Life Unplugged: David Wilding on Naked Runs, Playful Moments and Time Well Spent

Naked Running

I wouldn’t say I love running but they say you never regret a run after you’ve done it. I wanted that to be wrong because it’s a cliche and a bit boring but I’m afraid to have to report that it’s true.

But recently I’ve been doing more and more ‘naked running’ which you’ll be hugely relieved to hear just means tech-free, phone-free running. So no podcasts, no music, no earphones, no Strava, no tracking, no measurement, no obsessing over or sharing your split times and PBs.

For the avoidance of doubt, you are absolutely supposed to and encouraged to wear clothes. I’d probably even argue they’re essential.

My brain just thinks about stuff in a different way when I’m running naked. A lot of it is nonsense and not very helpful but I’m often surprised how running without anything in my ears opens up my brain to thinking about things in entirely different ways.

The big flaw with this method is that I then forget a lot of it almost instantly after the run has finished, so I try to remember one thing and write it down as soon as I get back. The other major flaw is that I run remarkably infrequently!

Of course, I need to acknowledge my privilege here because I’m lucky enough to be able to go for a run without my phone without really thinking about it, whereas for a lot of people a phone is an essential part of making them feel safe while running.

Playing Games

There’s a wonderful book by Catherine Price called “How To Have Fun” in which she comes up with a formula for what she calls “true fun” which is made up of three ingredients - playfulness, connection and flow - happening together.

For me, this state occurs every time I play games - especially analogue games. At a recent offsite with our strategy team, we sat in the pub and played a very fun game called “Debateable” (highly recommended for Christmas). It was very silly and probably the most fun I’ve had at work this year, but games like this (and countless others) do so much to make people feel bonded and connected and of course to get us thinking creatively, reframing and shortcutting in surprising ways.

It’s just that as adults we forget to play them. My wife has just completed a Master's in Play Therapy and can attest to how playing games can be genuinely transformational.

It honestly doesn’t matter what the game is, but if you ask me to play Dobble, Yahtzee, Exploding Kittens, Guess Who or Bananagrams at any time, I am going to drop everything and say yes.

When I worked at Twitter, I accidentally ended up hosting a weekly game of #BlanketyBlank every Friday morning for about two years. It was a labour of love and was very, very silly indeed, but I got such a buzz out of doing it. Playfulness. Connection. Flow.

Four Thousand Weeks

The writer Oliver Burkeman published a brilliant book a couple of years ago called “Four Thousand Weeks”. The title simply reframes a typical life expectancy of around 76 years into the equivalent number of weeks. It doesn’t sound like much does it? And that’s the point. His argument is that all of the things that a “high performance culture” advocates to squeeze the last drop out of every day (set the alarm for 4.30 am!) are ultimately futile because they are intended to give us the illusion we can conquer time and distract us from the fact that our time on earth is finite. Much better instead to accept it for what it is, try to be fully present in the moment you’re in and experience it for what it is. I love this way of thinking about the world. I am absolutely terrible at doing it.

If that’s not enough to make you live for the moment, here's a fun fact to finish with. It’s estimated that about 7.5 billion years from now the Sun will die and swell into a huge red giant ball that will fully consume all of its inner planets, including Earth. I find this weirdly liberating. Might as well not fret too much about that slightly awkward meeting you might have next week and think of it as an opportunity to do the fun thing, the brave thing or the right thing instead.

David Wilding is a strategist of GroupM