Embracing seasonality - we're not built for 100% all year

Spring is very much in the air, the apple trees on our balcony have just started to burst into leaf, and the pot plants which looked very sad and quite dead are starting to come back to life.

Since moving to Sweden 18 months ago, one of the biggest shifts I’ve noticed, compared to life in the UK, is how deeply seasonal life feels here.

It’s not just the weather. It’s the pace. The rhythm of everything changes.

Winter is slower, Spring builds energy again. Summer is an actual, genuine pause.

It’s not just that the seasons are different it’s that people acknowledge them. They work with the shift, rather than pushing through it or ignoring it altogether.

And it’s not subtle, everyone feels it.

Even the Swedish central bank takes July off.

That’s felt like a marked contrast to how things were in the UK, or in my work with colleagues in North America. There’s often an underlying, unspoken expectation that we should all be operating at full capacity, all the time, regardless of the time of year, as if 365 days of 100% productivity is just the baseline.

But maybe that expectation is part of the problem. Maybe the pressure to be ‘always on’ is one of the reasons so many people feel stretched, even when everyone’s working hard.

There’s no time to reflect. No time to learn. No time to celebrate. Just the next thing, and the next.

I saw a comment from Dr Carrie Goucher recently:

"We live a 'battery hen' life rather than a seasonal life now and we are trying to up our productivity to 100%, all year round - something our bodies and minds were never intended for."

I don't know if it's because the seasonality is so much more marked here with the amount of daylight and the weather changing so much between summer and winter. It’s hard not to notice your energy shifting with the light. But it’s been a useful reminder that life and work don’t have to move at a constant speed and that slower rhythms can actually support better thinking, creativity and collaboration.

This pronounced ebb and flow across the year has been an enjoyable discovery. It feels healthier and more human.

Working at a more natural pace

This is not a new idea. In his book, Slow Productivity, Cal Newport (the author of Deep Work) talks about this. He says we need to rethink what achievement looks like, and how we get there.

One of his core principles in this new book is "work at a natural pace".

That idea hit home. It reminded me of one of the original Agile principles too, "work at a sustainable pace". A simple and perhaps 'obvious' idea, but one that quickly gets lost in cultures that treat speed and busy-ness as prerequisites.

It doesn't have to be this way

Of course, some times of year are busier than others. That’s true in most sectors, and it's definitely true in the cultural world. Season launches, production deadlines, funding applications, these are natural pinch points that are (somewhat) imposed on us.

We are familiar with the rhythm of intense bursts, of festival peaks, touring cycles, opening nights, fundraising events, yet we rarely talk about how we recover from them. The pace of delivery is front and centre, but recovery is left to individuals to figure out, quietly, if at all.

In many organisations, people are just expected to push through it. Work late. Skip breaks. Eat lunch at your desk. Pick up the slack. There seems to be this unspoken assumption that stress and overload are part of the deal. Like it’s baked into the job.

Because 'we love what we do'.

Alternative rhythms

It can start to feel inevitable, like exhaustion is part of the deal.

But other cultures and systems show that different approaches are possible.

The Centre for Public Impact’s Human Learning Systems framework builds reflection and experimentation into public service delivery. Volkswagen switched off out-of-hours emails over a decade ago, and now right to disconnect laws are spreading across France, Argentina, Belgium, and beyond. Enspiral, a New Zealand-based co-op, openly shares resources on thoughtful pacing, while Atlassian has introduced company-wide 'recharge days' alongside a four-day work week.

Iceland’s government trialled shorter working weeks and found that services didn’t suffer, if anything, productivity improved. Meanwhile, initiatives like The Hum offer tools and resources for more balanced, self-organising teams, and The Long Now Foundation encourages thinking on a completely different scale: the next 10,000 years.

Here in Sweden, even in high-pressure creative roles - we’ve got friends who work as directors, conductors and designers in theatre and opera - people describe working in a way that leaves space.

What does this look like? No weekend rehearsals. Time for ideas to develop properly. Space for rest and reflection.

It’s not perfect, of course, no system is. But it’s a reminder that pace is shaped by choices. The way we work is shaped by the choices we make every day, and just because something’s familiar doesn’t mean it’s the only way.

We can’t all change our working lives overnight. But maybe we can begin to notice the rhythms we’re in and ask whether they’re really working for us. Maybe we can push back a little on the idea that faster is always better. Maybe we can start to reclaim a bit more space and learn to value rest as part of the work, not a reward after it.

Not for the sake of being slower for its own sake. But because it might help us work in a way that feels more human.

Because if we never pause to notice or think about the pace we're working at, we risk treating ourselves like machines, or worse, like battery hens.

And we’re not.

A few questions

Below are a few questions that I've found really helpful to think about this stuff personally, followed by some questions or reflections that I have found helpful (or wish I had considered more) when managing and leading teams and organisations.

• When during the day do I feel most focused, creative or energised, and when do I tend to feel depleted?
• What kinds of work give me energy or satisfaction, and which types consistently leave me drained?
  • I've found the Table Group's Working Genius model really helpful for thinking about this question - it describes six types of work: asking big-picture questions (Wonder), figuring out what ideas are worth pursuing (Discernment), coming up with new ideas (Invention), getting others excited and moving (Galvanizing), helping and supporting what's already in motion (Enablement), and finishing tasks and making sure things get done properly (Tenacity). Friends I've shared this model with have also found it really valuable.
• What parts of my work feel rushed or reactive? Where would a slower, more deliberate approach actually lead to better outcomes?
• Are there habits or expectations I’ve taken on that create unnecessary urgency?
• How do I make space for learning, rest, and reflection, and what might help me do that more consistently?
• What would it look like to take the right amount of time for something, rather than the fastest, and how do I define that?

Questions for teams and organisations

• What pace are we currently working at, and who sets it?
• Where is speed helping us, and where is it creating unnecessary pressure?
• Do our planning cycles build in breathing space, or do we tend to fill every gap?
• What gets celebrated: speed or thoughtfulness? Doing more or doing better?
• Are we making time to reflect on what kinds of work energises our people, and which types consistently cause overload or fatigue?
• Are there opportunities to rebalance workloads based on energy, motivation and strengths, not just job descriptions?

Questions for managers and leaders

• Where are we unintentionally creating urgency (deadlines, communications, meetings)?
• What’s the cost of constantly being at full stretch in terms of quality, morale, or curiosity?
• Could we design in short pauses between delivery cycles (however those are defined where you work), meetings, or project phases to support learning and aid recovery?
• Are there parts of our process we could simplify or slow down without affecting outcomes or even improving them?
• What types of work in our organisation require space for reflection and development e.g. strategy, creativity, relationship-building, and are we protecting that space?
• Are we treating all work as equal in pace, or do we need to adjust rhythms based on the nature of the task?
• How do we set expectations around responsiveness to ensure people have time to rest and do their best work?

I’m still figuring all this out myself, but noticing the seasons both in nature and in work has been a useful reminder that maybe pushing through exhaustion isn’t a great long-term strategy.

At the very least, I’m trying to pause before automatically saying ‘yes’ to things, build in some actual recovery time after big projects or busy periods, and stop treating rest as something I have to ‘earn.’

It’s a work in progress...