Final Advice on Productivity

BBC sounds, music, radio podcasts. The FIFA World Cup twenty twenty six. H live coverage from the five Live sport team across the tournament after the final whistle has sounded. I think it's safe to say there's only one place to start. Dive deeper into the World Cup where the BBC sounds out. It's de. Discover a range of podcasts featuring analysis, in depth interviews and stories you may never have heard before. From the football D later to the Wayne Moonly show and Games Got, the Steve Bratnll podcast Listen on BBC sounds Heel forges your sins show where I, John Tophill, eschew the nauseating barrage of self improvement in favour of your worse impulses and transgressions, and I'm here tonight to take your confession. Think of me as your high priest. And while not a real priest, I am really high And where would a priest be without his parish? Look at you all. Thankk God you're here. I asked my producer Sasha to round up the most impure, immoral, feckless, virile, shameless, disgusting little freak she could find. And my God she's done a good job. hasn't she We all have those regrets, whether it's an awkward faux pas at your girlfriend's work Christmas party, or drunkenly insisting you can do a backflip straight into the chocolate fountain at your girlfriend's work Christmas party. Lifestyle gurus are constantly teaching us how to optimize our lives. Influencer Molly May once said, We all have the same twenty four hours in a day I say, not if I lose six of them drunk on shherry in my local wait rows, waiting for them to put little yellow stickers on the fish cate Now today's theme is the workkplace. Now the world is full of people trying to teach us life hacks for the workplace. I'm tired of Stephen Bartlet with his diary of a CEO. Sorry, that's the last diary I want to read. My favourite diaries in order are Bridgget Jones, Samuel Pepes, Eone else on Earth, and then Stephen Bartlet. O, workplace. what do we do for a living? What's your name? Luc? Lucy, what do you do for a job D Festival Design Festival. Now what that is is two abstractouns that you' so interestingly sewn together. Design Festival. Say more You don't have to. Work in partnerships. so sales. I backed out. It's so hard, isn't it? Don't take this aong way. You know when someone starts to say sales and it's like you know when someone tries to explain the rules of a board game to you go, I can't Anyway, whats everyone's favourite style Proiss on three, two one, Almond o. Let' Let's get on with it. Let's get going with our first mischievous misdemeanor. Now my genius producer Sasha has gathered up all of your confessions before the show. I promise you I have never heard any of these before and I can't wait to get through them. So our first confession comes from Nadia, there you are. Okay, amazing. Now I will say Nadia, in the final broadcast, in the interests of anonymity, we will blur your face. Okay. Nadia, what's your confession from the workplace? I once caused a man to have the wrong body part treated in A and E Okay, do you work in A andE or was this You used to work in AE That story checked out, isn't it? Tell us what happened? He was meant to have his lower leg, his shin examined. Right, and what actually happened? Well, I was a student nurse at the time and I wrote down because I was a bit nervous and a bit dyslexic and I accidentally wrote down chin. Oh Okay, interesting. And so what happened? Well, we were sort of flitting around as students and I could see the man sat down and the casiie officer was like, openpen your mouth. Can you plench your teeth thinking Oh, and he looked a his eyes up to heaven and he obviously thought he was getting a really good job starting at the headphont. And then didn the penny didn't drop with me until I saw him limping out at the Okay, I'm very sympathetic to you straight away. And for two reasons. First of all, it's totally on him. Do we agree? Do like I think that's been everything, thank you. He's got to learn to advocate for himself, you for God's sake. Second of all, it's hard, isn't it? because you're a student nurse. You're doing a real job, aren't you? When people like with fake jobs, don't take this the wrong way design know if the design festival goes wrong, it's not the end of the world Before I did this, because I mean, as you can see, I don't work anymore. I don't consider this work civic duty perhaps, but not work. But I used to work as a teacher, Nadia. And it's difficult because it is a kind of high stakes job, isn't it? I wasn't a teacher I should say. I was a really bad teacher. I was in the words of one of my own students, a dog shit teacher Terri awful I was like one of those ones that like, you know how in every primary school there's one particular classroom where you walk past it and you're like, okay. It's not that those children aren't learning. It's that those children are actually forgetting things they used to know, you know, Weird scary But it's difficult because I'm not a natural teacher, you know, and don't take this the wrong way, Nadia, but you'tound like a natural nerd. If I had to have like my actual ideal job, I think I would have been a very good medieval nine year old morbidly obese boy king. Wouldn't that be nice? can't do that. I had to be a teacher and I had to leave for school actually in the end. Lucy, asked me why I had to leave for school. Is you badly behaved? No, Lucy I said ask me why I had to leave for school. No, don't help her. Lucy, please could you ask me why I had to leave for school? Why did you have to leave the school? Round of applause for Lucy That's why I push you. So I had to leave the school because this modern agonizing notion of timekeeping and punctuality and contracted hours is entirely at odds with leading what Aristotle would have called the good luck.. If you ask the school why I left the school, it's because I kept forgetting that the dayays start in the morning.. my whole family are teachers by the way. I don't know if you come from a dynasty of nurses. I don't know if you come from a dynasty of design festivals And maybe you do. Maybe it's a sort of family thing. My parents are teachers, my grandparents are teachers. In fact, okay, I'll quickly tell you this. My grandma, as in my mum's mum, you know how like in the English language, it falls to like the children of every family to come up with a differentiating system between grandparents. Do you find that? So you get grown men like me being like, yeah, well when I was younger, I couldn't really pronounce the word grandma. So in my family, we just call my mum's mum Gangbang A. And so Man Gangbang was a cookery teacher, right? And she was a cookery teacher and her maiden name was Miss Piecraft. Isn't that so nice Isn't that lovely? That'd be like me being called mister hasas a glass of wine at lunch and in the afternoon wheels out a trolley with a TV on it. Makes the children watch. Makes the children watch chicken run hundreds and hundreds of times. Any teachers in before we all come back to Nadia?'s a teacher over here, Thank you for putting your hand up, God bless. h h day for you. What's your name Samantha, and what do you teach primary or secondcondary? You teach primary, God bless you, quite right. Secondary school teaching? Terribly intellectually lightweight? Yeah. Do know me? Primary school teaching, Samantha, that's where it's at, isn't it? Be we this is the last haven of the polymaths. Do we agree? Yeah. Primary school teachers, the great generalists. Are we cooking with this? The last living Rnaaissance men and women of Europe. Pontificating as we do on all the great subjects, you know Flitting between French and fout tent like a great multi headed god of wisdom, Fantastic. Joining the dots of knowledge. That's what you have to do Samantha, isn't it? J What can the Battle of Hastings teach us about joined up handwriting D Ver Anyway, so Nadia, did you get into trouble? No one really realized because I managed to run after him because he was limping so. Oh bless you. So you actually rectified this. I'm sorry, but you're an angel, I think. That Fantastic. I used to get into so much trouble. There was one time when I was a teacher I got called in for a meeting with the deputy head. and she said, John, you and I need to have a meeting because every time you're late for the school, the message that that is sending to the children It's that you value your time more than you value their time. And I said Yes. G on. That's not what that means, by the way. If you're someone like me who's late for stuff all the time, it's not that you value your time, is it? What it means is five minutes before I was supposed to get to work, I treated myself to a sit down wee, turned out to be a poop. Here's an interesting fact for you that digital alarm clock was invented by the Nazis. Isn't that interesting? It's not true, but it is All of this is to say nowia, for God's sake if I can get a word in edways is You the workplace it forces you to be someone you're not and for that I think you deserve complete forgiveness. What do we think? Do we forgive Nadia? What do we say to Nadia? Round appause for Nadia Time for another confession, I think. So where is Izzy? Okay incredible, Izzy, what's your confession for me? So I was so bored during my receptionist job that I bought a craft project to do at the front desk and I supergued my arm to the desk and the paper so this was a desk job. It was my first job I said. And I was a receptionist and I had to work quite late. Right. It was just quite long and so I would kind of just want to craft and like do something. mean craft I might be stupid. What what do you mean by craft? I decided to like kind of recover my diary with like kind of different bits of paper I see putting sort of like new wrapping paper around your diary. Right exactly because I didn't like the kind of cover. you super glue. So you put the glue on your arm? No, No. No, I meand put I'd put it on the paper And I tried to pick up the diary to have a look. But I was stuck And then how long were you stuck there for? I think maybe like an hour. No an hour. And so this was in an office. It was in an office. But it was a quiet day at the office. Yeah. I'm so interested in these kind of office officy jobs like that. I haven't been to an office in years. Be I'm a professional comedy writer, which basically means I'm a sort of stay at home dad with no kids. You know what I mean? It didn't she actually freelance writing, You can wake up, sit down at your desk, blink and you've been making scrambled eggs for hours, you know? Do you know what I mean? Pople Work from home people, It's scary, isn't it? It really can, you know You blink in your afro Beats dance class at your local. Sometimes I'll pretend I'm in an office, is he? I sometimes make it like a work station for myself. Do work from home people do you do this? you know? And some of you like office people, you might remember this from the lockdown when we all worked from home, which I consider a kind of cultural appropriation by the way. You know I look at that I think, well, that wasn't really your thing, was it? that was my thing. You My flatmate was working for the local council. I've never seen so many desktop monitors. He brought in organising bin collection. it looked like he was launching a rocket or something.iculousful. Sometimes as a work from Homer, I will venture out into the library Libraries Okay, let's break to words. Libraries have very good PR, don't they? You know If you read about libraries, people are like, well, the library for as long as we have libraries, we have civilization. you know The library, this bastion of hope lir You go to a library now and it's a stack of Dan Brown books and a nappy change area being presided over by a volunteer ghost And then do what I've also done is I've occasionally tried to do working from home in a pub. Has anyone done this? Work from home people? You ever a tried for Or maybe I'll go to a pub during the day. That's a disaster for a whole range of reasons,. It's a nice place if you want to answer emails surrounded by silent men who move in slow motion And the other scary thing is in a pub at the daytime at any point in the toilets, someone's going through the unimaginable. And I don't just mean number tw s. I mean number threes, people inventing number fours, number fivees, know pioneers, really scary stuff. Even that even that I think is better than an office, you know really isz he You couldn't pay me to go into an office, I don't think. I appreciate that is the point. You are paid to go into an office. but you couldn't pay me to go in Do you still work in an office? is he? Do you still go in sometimes? Yeah, it's not that office. No than God. yeah. I see offices, it leaches the life out of you people, doesn't it? There always comes a point on a Sunday when my office friends they go, Oh I've got to go home now I'm in the office tomorrow, I've gott to go home and prep my meals. Oh I'm gonna have some bulga eat this week I put that in little tupper wares Puffins for food, know Maybe I'll put some Hallumi on it. That'll be fun. Halloui is not fun, people wake up Halloui is fun in the same way that crazy golf is crazy. Well If I went into an office, I think, Izzy, I would I'd buy a cheap lunch. Yeah. Four words for you. Scotchgg creream egg. I just don't like all that meal prep stuff, you know? The office fridge so sad, isn't it? awful place? Go in tupperares everywhere like you're preparing for the apocalypse. St. All of them labelled, labelled Tupperwares. Katy I hate that. Katie, do not touch Katie. Katie. Funny name for a salad I yell as I shovel my colleagues nises into my gaping mow. Okay, Izzy, frankly, I don't blame you at all. If you're trying to add a bit of doldrums into the banality of office life, I don't blame you. What do we think? Do we forgive Izzy What do we say to Iizzie we got time for one more confession, have we? I mean, do they need the news again at seven? No. It's be the same as it was at six it hasn't been nice recently. This next confession, I think I'd like to hear from James. Where's James Hello. Hi. What's your workplace confession for us? I was fired for going to Glastonbury twice. It' put a lot of posh people tonight, hasn't it? Amazing. So does that mean you were fired twice? or you went to Glastonbury twice? Two jobs, two different firings, so Okay, o. Right. What was the first job? It was actually a sales job interestingly. Not interestingly But you don't always get fired for going to Glassonbury. So I ran out of annual leave and obviously wanted to go. so of course didid the Eastter of War, I'm feeling a bit sick for a long time, three days I think. That's huge. So you did a little trailer in the office being like I'm feeling a bit peaky. So so you're Moriarty. Thisounds incredible. You're a genius. Monday, Tuesday s of setting the scene. God, that's amazing It's obviously Wednesday go, haveave a really great time. Monday morning get back in, quite conveniently looking pretty terrible still. Yeah And my boss asked me how Glastonbury was He was a Facebook friend, so He was a Facebook friend. I didn't realise you was sort of in your late fifties. Now that so far is a horrible story, but in the backt of my mind, this has happened twice So then take us through the next time. So next year sort of new job, same me. did the same thing. It worked so well the first time. So obviously lived groundwork coughing Monday, Tuesday. And then no, Wednesday went unfortunately on Saturday front of Liscaapaldi bumped into my new boss. And so then on Monday was there a sense of like what happened? Did he fire you at Liscaapaldi? I guess too. So did you enjoy Lis Capaldi? Oh Godd. Yes, youre fired Oh God. Do you know what that reminds me of straightw away? The rat who orgasm to death? Do you know what I'm talking about? Are you're all on the same page as me? I heard games I thought the rat who orgasm to death. Yeah. The rat who o, this will take as long as it takes. So the rat who orgasm to death was like a mad science experiment From the nineteen fifties, Yeah. The golden age of mad science. you know You know one of those experiments you read about on Reddit where it's like, fininally after all these years we've taught a butterfly to hate. you know you think ra and nasty horrible cruel or. So these two mad scientists called James Olds and Peter Milner gave a rat an ability to give itself an orgasm, right by a kind of lever and electrodes that were then placed into the rat's brain. And what resulted was probably the most interesting experiment in the history of neuroscience until tonight. Be what they discovered is that the rats would press the lever as many as seven thousand times per hour. Self stimulating male rats, right? We've got to stop lookingking eyes now, Jane. Self stimulating male rats would ignore a female in heat. And self stimulating female rats would cross over electric shock delivering floor grids to press the lever again and again and again. And in the end, the experiment had to be abandoned because the rats kept dying from exhaustion Now that is what we call in the comedy industry, relatable content Have you ever felt more akin to anything in your life than a rat to the w? If I had a lever that gave me seven thousand or, well, I wouldn't be here for a start. We started to draw the dots about where we're going here, about how that reminds you of James. Do you know what I mean? This desire to do the same thing again and again and again? Yes, expecting the same result. Quite right, nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong. I got into big trouble once. when I was a teacher, there was this demon French teacher, James, and he like he was one of those colleagues who kind of messages you sort of near the end of the week being like, do you think you could sort of fit me in for one drink tonight? We went out immediately had like six or seven glasses of wine. and then he said, right It's a school night. We've got to do the right thing. And I said, You're absolutely right. We've got to text to the deputy head now. Soay we're not going to be in tomorrow. So this can carry on. And you've got the kind of pretending to be sick. I love that thing of trailing to be sick, James. That's huge. Sometimes I'll send like a drunk text The night before. People think a drunk text is like a slurry affair, but it's not, right? The drunk text is conspicuous by its overpunctuation. right? And it's taken you so long to wride. Now James, I fired off this masterpiece. You should have seen this text. It was like, Dar sir slash Madam Con I trust you're well, Wh are you apostrophiari? You're not going to catch me out? L I regret to inform you that I haveve succumbed to a terrible disease. You've got to try this, James. Which upon consultation with my family doctor is either fatal or twenty four hours keep you abreast of developments. Yours, John Seymour Top Hill. Seymour, not my middle name. And of course you know there always comes that point we think, o God, this isn't fun anymore. You know now I'm going to have to placeace work tomorrow and what if I get found out? And it's scararyish. I remember that night coming home five o'clock in the morning. And thing is I live in London, so as you can imagine, I live with about fifty six flatmates, you loads of us, ridiculous, whichich I quite enjoy because if I lived on my own I'd take up crystal Mh m. But if you live with flatmates in London, my bedroom is my only private space, which means my bedroom is filled with everything I've ever owned. And if you come in from a big night out five o'clock in the morning, the room's sort of spinning around you, you get into bed, it's very difficult not to feel like an Egyptian pharaoh being buried with all his worldly possessions You afford swift passage into the next life? No Weird. And I woke up the next day and I surrounded by McDonald's rarappers and flashing vapes and that kind of thing. I thought, o my God. Is this worth it? off course it's not worth it. But what am I supposed to do? I am a rat. ye. I've had my orgasm and now I must face my death. And I see that in you so much, James. it wor Was it worth losing your job? Probably not, but it was inevitable. You know Of course I'm going to go back to Glastonbury. It was amazing. OkayK, give us a cheer if we forgive James What do we say to James? darlings, My initial hope have been to get for about twenty confessions, but you've all spoken far too much. It's just so sad. Let's whizz through some of these quick fire style. Okay, I've never done anything quickly in my life, but let's see if we can do it. Right. This comes from Delilah I had a I had a new sex toy delivered to the office on a workday and decided to charge it on my boss's desk. He wasn't there, God. I forgot about it overnight and had to sprint to the office in the morning to unplug it before anyone got in I made it by ten minutes. What do we say to Delilah This comes from anonymous, okay. Instead of reducing the milk delivery order, I drank a litre of milk each morning before other colleagues noticeed the excess if we can forget. Not because it's bad, but because it's profoundly value neutral, isn't it? What do we say to anonymous? I agree, I think. Okay, Lorna says I was so hungover on my commute, I threw up on the tube into a Gregs bag told everyone next to me it was morning sickness What do we say Delorna? Here comes Lewis, age thirty. He's written his age, That's good. Lewis says I once sent an email to our office manager asking if she wanted to walk to the chocolate orange after a stressful day. That's nice. A colleague then informed me that I had sent it to everyone in the company Inluding our offices in Paris and Hong G. Okay fininally, I emailed HR as my colleagues were having a lock in in the office and two of them got fired Give me a cheer if we forgive then. Give me a cheer if you don't. Youing, what a fascinating place to leave this. What have we learned, my angels? Well, the world is full of self improvement experts and I don't use that term correctly at all. offering unsolicited advice on how to be more productive. Here is a genuine quotation from a lifestyle influencer called Ed Miler. In fact, can we play it My day is six AM to noon and I'm not crazy. You're crazy for thinking it takes twenty four hours just like some dude in a cave did three hundred years ago. My second day starts at noon and goes till six PM. That's day two. And then the next day is six PM to midnight. What I've done now is I have changed a manipulated time. I now get twenty one days a week Stack it up over a month on my kick your butt. Stack it up over a year, your toast. Stack it up over five years, my entire life is different than it would have been otherwise.. My favorite bit of that is when he says, Some dude in a cave three hundred years ago So since everyone is giving advice on the ideal working day, I thought by way of conclusion to this, I would throw my hat in the ring and to be clear, my hat is an Easter Bonnet. I want you to take this advice as gospel, by which I mean would be better if sung by a choir So first of all, wake up early. I really do think that it's good to wake up early. If you're like me and you struggle to wake up early, can I suggest have lots and lots of spicy margaritas the night before. You'll wake up with such a dry mouth that your body will actually wake you up.. fiveive o'clock in the morning out the bedroom on a quest for liquid,. Sometimes I'll just drink the vase water of my friend's birthday bouquet. I don't care Tust it. Next, wellness expert Wimhoff says you should begin your day with an ice cold plunge. I say I see your ice plunge Wimhoff and I raise you a boiling hot bubble bath and a beef bulgignon Nextip, beware of caffeine after midday. I have four full cafetiers at eleven fifty nine. That brings me up. twelve o one Aparl Spritz number one. That brings me down. I'm ready to work. twelve ten, work finished. Nhing good was ever done after twelve ten. You don't need to do it. Now people say be the first into the office and the last to leave and I completely agree. First in, last to leave. Doesn't mean you have to be there for the middle? That's fine And with that my perfect little monsters, we're coming to the end of the show. God. I hope that tonight we've exercised those horrible modern demons of self improvement in favour of being a human being. And I hope most of all that you've learned as much from me as I feel I have from myself Thank you very much. You are forgiven. Go forth and do it all over again. Goodbye. John Tocktailill for Forgives Your Sins was performed by me, John Tocktail. It was written by me and Eve Del Laney and the producer was Sasha Bober. It was a BBC stududios production for radio four