If I had one piece of career advice for a school leaver, then it would be this:
Do you want to work inside or outside? Think really carefully before you answer! In fact take plenty of time before you reach a final decision. It will be more obvious to some.
Improve Sleep and Vitality
My education was always going to condemn me to an an entire working life indoors.
Having failed to get into medical school, I ended up as a bank clerk. From there a brief spell as a money broker, then sales rep, eventually setting up my own small business. No plan, little idea, just played what was in front of me. What would I have given to be asked the Indoors/Outdoors question at 18? Thankfully, getting a D in Physics saved me from the one profession where they look like 'death warmed up'. I accept that it's a sweeping statement but I rarely meet a doctor who looks the picture of health; doctors don't get to see a lot of the outdoors. In some wards, like Intensive Care Units, there are no windows at all.
A study simply comparing the amount of natural light workers experienced clearly demonstrated poorer health outcomes for windowless environments ie the amount of natural light that a worker is exposed to in a working day. Workers in restricted light had poorer sleep quality, more sleep disturbance and less vitality (the desire to do physical exercise). Armed with this knowledge it makes one wonder why we would ever recommend an indoor working life to our children.
Improved Physical Conditioning
Most of my working life has been in an office. You don't notice at first, but slowly, sedentary working for 8 to 10 hours a day, destroys your physical wellbeing.
Comparing the difference in the number of steps is alarming: a days work in the woods is between 12,000 and 15,000 steps; very often I'll start my day with a walk which bumps the daily tally to 20,000+. A workday in the office....between 2,000 and 3,000. But here's the killer blow. Stripped of all vitality, its very common to come home and spend the rest of the waking day in front of the TV! Dog owners wouldn't accept this for their beloved pets! My friends tell me that they compensate for this by going to the gym - 'full gas' for 45 minutes, everyday. Is the gym a substitute for being outside? Maybe, but probably in the same way a liquidised dinner is a substitute for a Sunday roast or playing Guitar Hero instead of a Fender Telecaster.
When you read that 63% of gym memberships are completely unused, 82% of memberships only use the gym once a week it's as if we know it's not right. If you commit to the gym, then you have to attend for the rest of your life. In fact you will be required to do more each year just to stand still with your fitness due to the ageing process. The gym isn't something you do in your twenties in the vain hope "it's done!". Like a dog...the gym is for life!
Then there's the correlation between muscle mass and longevity and independent living. Muscle mass declines with age, so to keep up you need to do more. In addition, you need to keep changing which muscles to work. So once, you sign up to the indoor career, you need to become a slave to the gym. Personally, I can think of nothing worse than after 8 hours in front of a screen, having to visit another indoor environment to play catch-up with the other lycra-clad victims! Utter madness.
Working in the woods involves your whole body with a constant change of activity. One minute you're lifting logs, but always different shapes, weight and sizes. Other moments, you are dragging, rolling logs or doing the 'farmers carry'. Lifting lumber onto your shoulder, occasionally over your head, the number of different lifts makes for the world's most complete work-out: my friend calls it "The Green Gym".
Mental Wellbeing
In addition to the challenges of lifting, the forest floor is both uneven and unpredictable; brambles posses the wonderful habit of grabbing your ankles just as you are staggering with a log. There's no 'non-slip' surface or plethora of signage to prevent injury in the woods. You are forced to mentally 'plug-in' to the environment and back thousands of years of evolution. Before long, I became stronger, lighter on my feet, always anticipating the dangers around me. For the first time I could remember, I became lost in my work.
While this is going on, you are surrounded by the the amazing sights and sounds of the forest. After a while, you are no longer a separate entity, but now part of the surroundings. When this happens.....you will never want to work indoors again.
Many of us will sacrifice most of our lives to live a life as nothing more than a battery hen. The Escape Artist calls it the 'Prison Camp'. If things go really well indoors for us, we'll have a mortgage round our necks in the belief that we're 'winning the game'. Little do we realise that we don't own the house, it now owns us and our future decisions. All that stuff we buy, effectively takes a little more ownership of our soul. This often requires more hours being sedentary, and if there is anything left, maybe fit in a gym session in an already crowded schedule - somehow we need to compensate for the physical and mental decline that is taking over our bodies. Most of us give up the fight at this point, accept our lot; others react by doing copious amounts of running or cycling in the false belief they've got it sorted. These victims, then become slaves to their Garmin devices, not realising that they are now owned by the data they generate. (I still look at my daily step data on my phone - it's difficult to get clean!) Companies relentlessly pursue our data until we no longer control our lives. Just think how you respond to your phone!
There are countless studies showing the mental benefits of being in touch with nature; the evidence is overwhelming.
I dropped the Garmin obsession, the striping of the lawn, the mortgage repayments, in fact most things that our society had coerced me to take part in. I decided to quit being a slave to the expectations of society. It's not easy - I'm only a small way in, but as they say, "every journey starts with the first step".
If you've just left school and you're not sure what to do, be watchful. Don't be fooled into thinking that you'll just do it for a few years; invariably, it's for life. Our institutions, parents and peers will all tell you to effectively become a battery hen. If you're going to be honest with anyone in life, make sure it's yourself.
I'll never know for sure whether it would have been good for me to do medicine ( I certainly wasn't motivated enough to retake physics). To be honest, I can't stand the sight of blood and lack the key characteristic of a good doctor........conscientiousness - oh, you can also add in a sketchy work ethic and poor attention to detail. Psychometric testing in1984 would have weeded me out pretty quickly. To my mind, indoors isn't living. I'm sure there's plenty of people, having been paid enough compensation as a battery hen, feel that it is or has all been worth it. I know because such people tell me so. They are normally about mid-fifties , retiring, and now ready to start life. Only problem is, the bulk of their active, independent life has gone. All it really means is that at some stage they will dribble in a more fancy place for the sacrifice.
I do have a confession; The indoors/outdoors question isn't my idea. A friend of mine told me about a conversation he had with his son. I don't remember too many details but his lad wasn't sure about his next step. The upshot was this simple question. His lad chose outdoors, despite an education system that had spent the last 14 years channelling him to work indoors. So how did it work out for him10 years later? Well, he won a million quid on the lottery (honest!). If you ask me, he won the real lottery when he chose to work outside.