Episode Details
Back to EpisodesHow 1920s England can Inspire Your Productivity
Description
“I have the most ill-regulated memory. It does those things which it ought not to do and leaves undone the things it ought to have done. But it has not yet gone on strike altogether.”
I’ve been reading Dorothy L Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey novels. Set in the 1920s and 30s, the stories feature an aristocratic private detective in a style similar to Sherlock Holmes. And that quote comes from Lord Peter Wimsey himself.
In this week’s episode, I share some of the productivity methods these fictional characters followed, as well as some from the biographies of these authors.
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Script | 413
Hello, and welcome to episode 413 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.
1920s and 30s England was an interesting time. The country was changing. The First World War broke down many of the class barriers that existed before the war, and while many manual labour jobs remained brutal, conditions were slowly improving.
The way people lived their lives was also changing. There was more leisure time, and cars were becoming more common, giving people more freedom to travel, certainly at weekends.
And yet, with all these changes, there were still some customs and habits people followed that gave them structure and balance. They also used nature far more than we do today. Lives were much simpler; heart attacks and cancer were rare; there was little waste; and recycling was part of life.
It could be asked, what went wrong?
I began this episode with a quote from the character Lord Peter Wimsey.
Lord Peter was very much in the style of Sherlock Holmes, and throughout the novels, many of Lord Peter’s friends would often accuse him of being “Sherlockian”.
What I noticed about these characters was that in the 1920s and 30s, some customs helped people avoid procrastination.
You can also see these in play in the Downton Abbey and Jeeves and Wooster TV series as well.
The first productivity method you will see is that days were structured around meal times.
Breakfast was informal, and people ate when they were ready. However, lunch was always a proper meal, not a quick snack taken at a desk. It would have been unthinkable not to take the one-hour lunch break.
Even manual workers would stop for lunch and eat together.
Taking a proper lunch break can do wonders for your productivity. First, it gives you a break from doing tasks, and it should always be eaten with other people.
But the biggest impact on your productivity was having a natural deadline. Becaus