentum with less? How do we move into a state of action when all we want to do is rest?

Maybe rest is the action. Would that be such a radical idea?

For some, maybe not. It might be obvious, but whether you’re a parent juggling young kids, a professional trying to do well at work whilst living your life, or an entrepreneur just trying to make ends meet, it’s definitely not always easy to do.

What if we made rest a smaller practice

Recently, I’ve been lucky enough to move into a new place which should be exciting, but instead, am currently rendered useless; overwhelmed by the amount that needs to be done. I sit and stare, willing something to change, but with each step seeming larger than the next, the pile of things just gets bigger and I then just carry on pretending it doesn’t exist.

I think in some ways our approach to rest is the same as what I’ve described in my home.

I was invited to speak at a talk at Gather Round in Bristol a few months ago. I asked the audience of 50 or so creatives whether any of them had just considered just quitting their job, putting their phone on airplane mode and stepping away from their screens for a couple of months. Unsurprisingly, pretty much all of the audience raised their hands.

When we then chatted about who had actually done such a thing, most people just laughed. Sure, it’s quite an extreme reaction that is unrealistic for most to achieve, but if we all feel like this, then what small steps could we take just to get a taste of that feeling and to keep that desire at bay?

Rest isn’t just good for us as individuals, it positively impacts our workplaces and society as well. Decreasing our time spent at work increases our time available for recovery, which in turn means we are psychologically more able to focus when we are at work.

This is where time in nature can be so powerful, if we spend some of that rest time in nature, our recovery is enhanced. Yet when I talk about this idea with people, the challenge I often get is, “but I don’t live near a forest/wood/river”. My answer is always the same: a couple of hours away from the city surrounded by trees swaying and birds chirping is divine, but don’t underestimate the power of quiet moments of time outdoors

What are you seeking rest from?

This is particularly relevant when we consider the question above. So much of what goes on in our lives feels out of our control or too large to be manageable and so we feel lost. But there might be a smaller, more tangible cause to your exhaustion or overwhelm, and it’s the little device that sits in your pocket, the screen(s) that, if you’re like me, you’re glued to day in and out.

Our always-on culture is not doing us any good. We know that. There’s no shortage of evidence that demonstrates the endless harm of too much screen time but it’s not like we can go cold turkey on technology. The analogue life might seem aspirational, but for most, so much of it is an unrealistic dream. And there's a quiet status to it now, too. The people who can genuinely switch off tend to be the ones with enough autonomy to get away with it. Disconnection has become a kind of luxury good.

However, you don’t need to spend a fortune to reap the rewards. Creating small slots of screen-free, green time on a daily basis can do your brain the world of good. 30 minutes of time in nature has been shown to have a positive effect on your attention span, particularly if you’re feeling a bit tired.

Subscribe now

This leaves me with my final question, if you’re honest with yourself, are you even ready to tune out? Or have you become accustomed to a screen to fill your brain when you’re bored, a voice or music in your ears when you commute or exercise? If you’re always listening to a personal development podcast on your walk, you’re in the habit of pairing your peaceful downtime with “productivity”. You don’t need to turn your free time into a quest for self-improvement, it’s not doing anything for your nervous-system.

In the words of , “I’m begging you to consume less content”. It might feel daunting, the prospect of interacting with your own thoughts, but when you do so in nature you might not feel so alone. Tune into the feeling of the sun on your face, that bird that you always hear but don’t truly register or any of the colours that June offers us in abundance. It doesn’t have to be for long, but 10-30 minutes daily will do you the world of good, I promise. When you build this up, the action compounds.

Share

Building up the action until it compounds can be difficult when going solo, the intention's there but life gets in the way. So this September I'm running two small pilots, one in Bristol and one in London. Twelve weeks in a community garden, with the group deciding what we actually get up to. It's based on green social prescribing, if you want the proper name for it. If it sounds up your street, you can find out more and register your interest following the link below.

Find out more

Finally, my wonderful friend from took the time to listen to me ramble about rest, nature and human-thinking and turned it into one of her Open Letters series if you fancied a read. She’s also just moved to Italy, which is sad for me, but great for Substack as she is documenting her adventures here.

Tom Vaughton founded Varn, a search marketing agency in Bradford on Avon. Since 2020, the team has had the opportunity to work out of their woodland office on a weekly basis, where billable hours went up as a result. Clients ask to hold their team days there and CVs arrive from people who’ve heard about the setup.

With a London office opening this year, I wanted to ask Tom how the woodland office has shaped the way his team works, and what he’s taking with him to the city.

Subscribe now

What does working in a woodland actually look like?

In practice people just turn up, open the laptop, plug the charger in. The struggle has been that people want to start work straight away, so some arrive a couple of minutes earlier because they know they’ve got to set up.

Weirdly, everyone sits in a similar place. I’ve noticed it with clients too, who have flexy workspaces. Everyone still sits in the same place most of the time. If someone new comes and sits in someone else’s seat, even though it’s not technically their seat, it’s like, “My goodness”.

Working in the woodland is not enforced. But if people don’t want to come, we do ask why. We also know that some people struggle with less structure and the woodland workspace is relaxed. Grab a box with a keyboard, laptop stand, set yourself up where you want. For people who like structure, that’s hard to compute. In the beginning it could actually be quite stressful.

We adapted to that either these team members would arrive a bit later when it was obvious where the space was, or we’d just sign post them to a seat.

That’s an example of trying to understand how people’s brains work. Others struggled with the light, or with spiders. That’s when we created the ‘Varn barn’, an insulated area with blinds, for people whose eyes were sensitive to daylight. If everyone’s open and honest, it’s easier.

You’re opening a London office. How do you keep a woodland culture in a city?

Our budget wasn’t ridiculous. We haven’t got the budget to buy Hyde Park. So it was about finding an office with outdoor space where you could actually work. Natural daylight in the room when you’re inside, outdoor space connected to the office where people can work when the weather’s right, and a park close enough to walk to. We found one near Paddington with a courtyard with trees and a park over the road.

There’s actually more green space in London than you realise. I was fortunate enough to go on a helicopter flight over London a while ago. You just can’t see it from the street.

And the team from London comes up to the woods too, so in summer they’re looking forward to working from there.

For us it was about nature, but the question is really what would help your team enjoy their workspace more. For some people that might be an office in central London because they can meet others after work. It’s about asking the question rather than just picking the place closest to the boss’s house.

What’s a belief about work you think is overdue for a rethink?

One belief is that it has to be stressful. It concerns me that a lot of the data on small and medium-sized enterprises is how stressful it is to run one, how hard it is, staff turnover is a problem, managing staff is a problem, sleep is a problem. And it’s like, why would you ever set up or run a company?

But we need new creative and innovative companies to help the economy. Otherwise you get these zombie ones that just plod along because there’s no one else to challenge them. Why was Hoover successful for so long? Because Dyson hadn’t started, Hoover was the incumbent and we all just bought their vacuum cleaners because there wasn’t another option.

The narrative is negative, and I want to change that. If you know your strengths and you can get in the right seat on the right bus with the right team, you have days that are tougher than others, but for the most part it’s way more fun than you realise. People have this mindset of, it’s just work, I have to grind through it. You spend something like 70% of your waking hours thinking about work or doing work. If you don’t enjoy it, the impact on your life is huge.

For the most part, everyone can enjoy their job. And if you don’t, you probably need more training, you’re in the wrong job, or your manager needs training. Either way, you can do something about it. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Share

Tell us about an idea that arrived on a walk or anywhere away from your desk. Do you remember what sparked it?

Most of my ideas come when I’m outside, or half asleep. The idea of the woodland office came when we were outside with our team. There’s no way we’d have had it sat in a small bunker room in a hotel with no daylight. It would have seemed so far removed as to be ridiculous. We often do walking meetings for creative work, just because it gets the blood flowing.

Our business conference, Varnfest, came from being in the woods too. We were thinking, should we do an SEO conference? And we were like, no one really cares about SEO outside the SEO industry. Our clients pay us to do it, they’d do it themselves if they did. So we thought, why don’t we use this space to run a helpful event for people who run businesses or teams instead? Honest stories from people who’ve been there and done it, what they learned on the way. We did it to be helpful, but it’s been great for connections and brand awareness too.

Where’s your best thinking spot?

A desk I carried out into my garden every morning during COVID. That first summer was amazing. I just ran out of power cable into the middle of the garden. A few clients did the same thing, and we all started chatting about it on video calls. You got a Wi-Fi booster pointed at the garden, rigged up a setup.

I’d carry a table out in the morning, a monitor, it took five minutes to set up. I’d just work as I would at any desk, but in the garden. It looked mad in a photo, but it was great. It just made me think, why wouldn’t you?

Who’s shaped how you think about work and the world around it?

My wife. There was a point at the beginning of Varn where I was working weekends. She wisely said, if you’re billing enough you should be able to get staff. Or if you can’t afford it, you’re billing wrong.

A ritual you won’t let slip

I struggle to concentrate sometimes. So setting clear objectives at the beginning of the day helps me have a routine. For me it’s about sitting down and looking at what I must do, what’d be nice to do, and what I can save for later.

Otherwise you end up doing the little jobs to feel like you’re winning, don’t you? But you leave the big one till later, then you never get there because something else comes in. It’s about creating a bit of structure.

Walk with me

Join me this spring for a little break from your screen. I have a couple of events coming up in May and June across London and Bristol that I would love you to join:

1. Micro-dosing nature at Nature Tech Week in London with Regen City - 15th May at 11am

2. Lunch break reset on Brandon Hill, Bristol for the Festival of Nature - 10th June at 12.30pm

Engagement, engagement, engagement. I bore myself sometimes thinking about it. But occasionally the algorithm gods deliver something that lands perfectly. Enter and her personal birthing mantras.

Now, this may feel off kilter for a nature-focused wellbeing newsletter but the point she touches on is exactly right: woo-woo words kill engagement and natural wellbeing is drowning in them. In fact, “nature connection” itself is a bit earnest, so we’re already falling at the first hurdle. And if we can’t make the initial approach sound accessible and appealing, how are we ever going to convince people to make time in their day?

Sustainability comms have faced the same problem for years, in fact Radley Yeldar called it ‘stock sustainability’ back in 2021 and it’s still an ongoing battle.

Whilst the wellbeing industry itself is a fully fledged beast, I still believe that natural wellbeing is in its infancy (if we’re prepared to gloss over the fact that getting out into nature is what we’ve been doing for millennia, we’ve just lost sight of what’s good for us). As a result, we have an opportunity to learn from our close cousins and perhaps nip the issue in the bud before it becomes a stereotype that is hard to shake. Because we need more than just “tree huggers” on board if we’re going to win this war.

Now, I’m not currently pregnant nor trying for children but I have a lot of friends that are. As a result, I’ve been privy to enough conversations to know that Flora’s post would resonate. And the leap from birth affirmation cards to nature connection copy isn’t as big as you’d think.

Ultimately, to those not intimately connected to nature or working in the space, a lot of the language and practices can feel a bit precious. That’s not to say it’s not correct or important. In the right space, time and with the right person, that language and those practices are brilliant. But the simple fact of the matter is that not everyone enjoys the idea of holding their hands to their hearts and ‘allow the earth to support them’.

So what do you do? Ideally, hire a copywriter - AI can't tell you what 'woo-woo' feels like or how to keep the sentiment while making it lighter. That being said, I'm not a copywriter and this is just a newsletter, so I asked my good friend Claude to have a go. Here's what it came up with:

• “Nature is your healer” → A walk won’t fix capitalism but it will fix the next 20 minutes

• “Embrace the healing power of nature” → You don’t have to feel anything profound. Just being outside counts.

• “Let nature restore you” → Fresh air is not a cure. But it is a reset button.

• “Prioritise your wellbeing” → You’re not skiving. You’re preventing the 3pm meltdown.

• “Expand your awareness” → The sky is still there. It’s easy to forget.

• “Invest in your wellness” → Ten minutes outside now saves thirty minutes of staring blankly at your screen later.

• “Immerse yourself in nature” → You don’t need a forest. A bench and a tree will do.

• “Make time for nature connection” → Nobody ever regretted stepping outside for a bit.

• “Digital detox in nature” → Your brain needs something that isn’t a rectangle.

• “Develop a nature practice” → It’s not about loving nature. It’s about giving your head a break.

After Claude, I crowdsourced some human perspectives, one of which came from my friend Tids, one of the co-founders of the brilliant creative studio, Duna. She reminded me that if it doesn’t sound natural said out loud on a break at work, rewrite it.

• ”Reconnecting with nature supports mental health.” → “Being outside can help when your head’s full or you’re worn down.”

• “Nature connection improves wellbeing and fosters resilience.” → “Spending time outside can help you cope better and feel less stressed.”

• “We encourage mindful engagement with the natural environment.” → “We help people get outside in ways that actually fit real life.”

Do any of these work for you? If you've got better ones, I would love to hear them - we definitely haven't cracked it yet. We're still workshopping "nature connection" for god's sake, the best we've come up with is "green time"!

If you want to see me attempt this in real life, I'm running a walking club next week in Bristol on Wednesday 28th after work. I can't promise I'll nail the tone but I'm going to try. Everyone's welcome!

Register here

For those of you still hunting for the right approach, I recommend finding your version of Lil. Lil is my friend, a total champion of what I’m trying to achieve…and the queen of keeping me humble. She tests my initiatives, she signs up to my pilots and she tells me, without hesitation, “mate, that sounds like a load of pretentious bollocks.” Simple, and effective. Plus, it’s a reminder that we need lots of different voices and approaches to make natural wellbeing accessible, not just the converted talking to each other.

Finally, for the Lils in this situation, please keep doing what you’re doing. Challenge us to make sustainability/wellbeing/nature connection more entertaining and open, and if you’ve got suggestions, even better.

Subscribe now

Waymarkers

I’m part way through Wild London at the moment. It’s less dramatic than Attenborough’s usual work but a great reminder of the nature we find closer to home.

Ways to work with me:

Our workshops are back up and running for 2026:

• Introduction to Wellbeing Through Nature - the foundation, good for burnt out teams who need a reset

• Energy and Sustainable Focus - understanding your working patterns and designing your day around them

• Trust and Psychological Safety Through Nature - for teams who’ve lost their way with each other

• Creative Incubation Through Nature - for the early stages of creative work, when getting outside actually shifts the thinking

Book a call if you’d like to organise one for your team or wellbeing champions.

Organise a workshop

And a favour: if you work with Wellbeing Champions or Mental Health First Aiders (or are one yourself), I’d love to interview you. I’m researching how MHFAs can better support preventative mental healthcare in the workplace, not just crisis response. Drop me a reply if you’re up for a chat.

Well, here we are again. Another year, another grey sky outside, plus countless posts about the year of the horse flooding the respective feeds that I pledged optimistically to leave, yet still find myself locked into. Still, all is not lost. We’re still in the year of the snake, which by my interpretation, means I’ve still got time to hibernate and shed (my phone addiction).

I was practically crawling my way to the finish line at the end of last year, but after 10 continuous days of laptop-free time, wrapped up by the fire in Cornwall, I was struck once again by the amnesia of time and created a new year to-do list the length of my arm. Will I ever learn?

Luckily, in times like these, it’s helpful to have more realistic friends to bring you back to reality. After loftily declaring all the many ideas I had, hobbies I was going to start, goals I wanted to achieve, one friend politely but firmly reminded me that I might have one too many things on the list to make it achievable. Back to the drawing board I went.

Like so many others, particularly in our tech-addled society, I love starting new things. New ideas, new energy, I love it all. Even this Substack comes in real waves. All plans and notes that fall by the wayside when busy comes knocking. But not this year. There’s no room at the inn, as they say - or in my case, no room in the idea graveyard.

Which brings me to the only two things I’m actually committing to this year: consistency and connection. Two things that are essential to so many pursuits, but particularly when attempting to maximise the benefits of being in nature.

For those of you interested in habit formation, social accountability is one of the most effective levers that we can pull, so finding ways to commit to your plans with others often makes it much more likely that you will achieve them.

Subscribe now

Here are my accountable foundations for a good year ahead:

1. The monthly walking club: This is something I’m organising. It’s been in my mind for over six months now and it’s time to get over the fear and do the thing. Part-book club, part-walking club, this group is open to anyone in Bristol. Each month we’ll walk and talk around a chapter from The Blackbird’s Song by Miles Richardson. It’s a gentle, reflective book about noticing more and feeling more connected to the world around us.

   You’re welcome to try out the practices in your own time during the month, then join us to share what landed, what didn’t, or just listen in. Creating time for a walk with others is the main thing.

   More importantly, I’ve scheduled every session until December 2026. Consistency at its finest. The first walk is 28th January in Bristol. If you’re interested in coming you can sign up using the link below.

   January walking club

2. If you’re like me, then the gap between knowing and doing feels like jumping from one side of the Grand Canyon to the other, i.e. impossible. This is why I’m hosting a habit building workshop on 4th February.

   By then it’ll be cold, likely grey, and those sparkly new year feelings will be a distant memory - which is exactly when we need this most. Winter blues are real, and positive wellbeing takes commitment, not a one-off activity. Getting outside, even for a few minutes daily will make you feel better, I promise. The session is a short one at lunchtime, and online so anyone can join.

   Create your habit

3. The writing club: Not mine but something I have signed up to every Monday 1-2pm for the whole year with a group of around 30 others. It means I have to write, and hopefully this newsletter will be the direct beneficiary.

4. Morning meditation for my mental health: another area where accountability is key for me. I’m absolutely rubbish at getting up in the morning to meditate, despite knowing how good it is for me. It’s too easy to roll out of bed, check my phone (see addiction above) and either open my laptop or walk straight to work. Between Georgia’s sessions and my new Brick, I’m already feeling more optimistic for my screen free hour first thing in the morning.

Waymarkers:

Gain some EARNT points by watching a Run to the Source on 22nd January at the Sea Containers in London.

My friend Rory and his pal Joe run a community called Concord, for people that build IRL businesses. This month they’ve brought in Oli Broom, the founder of The Slow Cyclist, for their latest event. Join them on 28th January in London

Last night, I ventured out in the rain to the Conduit to listen to Simeon Rose, Brand Director at Faith in Nature talk, alongside Jon Alexander and Jane Davidson. I managed to grab myself an early copy of Simeon’s new book ‘Nature’s Boardroom’. I can’t vouch for it yet but if this quote is anything to go by, I’m looking forward to it already.

Share

Have you ever had that feeling where you just want to step away from work for two months and have no one contact you? If you do, how often do you experience this feeling?

Whether it’s healthy or not is a debate for another day, but I can almost guarantee that it’s pretty normal. A few weeks ago, I spoke at an event at Gather Round all about Creativity in Nature and asked the same question to the audience that I’ve just asked you. The response? Almost 100% of the hands in the room went up. And this was from an audience who, in some way shape or form, are pursuing a career or skillset that they love.

It’s an idea that I have been ruminating on for a while now. Or more specifically: why are so many of us so tired all the time?

Why are we all so tired?

In a world where we’re facing an ever-looming polycrisis, overwhelm, unfortunately, is to be expected now and again. But this feeling of exhaustion, the desire to step away from it all, coupled with the rise of businesses actually facilitating this change, is something that I’m fascinated by.

Yet, rest or slowing down so often feels uncomfortable for many of us. Despite knowing it might be the right thing to do, when the people around you seem to be moving at dizzying speeds, it’s hard to step away and say, you know what, I’m going to do things differently. What if you miss out on that promotion? What if you earn less money than your friends? Workplace FOMO has seeped into our souls and our systems, making any kind of shift seem impossible.

Is it really on us?

But what if it’s not on us? What if we take a moment to step back and stop placing the onus on the individual and instead focus on the way the working world has been designed?

From where I stand, it seems that work is breaking people because it’s been designed in the wrong way. Our biology is nature-connected, but our work is not. And unless we start to see a fundamental shift, figures like those reported in the Keep Britain Working review (in short: 9 million people economically inactive in the UK, with employers losing £85 billion per year due to lost productivity — you can read our full summary here) are unlikely to change.

Subscribe now

It’s time to prioritise prevention

For those that haven’t read the report, it’s a review of the state of long-term sickness in the UK and what needs to change if we’re serious about preventing it, rather than just managing the consequences.

When reading it, two things stood out immediately for me:

• It’s person-centred

• It’s preventative

Too few interventions focus on these core elements. Even though treatments keep improving, issues and demand will continue to grow unless we change how we think about work and health.

Alongside this review, I’ve been thinking about the 2024 study of 46,000 people from the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford. Their conclusion was stark: individual wellbeing interventions in the workplace showed no meaningful impact. Not because wellbeing doesn’t matter, but, as the researchers put it, ‘strategies focused on individuals do not provide the right support for workers.’ In other words, programmes like mindfulness and stress management aren’t enough on their own. Deeper, organisational-level changes are far more influential when it comes to improving wellbeing at work.

The Keep Britain Working report echoes this, and it’s a drum I’ve been beating for a while, albeit from a nature-first lens.

I strongly believe that any mental health intervention in the workplace needs to sit inside a holistic employee lifecycle; one where wellbeing, or in Nula’s case, nature connection and its many benefits, are felt at every stage of the employee experience if we want it to be truly preventative.

One-off experiences can create brilliant moments of inspiration. But without the right systems and rhythms wrapped around them, we don’t see the changes we hope for.

So why nature?

Whether it be for physical benefits such as better sleep, mental health improvements or creative clarity, the evidence is increasingly clear: more time in nature is a win. More time connecting to nature? Even better.

What’s still being worked on is the how. But this systematic review of 78 studies published between 1990 and 2020 demonstrated that shorter, regular nature exposure delivered in intervals showed significantly positive effects, even more so than one-time, longer exposure. It’s repeated moments, not just minutes, that have the greatest impact.

But ultimately, I probably don’t really need to tell you that. I bet you already know it, even if you don’t make time for it yourself.

Because that’s the fundamental issue here: the difference between knowing and doing. When the onus is placed on the individual, the doing tends to fall by the wayside. But we can’t afford to let it, not when nature is such a simple, magnificent multiplier for so many outcomes.

Designing a better way forward

If you’re wondering what creating a nature-first system in the workplace might actually look like, not just as a one-off, but as a rhythm, I’m running a live webinar on 10th December at 11:30am GMT.

We’ll explore how to design an employee experience where nature isn’t a perk, but a practice, woven into the systems that drive energy, creativity and performance across the year and I would love for you to join us.

Register for the webinar

And, if you’re looking for ongoing support in developing nature connection in your organisation or want to find out about our upcoming pilot in 2026, you can book in a 1-1 call with me. I’d love to chat!

Over 500 million people now use ChatGPT daily, according to Open AI’s latest economic analysis. The way we’re using AI, and what we’re using it for, is a topic of constant fascination as the technology evolves. Many of us have assumed the key question is: ‘How can AI make me more productive?’. However, reviewing the breadth of use in the analysis suggests otherwise. Teachers are reclaiming nearly six hours a week to spend with students, not spreadsheets. State workers in Pennsylvania save 96 minutes daily with Chat GPT, not by working faster, but by focusing on what matters. These gains weren’t so much about productivity, but instead reducing the load of busy tasks, freeing up time for more meaningful work.

This can only be a good thing…right?

However, I can’t stop dwelling on this idea: as we all work harder, smarter, faster, are we feeling any better for it? AI may ease admin, but does it ease your life? Are you spending more time with the people you love or just getting more done? There’s no doubt AI is changing how we work but are we really the ones winning? In fact, over the past century, has productivity ever truly been about individual gain or has it always served the capitalist system?

Digitalisation and its resulting productivity gains have been a subject of fascination for businesses and governments alike. There’s no shortage of blogs or courses promising 10x the speed with the X AI tool, or that you could save a whole day following the Y system. I’m not here to dismiss them, I’ve read the blogs, tested the tools, even nearly bought the courses. I’m no stranger to the capitalist system that we exist in, one that chases performance and betterment at all costs.

Subscribe now

We remain consumers rather than active citizens in our communities, navigating the psychological burden of modern life. A loneliness epidemic, burnout on the rise and more people feeling disengaged from their work.

We work, we scroll, we get from A to B without a break, surrounded by noise, pressure, and performance.

Of course productivity isn’t the only culprit here, but the way we pursue it, endlessly, without redistribution, compounds the strain. This pursuit often follows the latest technological advances, continually shaping how we work. Whilst technology innovation alone has never been enough to radically increase productivity, the time saved by automation or collaboration rarely becomes time off, it just becomes more work.

Why? Because in this system, more output means more growth, and more growth means greater margins. And the gains? They’ve historically flowed upward into the balance sheets of those who designed the systems, not the lives of those doing the work.

But what if we chose differently? What if AI isn’t about productivity, but about reclaiming the time dividend we’re owed? Even if the work is more meaningful, we’re still optimising our time for work, rather than what makes us tick. And as generative AI gets exponentially smarter, our edge, our humanness, lies in our ability to connect: to each other, and to the more-than-human world.

As founders, leaders, and employers, we have the power to decide what AI is in service of. It doesn’t have to feed only speed and scale. It could serve restoration, reflection, or even just rest. So the question becomes: what are we actually designing for?

The real opportunity of AI isn’t just efficiency, it’s the chance to redistribute the time dividend back to the people who make the business run, whilst reaping the benefits in tandem. Because the more time we have available for recovery, the more psychologically focused and creatively able we become.

What would your business look like if time wasn’t just saved but shared?

Part II: Nature as a multiplier is coming in two weeks. Stay tuned.

This may sound dramatic but unfortunately, it adds up.

The Dasgupta Review – commissioned by the UK Treasury and published in 2021 – puts it plainly: our entire ecosystem depends on nature, from the water that keeps factories running to the soil that feeds cities, the climate stability that lets global trade flow, and the biodiversity that keeps diseases in check.

But instead of investing in that foundation, we've been extracting from it - without counting the cost.

Between 1990 and 2014, the UK's natural capital fell by 30%. Forests, wetlands, pollinators, fish stocks – depleted. In the same period, our built infrastructure grew by 20%.

And the future cost is enormous. If we stay on this path, nature loss could cut UK GDP by 6% by the 2030s: a bigger hit than both the 2008 financial crash and the pandemic. Globally, governments still spend around US $6 trillion a year on subsidies that actively degrade nature, while almost 7% of global GDP is poured into undermining our own life support systems.

When wild mammals now make up just 4% of all mammal biomass on Earth – and humans and livestocks make up the other 96% – the imbalance tips far beyond metaphor. It's systemic.

So what does this mean for business?

It means that nature risk is business risk. And that “sustainability” isn't about optics but operational survival. The organisations that thrive in the next decade will be those with align with the ecological reality.

That starts with rhythm. By creating space in the working week to reconnect with the natural world, and the biological limits that govern it, something shifts. Our focus returns, energy stabilises, and work begins to support life rather than run against it.

(Local) Nature worth noticing

Spotted in South East London: lots of happy bees enjoying lavender in someone’s front porch

A natural nudge 🌅

Speak up, step out

You don't need a stage to use your voice. Next time you're out walking, try talking aloud – not to rehearse a speech or solve a problem necessarily, but to hear yourself think.

Describe what you see, say how you feel, and name something you're grateful for. Speaking aloud in nature helps regulate your nervous system and reconnects you with your voice – without the pressure of an audience.

It might feel strange at first but give it a few minutes. Confidence isn't always being loud – it's about being in tune with yourself.

Science Pathways: Emotion

Share

This week’s hot list 🌿:

Sign up to Better Business Network x People Planet Pastry’s breakfast - 24th July 2025

Durability not permanence: Why we must act on natural climate solutions now - World Economic Forum

Want to build your nature connection practice? Check out this Nature Journaling workshop at the beautiful OmVed Gardens, North London - 19th July 2025

Labour’s housing plans could have catastrophic effects on Biodiversity Net Gain policies, potentially allowing developers to destroy 215k hectares of nature in England over the next decade - The Guardian

P.S. Want to explore this in your own team?

1. Book a Lunch & Learn – A 60-minute catalyst session to introduce science-backed nature habits your team can use immediately, and measure impact from day-one.

2. Book a core module – Choose from three high-impact sessions on focus, wellbeing, or collaboration – each built to embed nature into your working rhythm.

Thank you for reading. We know your inbox is full, so we appreciate you making space for this one – if the above resonates with you, please hit reply and let us know. And if someone forwarded you this, you can subscribe below.

Subscribe now

What if I probe further and ask about people in nature? Google actually does a little better at this but again, for many, I would assume you might think of something like the below. This is nice, but not actually representative of the majority of our experiences of and in nature, particularly when meditation is another ‘we know it’s good for us but still don’t do it’ kind of experience.

How do these images make you feel?

In my opinion, the issue is, whilst these images are pretty, they don’t exactly evoke strong emotions. In fact, you could go as far as to say that they’re a little boring and this is a problem.

In a society where we see ourselves as separate from nature rather than a part of it, we desperately need new ways of changing that mindset. If we don’t see ourselves as part of nature, we don’t see it as a problem when we destroy it. Our health depends on the health of the planet and until that sinks in, the systemic and institutional changes that are so desperately needed will continue to remain outside of our grasp.

I’ve just been lucky enough to spend five weeks in Kenya to see one of my best friends get married and spend time in my old home. Returning to London and the contrast in nature is pretty stark, even with Nairobi, a sprawling city that seems to grow every time I come back. When I first came back four years ago, I struggled to settle back in. The move from Tsavo, in the middle of the bush, to nine million people in London was a big one and over the past four years, I’ve been wrestling with what exactly it was that affected me so profoundly and made the move quite so hard.

Whilst there were obviously a number of factors at play (hello Covid), it wasn’t until last night that I’d heard it expressed so succinctly. As Nadeem Perera stated, when speaking about Sri Lanka, “it’s one of those countries that you can’t escape nature, you exist in harmony with it”, which is exactly how I felt (still feel) in Kenya, I just hadn’t realised it.

I’d taken waking up to birdsong for granted, it had become my normal. So when that normal disappeared and I quickly slipped back into my old London habits, I couldn’t tell you what was missing, and because I didn’t know what was missing, there was no way I could fix it.

It wasn’t until a couple of years ago when for health reasons I decided to pause work for a couple of months and go hiking that the penny started to drop. Nowadays, I still live in a city but I’ve changed the way I work and know (where) to look and listen. Birdsong is still around if I take my headphones out in the morning (the Merlin app is great for that) and one of the small pleasures I take is seeing nature break through the cracks, fighting to thrive even in the tiniest spaces. In fact finding the wild parts of London or Bristol is part of the fun.

Now, I’m fully aware how fortunate I am not only to have lived in Kenya but to also have had the ability to pause work for a couple of months, an opportunity that is not available to everyone. So how do we do it then? If the regular stories aren’t working, and one off experiences away from our screens reach only a small minority, how do we connect people to nature on a regular basis? Because until we find ways for people to see themselves in nature, they won’t realise that it might be a missing piece of their puzzle.

The answer isn’t a simple one, and the conversation about access to and inclusivity in nature needs to be louder, but a good place to start is by telling a different story.

Enter the Agency for Nature. Last night the team launched their Season 2 campaigns, with the support of House 337, Iris, VCCP, droga5, and AMV BBDO. Whilst it’s one thing seeing the stills, it’s another hearing about how those stories came to life. Have you ever thought about what you might say to a tree if it could speak? And more importantly, the questions it would ask back? What about seeing the synergies between your love for drag in nature?

There’s so much more I have to say on all of these brilliant projects, but for now, head over to the Purpose Disruptors page and give the campaign some love because we need stories like these to be front and centre to help give nature the support it needs.

If you’ve got other great examples of making nature stand out, please do share them as I would love to see them.

For those that might be reading this newsletter for the first time, I’m the founder of Nula, an organisation on a mission to make nature connection a habit. Our next cohort is live on 30th April and has been designed for SME leaders who are looking to make a long-term change to their own wellbeing so that they can create a culture that thrives.

🌱 Nature connection improves wellbeing, focus and creativity

🌱 Nula isn’t about creating one off experiences, we’re committed to long-term habitual change

🌱 Come and join us in our next cohort (or create your own bespoke experience for you and your team) over on www.nula.work

From then…

A little over three years ago, Nula ran a series of cards over Christmas period with the catchphrase 'Cut the C*rbon'. Little did I know that a year later, it was quite literally time to cut the 'Carbon' from Nula.

By the end of 2022, what had started as an integral part of Nula's brand became the piece holding us back.

I never set out to be a carbon broker. A sales person at the whim of a volatile market, unable to protect forests in any meaningful way, because the credits had either sold out or were too expensive for the majority of my SME clients. Nor did I solely want to analyse sustainability data, which is the area we had started to move into.

I set out to shift the narrative. To transform how people thought about nature-based solutions and connect them to a simple truth: protecting what we already have matters just as much as tree planting. But we weren't moving the needle, not in any meaningful kind of way.

I was stuck. In fact I had been stuck for a while. Torn between the product that I had started with and was bringing in some revenue and the brand I knew I wanted to build. But moving towards a bigger, more ambitious vision, meant potentially losing revenue in the short-term. But it was too terrifying to consider that prospect, so I tried to do both - and failed. I saw my passion and my experience as two entirely separate paths.

As I have written about before, it wasn’t until I took some time away in nature at the end of 2023, in preparation for potentially closing Nula, that I started to see the wood for the trees.

To now…

There's more to share over the next month, but the key takeaway is that we're steering back to our roots. Conserving nature has always been my driving force with Nula and was core to the brand from the start (evident in the beautiful designs by Duzi Studio and Natalia B), but I was approaching it all wrong. What I needed was space and time to think, away from screens. And what if countless others felt the same?

So where are we now? 2024 has flown by in a blur, but I’m looking forward to what 2025 holds. Our plan for the nature-first workforce:

Part I: A nature connection programme for any working adult to participate in (launched in October, opening again later this year)

Part II: Stakeholder training programme to embed nature connection into company culture and employee habits (available now for bespoke clients and launching as a cohort in mid March, with details coming in the next two weeks)

Part III: In progress

In mid-October, we launched our first Green Time pilot with 80 participants. This was part I of III, and while we didn’t have the luxury of perfecting each week before the launch, we did get to ship! And gathered feedback that will be used to iterate and improve the next one.

We'll share the full report with participant feedback later this month. For now, here's our team's perspective:

The pilot aimed to introduce core concepts and inspire more outdoor engagement. Operationally, we needed to test and iterate a shippable programme. It was intense – from making the science accessible to writing weekly newsletters and creating Notion lessons, there was a huge amount to get down on paper for such a small team.

We also tested a crucial hypothesis: that content and motivation alone aren't enough to create lasting behaviour change. While we're still reviewing results (and I'd love to be wrong), early signs support our theory. It is also important to note that this was a small group with many variables affecting nature connection habits.

Why was this hypothesis crucial? It's fundamental to our workplace mission. We believe education alone isn't enough. We need social accountability (among other factors) to drive change. That's why our workplace training for key stakeholders is vital to this programme.

Further reflections:

• Duration: Looking ahead, my instinct, even before diving into the data, was that the programme wasn't long enough to cement lasting behaviour change. I knew this initially but worried a three-month commitment might deter people. Sometimes I need to trust my gut more. Moving forward, we're expanding to three months plus additional time for prompts and check-ins.

• Community building: Yes, it's a buzzword, but here it matters. While solo nature time is valuable, increased screen time isn't just reducing our outdoor hours, it's fuelling loneliness too. Why not address both? It's already proving powerful in the Green Social Prescribing work across the UK. If you or your team aren't ready for a workplace programme yet, please join us anyway. You can sign up here to learn about upcoming individual programmes and events.

• Learning styles: We're acknowledging that they vary. We knew from the start that long newsletters don't resonate with everyone but were limited by capacity. We're now breaking content into various formats, creating digestible, bite-sized pieces that work for different engagement preferences.

The past few months have been transformative. We've stripped everything back, tested our assumptions, and most importantly, started building something that actually moves us toward our vision. Not just better habits around nature connection, but a fundamental shift in how we view and value our relationship with the natural world. And we're just getting started.

If you're feeling the same pull toward reconnecting with nature, but struggling to make it happen, we're building this for you. Our first free webinar is running on 11th February at 2pm GMT with Matt Furness focusing on how to make behaviour change in the workplace stick and you can sign up here if you want to join us.

And/ or if you want to hop on a call, I've opened up some calendar slots for troubleshooting on nature connection and workplace integration for readers of this newsletter, or just to generally say hello. I'd love to talk to more of you this year and learn more about what nature means to you. Book in a 15 min chat here

It wasn’t until I made the decision for health reasons to take some time out of work and get back into nature that I stumbled upon the psychological concept of nature connection and the work of Miles Richardson, a professor at the University of Derby. Nature connection in its simplest form “captures our emotional relationship with nature and whether we feel a part of nature”, something I couldn’t have felt further from at the time if I tried. 

Like Jon Alexander and his book, Citizens, Richardson’s book, Reconnection, is one of a handful that have really struck a chord. Something about both concepts feel wonderfully simple, and in some ways, inherently obvious. Plus, both advocate for us to look beyond the technological solutions that seem to dominate the environmental conversation at the moment, to deeper systems shifts that alter the way we, as individuals, view and interact with our society and planet around us. Yet proactive citizenship and nature connection have a long way to go before they are embedded in the mainstream arena.

Despite the concepts seeming like a no-brainer, shifting mindsets is anything but easy. The climate and biodiversity crisis are two of the biggest challenges of our time. Our approach as an organisation has been to work with sustainability leaders to uncover how their teams think and feel about sustainability, to help drive engagement with organisations’ sustainability visions and corresponding work, as our contribution to these crises. Whilst I still believe that leaders should apply a data-informed approach to sustainability initiative development (engagement should not just be seen as education), our work hasn’t shifted the needle in the way I would have liked. 

Which takes me back to Richardson’s book where he highlighted the Iceberg Model, a systems thinking approach to the way we tackle issues. As a society, we have fixated on visible issues, captured below by the tip of the iceberg. Our priority has been to introduce an increasing amount of technologies as the ‘solution’ to the problems we have created. However, these visible events are merely symptoms of unseen factors below the surface, such as our worldview and mindsets towards nature, which constrain the transformational capacity of our solutions.

Despite seeing ourselves as a nation of nature lovers, the data tells us another story. What’s more, “100’s of 1000’s of people are happy to count birds in the RSPB’s Big Garden Watch or enjoy themselves in nature though the Wildlife Trusts’ 30 Days Wild. Yet ultimately most remain bystanders to nature’s decline” (Richardson, 2022). The more we invest in technology, the more we are withdrawing ourselves from nature, reducing the value we place on nature and this is hindering progress towards a sustainable future and our wellbeing simultaneously.

Put simply, the human-nature relationship is failing and this is increasingly recognised as the root cause of our climate and biodiversity crises. We urgently need new solutions to address this issue.

This leaves me with the fundamental question of how can we, as a company, try and engage workforces to prioritise sustainable action to protect the planet if they see themselves as separate from it? If embedding sustainability across organisations is a priority, then it seems inherently obvious to me now that our primary concern needs to be rebuilding the human-nature relationship, to benefit both human and nature’s wellbeing.

That’s why we are taking a new approach at Nula: a nature-first approach. Our focus still remains with businesses but our mission is simple, to embed nature connection across the heart of organisations and the workforce. Our first experiment: getting employees outside and connecting with nature through the five pathways for 2-3 hours per week, making nature connection a habit.

Swap screen time for green time

Over the next few weeks, we are launching two pilot studies that aim to bring nature to work. 

1. Individual Pilot: The first is a nature connection pilot programme aiming to make nature connection a regular part of your week starting in mid-October. So, whether you’re in full-time employment, freelance, or currently not working, this programme is for you if you’re passionate about nature and interested in the benefits of lowering stress, enhancing creativity, and developing focus. Find out more about the individual pilot here.

2. Nature-First Workforce: Our workplace pilot starts in mid-March is for organisations looking to transform their approach and bring nature to work in a way that can revitalise climate goals and bring corporate value, from lowered turnover rates to fewer sick days. Find out more here. 

One final update is that our newsletter, The Notes, will be back. From Thursday onwards you will be receiving a biweekly newsletter that will be diving into the psychology of nature connection, engagement and action in the workplace, as well as case studies of organisations that are leading the charge when it comes to championing the human-nature relationship. If you have been forwarded this email, you can add your name to the list.

Sign up to The Notes

If you would like to learn more or if you have any questions, please reply to this email or drop us a message at hello@nula.work.

Henry Stewart is Chief Happiness Officer at Happy, a self-organising workplace consultancy. happy ranked 2nd in the 2023 UK's Best Workplaces™ for Women in the Small Size category and top 15 in the 2022 Best Workplaces™ in Europe for Small Businesses (10 - 49 employees) so he knows a thing or two about company culture. A sustainable future of work means engaged, happy employees who are motivated to act on solutions, so I caught up with Henry to find out more about what that looks like in practice. 

Subscribe now

First things first, what is a Chief Happiness Officer?

There are many different versions of a Chief Happiness Officer, however, my main priority is to create a framework for a happy workplace. One that’s about trust and freedom. Allowing people to make their own decisions and ensuring that there’s a coaching culture in place. It’s not about a party on a Friday night.

How has your happy framework evolved over the years?

We’ve been going for 36 years and in the beginning I was micromanaging, calling back from holiday to check on everyone. However, in 1992 I read the book Maverick. This story about a Brazilian businessman was the turning point for our transition into a culture of freedom. 

Since then, books, rather than research, have informed our approach. In the early 2010s, I read a book called Multiplier by Liz Wiseman, which is about managers that diminish or managers that multiply and we realised that we had some points of diminishing management. 

One pivotal book for us was Turn My Ship Around by David Marquet. He was a US Navy Commander of a submarine, in charge of 135 people. Instead of him telling them what to do, he suggested the 135 people tell him what to do. The only thing he was responsible for was firing the missiles. Other than that he would make no decisions. This sounded like a great idea to me, so at that point I decided to make no decisions at Happy.

What was the impact of that decision on Happy?

Before that we were flatlining for five years. After that change, income rose by 25% per year because people took real accountability for their decisions. I had written the Happy Manifesto back in 2012 but that was the real shift that made things a lot better.

What is a self-managing organisation and what does it look like in practice?

So basically, people decide for themselves what to do if they're working with a particular client. They'll decide exactly what pricing that client has or whatever. Two colleagues, Ben and John, actually decided that they wanted to change the pricing model. This was based on the advice process, where they take advice from everyone including me. Taking everything into consideration, including competitor pricing, they concluded they wanted to increase prices. In this particular case, I suggested that I didn’t want the price to be so high. 

And I realised afterwards that my pricing is based more on old models than on what competitors were doing and on what they thought clients could give. During this experience, I realised that I wasn't the best person to do the pricing or to do anything, really. 

How do you get to grips with how your team is feeling?

We have a regular survey. We don't have performance appraisals. We have snapshots that happen every four months. We get people to play to their strengths. We get people to look at the values and we get people to say what percentage of work they enjoy. We aim for it to be 80%. It was originally 74% and it's now 87%. 

That’s a brilliant statistic. What do you think is the secret to a score like 87%

What creates a happy workplace is playing to your strengths. Give trust and freedom to make your own decisions and have managers not tell people but coach people. And that made a real difference, as you'll see from the quotes in the Corporate Rebels piece. It's made an absolute difference to people. Because coaching is about helping people find their own solutions. 

We talk about Daniel Pink’s work, focusing on purpose, autonomy and mastery. We have a clear purpose at happy. We have the autonomy, which is the trust and freedom to make their own decisions. But the key element is probably mastery. That is the key difference. I think that was what shifted the dial from 73% to 87%. We get people to work on their strengths.

And so we will often get people to put their roles up on post-its on the wall. Then we get the teams to decide on their own what plays to their strengths in those roles. Once those have been confirmed they have a bi-monthly meeting with Cathy to work on those strengths and find what is magnificent within them (an idea that came from Marcus Buckingham).

You have designed two flagship programmes, the four day flagship happy workplace programme and the two year senior leaders programme (or the happy MBA), how do you help others create a happy workplace?

Our core program is the  four day flagship happy workplace program. And that spread over three months so that people come to work, people leave, come away and talk about what they're doing.

But we also now have a two year Level seven senior leaders program, which I like to call the happy MBA (although it’s not actually an MBA). There, you can really transform organisations. So we have various CEOs who have actually completely transformed their organisation to a culture of custom, freedom, letting people decide what they want to do. And it's been brilliant for the CEOs because they don’t make any more decisions. They get to just have fun.

The two year program is based on a day a month on workshop. And then they go way and do it. Okay, so if they learn about coaching, they go away and coach somebody, and then because it's an apprenticeship, you have to come back and write it up in an assignment.

So that's the great thing about apprenticeships, because it doesn't always happen. In the four day program or the two day program, they might go away and not do anything. And hopefully they don't, but. With an apprenticeship. You have to go out and do it, and you have to report back on. It. So they get to do it.

What are some of the results you have seen from these initiatives?

One example is from the London Borough of Hounslow. Helen Taylor.was in charge of children's services. Initially, she would have a panel for placement decisions. It would take three months, which was too long for the kids that needed to go into care. They needed to be there straight away. Through the training, she delegated authority to a team manager to make placement decisions about block placements without the need for a panel or her intervention. Without these two features, they saved £100k annum, which is quite a lot. She keeps that under review, as she's required to do. Today she's still not come across a single decision she would consider misplaced. 

Finally, you recently took part in the four day work week trial and are one of the organisations that has decided to stick with the initiative. What has been the impact of your shift to four days?

I would absolutely recommend it to other people. We did it in 2019 for one month, and at the end of it, most of the people said they'd got as much work done before, but there were few that hadn't. When we did it in 2022 we got involved in the 61 company pilot and really involved our people. We conducted a survey with our people, and 16 to one said they were in favour.

Ultimately, the key premise of the four day work week is 100, 80, 100: 100% of the salary, 80% of the time, as long as you’re 100% productive. To help our team make the most of the time, we conducted what I call a ‘productivity blitz’, which is when for 15 minutes every morning and afternoon you work on the Pomodoro method, i.e. focus, meeting, emails.

The surveys told us that everybody felt they were as productive as before. And you might say, well, they would say that. But the key point to get across is that the two key KPIs we had were customer satisfaction and sales, which went up. Customer satisfaction remained as it was before. And we actually increased our sales by 15% with no extra staff.

Share

Henry’s Reading List

Maverick - Ricardo Semler

Multipliers - Liz Wiseman

Reinventing Organisations - Frederick Laloux

The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us - Daniel Pink

Side note:

The Big Plastic Count starts next week. It’s a great bit of citizen science to show how much plastic is thrown away in the U.K. In 2022, a quarter of a million people took part. Register now to take part.

Up next week:

Behavioural biases will be in the spotlight, in particular: The Ikea Effect. If you’ve come here from LinkedIn, subscribe now as this newsletter will be exclusively for Substack.

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

A couple of stories to get us started:

TIME kickstarted 2024 with a segment ‘Davos 2023: Ideas of the Year’. The standout article, and beautiful illustration, came from Tom Rivett-Carnac and Oliver Jeffers entitled ‘The Climate Stories Our World Need Now’. Initially sourced from the wonderful Jessica Marati Radpavar (who writes a brilliant bi-weekly newsletter, Reconsidered), this article was the tonic to some of the gloom that has littered the climate news over the past month.

“A poll conducted by Yale and George Mason University researchers in December 2022 found that nearly 70% of Americans were worried about climate change, and 35% described themselves as “angry” about it. But if we channel our anger into the decision to pursue transformational change, it can infuse us with meaning and possibility. Shifting toward the realization that we—having invented all of the ways we go about modern life—can change those systems, we arguably make a sustainable future more likely…And we can, because alongside all the problems that exist only here on earth, there also sit, conveniently, all the solutions we need.”

Quote of the week 🙄

“If ExxonMobil were required to implement a Scope 3 reduction target as described in the 2024 proposal, then under current technology and policy it would be forced to reduce or eliminate production and sell fewer of certain products. To replace the lost income, ExxonMobil thus would need to attempt to sell different products which lower or eliminate Scope 3 emissions.”

Hate to point out the obvious Exxon, but that is exactly the point! Somewhat terrifyingly though, they are suing to prevent shareholder action on a resolution to make them cut carbon emissions faster. If the judge rules in their favour, the implications could be huge.

Love it or hate it, Davos returned this month to the usual fanfare of private jets and eye rolls. Excessive emissions aside, there were some interesting conversations to come out of the conference and I particularly resonated with the beginning of this talk from primatologist, Jane Goodall where she posed the idea that:

“nobody should appointed to decision-making positions if they are not thinking about the future generations”.

Good news:

It’s been a long time coming but finally the government has seen sense and decided to ban disposable vapes. Why is this such a big deal? Because they are an environmental disaster! In 2023, around 7.7 million single-use vapes were bought every week in the UK. This was double the figure from 2022 and enough lithium (about 10 tonnes worth) from the vapes that were thrown out to make batteries for 1,200 electric cars! Anyway, you get the picture and that’s without delving into the health impacts. However, as will all of these things this ban should not exist in silo, so I can only hope that behaviour change initiatives are being worked on to support this period of transition. Time will tell how effective it will be.

Huge news from the other side of the pond. At 5am on 26th January, the White House released a statement halting all new Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) export terminals.

If you don’t already follow and his newsletter, The Crucial Years, I would recommend reading more about this case and what it means here.

There’s no doubt that we all need to buy less stuff but occasionally it’s hard to see any glimmers of hope in shifting the tide away from shopping given the firm grip that consumerism has on all of us. Hence why it was a pleasant surprise to read this article by Rachel Cernansky in Vogue Business. De-influencing is on the rise with the hashtag being used more than 26,000 times on TikTok. Content creators are trying to counter the prevailing narrative and encourage a less impulsive approach to fashion. This movement sits alongside excellent campaigns like the ‘Rule of 5’, created by sustainability journalist. The Rule of 5, based on research by the Hot or Cool Institute, suggests that in order to keep within the 1.5 degree target we should limit ourselves to five new items per year, instead encouraging creativity and alternative models to satisfy our insatiable appetite for new. What’s more, repair brands like The Seam have shown that audiences want more than new collections. Content that shows how to care for items has consistently outperformed average video content for Net-a-Porter, LK Bennett, and Octobre. The question is, will brands start to take note and really consider what adapting for the future means for their business model?

Share

Culture(lite)

If you’re a board game person, more specifically a Settlers of Catan enthusiast, this one’s for you. They have just released their latest edition, New Energies: “Long gone is the agrarian society of the island’s Viking ancestors. Today’s Catanians need energy to keep society moving and growing, but pollution is wreaking havoc on the island.

You must decide: Invest in clean energy resources or opt for cheaper fossil fuels, potentially causing disastrous effects for the island?”

Games offer a huge opportunity to build a deeper level of engagement with people over an issue, avoiding the guilt and shame that can so often be felt in everyday conversations (which I touched on slightly in last week’s issue). Would love to hear from anyone who has played it!

Earthrise Studio have just released a new four part-series: POWER, exploring the origins of the global energy crisis and how fossil fuels came to be the dominant force in society. The first episode, which is up on Youtube now, dives into fossil fuels’ influence on geopolitical relations and works to unpick the relationship between global power and energy production. Worth a watch.

I’ve shared this with a few people already, and if I was in London I would definitely be there, so thought it was worth sharing on here as well. On Tuesday, Jon Alexander, author of Citizen, is hosting an event at the Conduit alongside Ece Temelkuran, Paul Hilder, Jiore Craig tackling “The Rise of the Far Right – And What We Can Do About It”. With over two billion people eligible to vote this year, and climate being firmly on the political agenda, it’s a huge moment of collective choice for humanity. I think this conversation will be well worth a listen.

Finally, I’ve got round to reading Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth. I’m pretty late to the party and many of you will have already read the book or at least come across the concept. For those that haven’t, she suggests that instead of pursuing growth at all costs, there’s an alternative, optimal operating space that economies should be aiming for. As conversations around degrowth start to become more mainstream, I often turn to her work as a reference point. Where the term ‘degrowth’ allows for conversations to be derailed due to semantics, the Donut Economics model provides a framework for a dialogue that can take place across all levels of global society.

Share

That’s all for today. This is a monthly issue and would love to tailor it based on what you find useful or would like to read more of so please do drop me a message if you’ve got any thoughts.

As always, if you enjoyed reading this, I would love for you to let to let me know by hitting the heart icon and sharing this piece to spread the word. Have a great week!

Leave a comment

• Your behaviour in context

• The behaviour matrix

• What can you do to make your resolutions stick

• Why you need to remove guilt from your resolutions

• The ABC Goal System

Subscribe now

As January gets into full swing, so too do the endless cycle of resolutions. The prospect of a fresh start is enticing. Save money, more exercise, healthier eating, dry January, the list goes on.

However, making resolutions is one thing but sticking to them is another. Numbers vary depending on where you look, but the general gist suggests that by February only 20-25% of us will be continuing with our best intentions. By December, less than one in 10 of us.

So, where’s it going wrong? What’s standing in the way of us shifting our behaviours?

What if I told you it’s not about you.

The Behaviour Matrix

Firstly, it’s a very human response. It’s almost out of our control. We don’t exist in isolation but instead surrounded by our social circle; our friends, family and colleagues, and they have an enormous amount of influence on what we do and how we behave. On top of that, our social circle sits within a much larger environmental bubble; where you live, the shops that surround you, the kind of education you have, the list goes on and they all have an impact on our actions.

So when considering the behaviours that you want to change, you need to think about your motivations and enablers in the context of these three different situations. If you were approaching this from a brand perspective, you could start by using the matrix below to highlight all ways that you could directly change behaviour or use it in reverse and analyse the hurdles that you might face with the current behaviour.

Whilst you won’t probably adopt this matrix for your personal goals, I wanted to fill it in based on my resolution to eat more vegan meals so you can see how the social and environmental motivators and enablers play an important role, and could potentially be inhibiting even if you personally feel really motivated.

But ultimately if you’re just looking to swap in a few vegan meals per week or doing dry Jan, realistically you aren’t going to map everything out on to a matrix. So the question is:

What can you do to make your resolutions stick?

Firstly, it’s important to point out that jumping in with huge resolutions might actually have the opposite effect. “New Year’s resolutions are conscious desires to have better self-control with bells on,” Bence Nanay writes for Psychology Today, and when we try to have better self-control, the less likely we are to have it. What’s more when we lose self-control, we are often faced with internal feelings of guilt or shame.

Guilt can come about in two ways when setting resolutions:

• Initially, you might feel guilt about the behaviour you are trying to change, hence why you created the resolution. This feeling is an extrinsic motivation.

• However, this extrinsic motivation is not enough to sustain action. Guilt is then aligned with unreachable targets. Once you have fallen off track, the goal is out of sight and you don’t have anything to help drive the behaviour forward.

  Share

This is exactly what happened to me last year. It was the first time I had attempted Veganuary and it didn’t last much longer than 10 days. Regardless of whether you think it is a good challenge or roll your eyes at the thought, my motivation last year was simple: I felt guilty about occasionally eating meat, so to assuage this feeling I jumped headfirst into a completely different diet.

Living with a sister who had no desire to join me in this pledge meant a fridge full of butter, cheese, milk and crucially, bacon (social enablement). One hungover Sunday, with the smell of bacon wafting through the flat, I couldn’t resist and once I had caved, I didn’t look back. I had “failed” and therefore what was the point in continuing with the challenge?

New year, same challenge: how have I approached it differently?

This time living in a different flat, not surrounded by a family of meat eaters, means I’m already starting from a much easier place. So, what about my motivation? I’ve tapped into my intrinsic motivation and made it about learning to cook more plants using a variety of recipes. I’ve taken a lot of joy from searching for dishes and trying something new (particularly from Christina Sots, pictured above, and Soph on a Plate), but crucially, if I’m out at a restaurant and I have some cheese, or if I really fancy a croissant on the weekend, it’s not a big deal. And this is because I have adopted the ABC Goal System.

The ABC Goal System

I first came across this method when reading Sahil Bloom’s newsletter: The Curiosity Chronicle. For some of you, it’s probably fairly obvious. But if any of you fall into the camp above, it’s a simple approach that can apply for any regular goal and it helps to remove the guilt aligned with unreachable targets. As long as I hit C, I’m still making progress.

• A: Most ambitious, perfect case: e.g. Fully vegan for the whole of January

• B: Middle ground, base case: e.g. Fully vegan except the odd meal out

• C: Minimum viable level, downside case: e.g. Vegan on weekdays, vegetarian on weekends.

This system helps to prevent the optimal goal from getting in the way of a beneficial one and allows for flexibility in a life full of inevitable uncertainties.

“Remember: Small things become big things. Anything above zero compounds.” Let me know how you are getting on in the comments below.

Leave a comment

P.S. If you are feeling incredibly keen and want to adopt this approach across multiple areas of your life, Sahil has created a free Google Sheet to populate and track your performance

In other news:

• EU Parliament signs off anti-greenwashing legislation, this means claims such as ‘eco-friendly’, ‘natural’, and ‘biodegradable’ will all be up for scrutiny.

• “Greenpeace Nordic and Young Friends of the Earth Norway secured a historic legal victory”. The judgement found approvals of all three oil and gas fields invalid and issued an injunction forbidding the state from granting any new permits necessary to construct and produce from the fields.

Feedback is really important. If you enjoyed reading this, I would love for you to let to let me know by hitting the heart icon and sharing this piece to spread the word. Or drop me a message if you’ve got any thoughts. Thank you!

Share

As a result, the idea behind hedonistic sustainability is to “change the sustainability movement as a whole into something very young, vibrant, and egalitarian. As a concept and belief system it attempts to demonstrate that architecture and design can be both commercially successful and environmentally beneficial”.

Whilst the concept is over-simplified and idealistic, there was something about it that resonated. A belief that sustainability doesn’t have to be synonymous with bland and boring. In fact, with a new wave of chefs, artists, writers (the list goes on), creativity is right at the heart of the movement.

This version of the newsletter, which will appear on a monthly basis, is an attempt to bring together a list of opportunities and examples that meet at the intersection of culture and climate, spread a little joy, or at the very least are quite interestesting.

I would love to know what you think in the comments, and if you liked the newsletter, please do share it with anyone who you think might enjoy it as well.

Share

Food

Finding a restaurant with any availability in the week’s running up to Christmas can be chaotic (I’m looking at you Brutto and Parakeet), however, at the time of writing this newsletter, there is still space at Fallow. The restaurant was awarded the Marie Claire and GQ ‘sustainable restaurant of the year’. Whilst not a vegetarian/vegan restaurant, their approach to food waste is one that should be looked up to across the industry. For those of you that eat meat, Fallow purchase whole animals and butcher in-house, meaning they can use every scrap of meat across the menu, whilst using vegetables from root-to-stem. And to top it off, they have a mushroom treehouse in the basement of the restaurant, built on top of a fridge, meaning they grow their own mushrooms. What’s not to love!

Daun is a relatively new startup based in London, providing locally grown (in the U.K.) and sail-shipped food as well as pre-prepped refills, all delivered by e-bike across London. For anyone who finds leaving the house difficult whilst it's freezing, this is an excellent choice.

Introducing Open Funk re:Mix. Admittedly, this is slightly pricier than your average blender, however, I am obsessed. If you hoard glass jars like I do, this one's for you. It means minimal food waste, less washing up AND its modular design makes it easy to repair and for parts to be upgraded over time. Something we need more products to aspire to.

Read/Watch/Listen

On the Edge are a team of scientists and storytellers on a mission to emotionally reconnect us with nature. If you have been feeling a little detached from the natural world, you aren’t alone. Lots of people do. On the Edge believe our disconnection from nature means that we are largely unmoved by its ongoing destruction. This ‘Conscious Comic’ series has been designed to champion four different species that are fighting to survive, and if we blink, we will miss them!

Anyone that knows me, knows that one of the issues that I am particularly concerned about is the grip that fashion and consumerism has on all of us. Conversely I am also aware that I love fashion and our ability to use clothes to shape and craft our own identity. I’ve been struggling to put all of this into words, but luckily, Alec Leach has done it for me. A lot of non-fiction books are, in my unqualified opinion, slightly too long. The core premise often gets lost in unnecessary chapters. Thankfully, Alec has avoided this problem in his book ‘The World is on Fire but We’re Still Buying Shoes’ by writing it as a short manifesto. This roadmap examines why we buy clothes despite the damage we know fashion is having on the planet and offers a route to a more intentional relationship with clothes. If you’re looking for a last minute stocking filler, this is a great option. 

I only stumbled upon ‘Your Brain on Climate’ podcast last week during a casual LinkedIn scroll where it was referenced alongside a term I hadn’t come across before: ‘sludging’, the evil twin of nudge theory. Nudging is when choices are presented in a way that will encourage positive changes in behaviour, like auto-enrol pensions. Sludging, on the other hand, is when you sign up for a subscription service but then find it impossible to cancel. The term is referenced as part of a much wider conversation about the role of behavioural science and climate change, with host Dave Powell and Professor Lorraine Whitmarsh. I would definitely recommend checking it out, if you’re interested in this field.

Tools

A couple of cool new tools for you to play around with. The first: Climate TRACE from Al Gore’s team This map visualises the 352 million assets included in the Climate TRACE emissions inventory where you can explore where greenhouse gas emissions are coming from. The screenshot below shows you a snapshot of the fossil fuel operations across Europe that contributed 2.02BT of CO₂e100 in 2022.

On a more local level, this BBC tool lets you check out the climate stats for your local area. It will show you how climate will affect future temperatures, what rainfall will be like, plus hottest days during the winter.

Attend

Finally, just in case your weekend is completely packed the weekend before Christmas, the London Creatives for Climate group are hosting a morning get together around the theme: Creative Power Creates Change, starting at 10am on 16th December. The event will be held in a new Alpine themed pop-up Tipis on the Green on Parsons Green which aims to bring London's natural spaces to life through responsible events for the community and beyond.

A small side note from me, next year I will be offering Climate Fresk workshops to both individuals and businesses, which can be delivered both online and in person. So far, over 1 million people have taken part worldwide, including businesses such as L’Oreal and Boots.  The session is three hours long and is a great way to take part in accessible climate education. If you’re interested in taking part, please let me know in the form below and I will be in touch in the new year with more information.

Register for Climate Fresk

Have a great Christmas and New Year. I’ll be back in 2024, doubling down on how we can get our teams, communities and customers to get more involved in climate action.

It’s been over a year since I last wrote this newsletter (more to come on why) and it feels like no time has passed. But this time it’s back with a new theme: sustainable behaviour change.

Each week, I’ll be exploring a topic at the intersection of culture, sustainability and psychology; focusing on how we can get more people engaged and excited about proactive, but imperfect action. And what better way to start than by kicking off with the current Queen of Pop: Taylor.

Subscribe now

What has Taylor Swift got to do with sustainable behaviour change?

It might not be the most obvious comparison but, the answer is, quite a lot. Over the past few weeks we’ve seen extreme temperature levels around the world, most notably in Rio where, very tragically, 23 year old Ana Clara Benevides died before the start of Swift’s show.

Whilst many media reports have highlighted the extreme heat, they have often failed to discuss the relationship between these temperatures and climate change. This is despite the fact that the day of the Swift concert was the first day on record that the planet stepped over the 2.0 degree barrier. 

When new highs of 58ºC were recorded in Brazil the next day, Swift postponed the second night of her Eras tour in Brazil citing the safety and wellbeing of her fans as a priority. No mention of the climate in sight. 

Sadly, these events are not a coincidence. According to the Climate Shift Index, the climate crisis made these extreme temperatures five times more likely to occur. And, as the latest UNEP Emissions Gap Report shows, we are on track for an existential 2.5-2.9ºC of heating, meaning these temperatures are likely to become the norm.

However, this isn’t the first time we are hearing this, so why are we hard-wired to ignore the truth?

The Psychology of the Ostrich Effect

This is where the Ostrich Effect comes in. When we are faced with bad news, people are more likely to avoid it than face it head-on. 

We all know the feeling well, whether it’s an ever increasing pile of emails, a bank statement or in this case, a mounting pile of evidence that’s pointing to urgent change, sometimes it’s just easier to look away and pretend that it doesn’t exist.

The Ostrich Effect was coined in 2006 by Dan Galai and Orly Sade, researchers studying the behaviours of investors in financial markets. They noticed investors avoiding negative information rather than tackling it head-on and felt it resembled the myth that ostriches bury their heads in the sand (in actual fact, ostriches don’t bury their heads in the sand. They fall over and stay still to avoid being seen, who knew?! 🤷‍♀️).

This cognitive bias is not just limited to financial markets and climate change. It’s pretty pervasive across society, from personal finance to health. One study found that 20% of people who had enrolled on a weight loss programme reported that they had never weighed themselves prior to the programme. A classic case of “if I don’t pay it any attention, it will go away”.

So, why does this happen?

To keep it simple: fear, overwhelm and a sprinkle of positivity bias.

Whether you are thinking about the Ostrich Effect in terms of your customers, employees or just conversations with family and friends, often they will know that they need to make changes to their lifestyles or businesses. However, fear holds us back. As humans, we’re incredibly sensitive to losses, and in this case climate change is often associated with negative lifestyle changes, so it’s preferable to just ignore them.

What’s more, we love optimistic predictions. We’re often more likely to remember positive events than negative ones, and when it comes to the Ostrich Effect, we tend to pay more attention to positive information.

This means that when designing an intervention or campaign or just thinking about how to discuss certain topics with colleagues, you have to be incredibly strategic with your messaging so that you don’t accidentally scare them off. The anxiety of taking on a challenge is often enough to deter people from actually trying.

How can you overcome it?

Humour

Humour is a powerful tool when it comes to counteracting fear. It allows us to reframe and demystify sensitive topics, squashing the Ostrich Effect and hopefully opening up more people to tricky conversations. And entries into this category are starting to come through thick and fast.

Enter Oblivia Coleman:

Imagination

This is a pretty hot topic in the climate space at the moment. From Phoebe Tickell, the Imagination Activist, the Transition Town Network founder Rob Hopkins, to Ayana Elizabeth Johnson with her upcoming book ‘What if we get it right?’. Why is imagination so powerful? It reminds people of a hopeful vision to work towards and the gains that can be made by not avoiding the issue. Ultimately, it helps to provide a breeding ground for creativity and action rather than hibernation.

Read more: What if green energy brings down Big Oil - Positive News

Influencers

Bringing us back in a full circle to Taylor. If megastars like her want to continue to tour with thousands of people in an arena without facing deadly consequences such as extreme heat, she will need to start speaking up. As Jeff Goodell, author of The New York Times bestseller The Heat Will Kill You First, said in an email to HEATED,

“I of course understand that for someone like [Taylor], the climate crisis is a political quagmire. But fuck, she has the power to wake up millions of people to the risks of the climate crisis. Why doesn’t she use it?” 

HEATED

What does Taylor Swift owe the planet?

It’s been widely reported that the day 23-year-old Ana Clara Benevides collapsed an…

Read more

3 years ago · 153 likes · 13 comments · Emily Atkin and Arielle Samuelson

Taylor might be slightly out of budget for most campaigns or interventions, but bringing in celebrities and other trusted individuals for behaviour change campaigns, particularly those who usually sit outside of the climate sphere, can be incredibly powerful. Their ability to increase the exposure effect (a phenomenon where anything can become more likeable the more familiar we become with it) and influence through authority, social proof and like-ability means that individuals might feel more persuaded to act.

To summarise

Lots of these problems can feel incredibly overwhelming at times, and awareness-raising is not always the answer. We can’t always avoid the reality of the situation, and nor should we, but offering opportunities for light respite or imagination can be a powerful tool when attempting to overcome them.

Elsewhere on the internet this week…

Sewage in our water systems isn’t just gross, it’s impacting our health as well - The Guardian

Does happiness work as a counter to our climate anxiety? - Forbes

We all know spending time in nature is good for us, but did you know it’s good for your memory, imagination and logic? - The Guardian

Finally, this one is for any recycling/waste warriors who look at their work bins in horror; know that you aren’t alone 😱 - The FT

Subscribe now