250. The Post Office scandal, beating imposter syndrome and the UK's work crisis. PLUS! Does time really speed up as we get older?

0:01Coming up in This Week in Work.

0:03Leanne:A major new government report tackles one of the UK's biggest workforce challenges. Why half a million more people have left work due to long-term sickness since 2019. So can the government really keep Britain working? And what does the plan actually look like? Also this week, the Post Office Horizon scandal. How did one of Britain's most trusted institutions ruin hundreds of innocent lives and keep doing it for 20 years? A new MSC study breaks down what went wrong and what every leader needs to learn from it. And in truth or lie, does time really go faster as you get older? Childhood seemed to stretch on forever, but now entire months disappear in a heartbeat.

0:44Leanne:So is time actually speeding up or is something else happening? Plus, in this week's workplace surgery, a business owner is dealing with imposter syndrome despite Claire's success. Do other founders feel this too? This is Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture. Brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne, I'm a Chartered Occupational Psychologist. And my name is Al, I'm a business owner. And together we help organisations build amazing workplace cultures. So let's get right into it after a quick word from our sponsors.

1:15Does your experience with AI sound a little like this? You prompt for 20 minutes, the The output is polished, is confident, and is completely flipping useless. Well, that's what happens when AI doesn't know anything about your business.

1:27Leanne:But you know what does know something about your business? HubSpot. HubSpot's AI. It works with your actual customer data. Every interaction, every signal your team has generated over time. So instead of prompting and hoping, you ask once and ship it. Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.

1:51Hello, hello, welcome back. It's Leanne's favourite time of the week.

1:55Leanne:Well, do you know what? It's not specifically my favourite time of the week this week. Right, why? Because I celebrated my birthday on Saturday. Yes, you did. The present, Sal, I must say, you absolutely excelled yourself. I still can't get over the size of that ring. Yeah, as I said to you, there's still a couple of them still waiting. It's Amazon, you can't get it. You can't get it over here, you see. You better not be buying my turn to ring on Amazon, tell you that right now. okay so rather more uncomfortably i think we will it's lol because we're recording this before my birthday don't say that no okay yeah loved loved it thank you for the lovely presents al okay all right time for al's uncomfortable time of the week and leanne's favorite time of the week it's time for the news roundup yes it is cue that jingle al what have you seen my love major new report is out this week and it's tackling one of the biggest questions facing the uk right now let's to be honest, it's faced the UK for some time.

2:49Leanne:Why is it that so many people want to work but can't? A big thank you to James Hardy on the old LinkedIn for sending me this report and drawing my attention to it. I will leave a link to James's LinkedIn profile in the show notes. So this is called the Keep Britain Working Review. It's led by Sir Charlie Mayfield and commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions. The aim is to understand what's driving the sharp rise in people leaving the workforce due to long-term sickness, stress or disability and crucially how to help them stay in or return to work. So according to the review economic inactivity, that's what we call it, has risen by around half a million people since 2019 reversing 25 years of steady decline.

3:31Leanne:So right now around 8.7 million working adults report a health condition that limits their ability to work and that number is still climbing. The report calls this one of the most urgent workforce challenges of our generation because when people leave work for health reasons the odds of returning do drop very quickly. Those who are out for less than a year are almost five times more likely to return than someone who's been out for longer and the system as it stands apparently isn't helping enough. Employers often lack the structure or expertise to manage long-term sickness. The NHS and job centres work in silos don't they just and benefits health and employment policies rarely align um al thoughts on this it's a really thorny subject so what we're saying here is there is these 8.7 million people these are people who are working age and they want to work or the stats just say that they're working age but off on sick yeah the stats are saying they are not currently well enough to return to work and how are we how are we measuring they're well enough to come to work well this is also where it's it's really hard to collect data on anything like this because it's going to typically be linked to to benefits and benefit status um or indeed not there could be plenty of people that don't qualify for benefits because they have a large amount of savings that they're currently living off but they're deemed as should being able to be economically active and for healthy reasons aren't so i mean there's going to be a large number of people who well there's gonna be a number of people there for whom it's genuine uh they genuinely can't work the vast majority of people uh i think that i'm not gonna i'm trying very hard not to go daily mail on you uh i i suspect there are there is a percentage of people who don't want to work and therefore this is the way and i think that it's unfair because again i'm referencing the red the red tops um which is the um the tabloids in the uk and they tend to go very like oh well all these people we're working and we're earning money and we're paying their salary and they just sat at home watching Jeremy Kyle that's been cancelled now isn't it they're watching something like some daytime tv and it's not fair so there's we need to be careful that we do that we separate out that slight outrage which I think all of us will slightly have it it's unfair we're all paying into the system and some people are gaming it with the actual people who actually do want to come back to work Lee you worked on a contract that helped long-term unemployed people come back get back to work how many of those people were off work because of sick a large percentage and obviously it's i'm gonna ask you a question i don't know whether you're able to answer this of that what percentage would you say were genuinely unable to work due to illness that's a very broad statement right uh yes i think to address a few of your things yes i did work in welfare to work for a long time i worked on programs that help people with multiple barriers including physical and mental health conditions getting to work in terms of do people want to work Yes, the vast majority do.

6:29Leanne:Don't get me wrong. There are people that game the system. There absolutely are professional benefit claimants out there. They're such a minority. The vast, vast majority of people want to work. But the problem is, is that when you have a health condition that has kept you out of the workplace for a significant period of time, a year or more, it isn't just about being physically or mentally well enough to return to work. There's a psychological challenges that are going to come with that return to work. it could be around anxiety around what if my health declines when I do that I've lost a lot of confidence financially I'm now in a position where I'm I'm I'm not well off by any means but I'm I'm getting by whereas if I take a job and then I drop out of work and I lose my benefits for two months while I'm sorting out all the paperwork which does happen a lot that's going to put me in a worse position there are so many reasons why somebody who is able to return to work doesn't quite feel ready there's so many reasons that is the case and it really is it really is the a problem that the uk government under every color that we've had i worked in welfare to work under labor coalition and conservative and they were all they were all problematic in different ways but the the program that worked the most was the esf family support program which was i think it started with the coalition and then it's the conservatives in collaboration with the EU.

7:55Leanne:And what it basically looked at was, let's not talk about work. These 8.7 million people, let's assume half of them have got so many barriers to work. Let's not even chat about getting a job right now. Let's look at what your barriers are. Do you still have existing physical and mental health conditions that will need ongoing management? Do they need ongoing treatment? Financially, where does that stand? Are you actually going to be worse off going back into work I have worked with people and had to tell them not to get a job because financially they'll be worse off because of their health benefits they're getting child tax credits everything else I think that is reducing now because of because of the way benefits have gone but there are occasions where you are financially worse off to go to work there could be things around parental responsibilities there could be things around confidence around social isolation so many things and we would focus on addressing those barriers for the first six to twelve months they're on program voluntary program as well they don't have to be there so these are the people that want to get back into work when they felt ready when we felt they were ready and addressed sufficiently the barriers that they had then we talk about work and we talk about work in a way that's very much in terms of what can you handle what is going to give you purpose what's going to align with your skills what's going to challenge you but not overstretch you during this transition period and that might take us another six to twelve months typically people on program somewhere between nine months and 12 months before they got a job which is unheard of in welfare to work you usually got kind of two three months maximum before they'll get moved on to another provider and it's this attention to to the detail the holistic detail of somebody's life and all the elements to it they were successful in returning somebody to work sustainably and then continue to work with them and continue to work with them for another year once they're in work that requires a a lot of funding it requires a lot of patience it requires a lot of goodwill from government in terms of how these outcomes are measured it requires a lot and they want a quick fix they want a silver bullet and that's why this i think james pointed out to me in one of his posts that this is the third report of its kind in 15 years calling out the same problem that isn't making any systemic change because the government whoever they are aren't willing to invest in the quality of interventions that are needed and it isn't just about health it's also a cultural problem we do have an issue with worklessness being ingrained in the culture of some of our communities in the UK people being shamed for getting a job who do you think you are so it's a massive issue and it's not one that's easily solved it's one that's going to take a massive amount of investment and the report did go on to talk about that in terms of recommendations so see what you think of these are the first one said a new stay in work and return to work offer is needed so a coordinated national program involving employers the nhs and job centers the goal is early action catching health problems before they become crises keeping people connected to their jobs and providing rehabilitation and coaching through recovery second the expansion of work coaches so fans of work coaches are already being recruited into job centers i think i think i've actually talked about what i think about this on the show before i believe you've written an article for a major publication i did actually yeah yahoo finance yeah yeah and so pilots have begun placing some coaches as well directly inside NHS services and their roles to bridge the gap between health and employment.

11:16Leanne:And third, shared accountability. So the review argues that government and employers both need to skin the game through clear incentives, co-funded occupational health support and better data on what works. Oh, there's so much to this, Al. Do you have any further thoughts? I, the problem is that I look at this from the point of view, business is pretty tough at the moment. and so if you're saying to an employer, oh, well, employers should be doing more. Yeah, if you're BT or probably a bad example, but if you're Sky or big company, yes, you should be doing more. But the majority is like 92 % of people are employed by small to medium-sized enterprises in the UK.

11:52So you're talking about 92 % of people are employed by someone where there's just one person at the top whose job it is to balance everything from making money to profitability to growing the business and then going, oh, by the way, you need to also invest in this as well. It seems it's a big ask. In an ideal world, of course you'd invest in it. But I think it's just a tough ask. The one thing I would say, and I'm not being sycophantic to you, but the one thing I would say is that your idea of creating engaged work, well, not your idea, it's everyone's idea, but you keep banging on about creating amazing workplace cultures, that would stop a lot of people from actually wanting to quit, I think.

12:30I wonder, I bet there's no data on it, but I wonder if there's a correlation between poor workplaces, places where people don't want to be, and people going off on sick.

12:40Leanne:Oh, there absolutely is data on it. Oh, is there? Yeah, there's a whole, yeah, there's a mountain of data on the lengths between absenteeism and toxic workplace cultures, disengagement. Meg Lloyd started all this off, what, 2009, talking about that. And again, do you know what I think it is? It's at this point, we don't need to do more, we just need to do better. The HSC has their management standards over there. is meant to be a legal requirement that every organisation with two or more employees runs this stress test essentially on the workplace environment every 12 months. It's a legal requirement that isn't enforced, isn't monitored and barely anybody does.

13:17Leanne:Enforce it. See what people are saying. And also within that law, if you've got five or more employees, you're meant to make that information public. People are going to start to take it more seriously. That affects their brand, their ability to attract talent, their ability to attract customers when ethical practices are becoming much more much more um norm so i think it's it's do don't do more do better and in terms of welfare to work we need to invest a lot of money because this is a significant challenge this person is going through a one-hour meeting once a week with a job coach in a job center ain't gonna do it employ me maybe i should go back to welfare to work out maybe you should run it leanne for bright minister oh no thank you um anyway i'll um i'll leave all the links to that in the show notes is a very long and detailed report um i think the executive summary itself is like 12 pages long so enjoy that um and thanks again to james for bringing it to my attention and what have you seen this week hardy is it james hardy james hardy so go and find james hardy on linkedin and go give him a follow okay so i was i got a message from my brother-in-law hello jamie I'll be honest.

14:31Jamie's at our wedding. There's a big story about him. And take that. It's kind of funny. I'll be honest. 98 % of the stuff Jamie sends me is not for public consumption. And I'm pretty sure that I'd be going to prison for just even opening his messages. But one of them did. He did send me, which made me chuckle. His nicknames for lazy co-workers. So the first one is cordless because he only works for two hours. The second one I really like is that they nicknamed someone E.T. because they always want to go home. Then there's someone else called Kit Kat because they're always taking a break. Then we've got Sensor Light because they only work if someone walks by.

15:11And then there was another one, Lantern, someone who's carried at work all the time. And another one, which is just Shetland Tony because he's a small guy called Tony. quite funny now these make us laugh and there is a Rock FM which is in New Zealand and by the way if you're listening Rock FM people I'm saying New Zealand not Australian because everyone calls them Australian there's a New Zealand radio station called Rock FM in Auckland and they have quite a few series of these and a lot of them are not fit for our broadcast standards but they're very very funny my question is I mean these make me laugh but then I'm like huh can you imagine actually being in a workplace where you call someone wheelbarrow because they only work when they're pushed?

15:51I don't know. I would be fine with that because I think it would be funny. But at the same time, is it like a form of bullying? Is it perhaps just allowing someone to be a bit lazy because they've already got the nickname wheelbarrow? So they'll go, yeah, fine. Everyone thinks I'm lazy. So I'm just lazy. What would a psychologist say if they walked into a workplace like this and these things were going on?

16:13Leanne:So this is why people like me and your doy all get accused of like not allowing fun at work. Because it is funny. It is funny. Kit Kat always wants a break. That is funny. It is funny. The question comes down to, does the person you call in Kit Kat find it funny? Right. And I doubt very much that they are because it's taking a very negative view on their approach to work and how they operate in the world. And I'm sorry, Jamie, if you're listening. I doubt you are though. He is firmly a Gen X. It's a different generation where kind of the hustle was rewarded. And yeah, burnout was a badge of honour and sexual harassment was very much alive in the workplace.

16:51Leanne:Don't get me wrong, it still is, but probably more overt than it was now. So it's a very Gen X boomer joke and kind of like, oh, you're not allowed to have fun anymore. It's like it was never funny to the person that you were taking the mick out of in a way that impacted their self-esteem, their sense of self, their ability to work effectively in an environment. So with that in mind, it's probably not cool, but obviously depends. and it comes down to to how how somebody is is taking this you know as zenia says it's about it's not necessarily about intention want to be light-hearted and funny it's about the impact that actually has it could be that it's fine it could be that it's not but i think typically if you're calling somebody a name that undermines a key part of their identity i don't think that typically goes down that well do you know what i'm gonna go back to something jimmy carr said once i've seen jimmy carr a couple of times we've seen him a couple of times live haven't we in manchester um and um and he said he said on one of his shows said i never make a joke about someone where i have to look left or right and see if the see if that person or that type of person is hanging around so basically he'll always make jokes to people to their faces and i think that this is sort of sort of almost like if people are saying this behind your back i can see no that's wrong however let's talk about people who work hard all day in relatively dangerous jobs let's talk about where it does skew towards more male this is i get so much when my best mate sends me a message giving me telling me describing me as something horrendous or giving me some insult i'm like oh i love you too man so i totally understand what you're saying it's a really hard balance but i would campaign a little bit saying let's not ban them all together because in some situations i believe they would they would improve engagement yeah it depends doesn't it depends but i mean there has actually been some research into that in terms of friendships and how being brutally honest can actually bring you closer together because it trusts and kind of builds a lot more knowing that that person's always going to be honest with you so there is absolutely benefits to this kind of directness and and humor to it but i think it comes down to how how involved is everybody in the joke how are they taking it on and i think really if it's not going down well and you're continuing to hammer it then that's not that's not cool but yeah i'm sure there's environments where it's where it's okay i think it's got to come down to is everyone finding it funny or is it just you fair enough fair enough so lee what else you've seen this week well i have seen some really cool research on the post office if you're not if you're not from the uk or perhaps you've not heard from the uk there is a fabulous um bbc iplayer series um i'm not saying use a ppm to access it if you're not in the uk but i believe that option is available to you i called mr bates against the post office is it yeah something like that mr bates um and not masturbates mr bates um and it is a fabulous fabulous story um no it's a terrible story but it's a fabulous series depicting essentially what happened and essentially are you going to explain what happened yes well i'll stop then so yeah if you haven't heard of it uh the late 1990s the post office that's basically the people that delivers our mail in the uk um introduced a new it accounting system called horizon built by fujitsu that detail is important very quickly the sub postmasters these are the small business owners that run local branches of the post office like a franchise like a franchise yeah they began spotting unexplained shortfalls in their accounts and the post office basically said that losses were their fault it wasn't the system and then over the next two decades more than 700 people were prosecuted hundreds lost their livelihoods and tragically some even took their own lives and it is now recognized as one of the worst miscarriages of justice in modern history i think it was only was it this week the last 10 days or so that mr bates has actually finally got his compensation payout from the post office so it is an extraordinary story that is horrifying in terms of its impact.

20:57Leanne:And it does raise a question, how can an institution like this, one of the most trusted institutions, manage to ruin so many innocent lives and keep doing it for 20 years before anyone stops it? From an organisational psychology perspective, it's mind-blowing how an organisation can create the conditions for this, this level of injustice. and it's thankfully one that Charlotte, do you know what? I didn't ask Charlotte how to pronounce her surname. Charlotte Gladding? Charlotte Glading? I'm not sure. I'm sorry, Charlotte. I will spell it out in the show notes. But Charlotte, an MSc student in Organisation Psychology and Business at Leeds University, or has.

21:38Leanne:She's now graduated. Congratulations. Charlotte chose to study the post office scandal for her dissertation. And again, I said it a couple of weeks ago. It's why I'm really a big fan of featuring the work of MSc students. It's these fresh ideas. It's the outrage, let's be honest, of these things happening and wanting an answer to how could this possibly happen. And that was a central question to Charlotte's research in terms of the factors that led to this happening. Al, are you with me so far? I am, yes. Okay. So in terms of Charlotte's research, she used two key frameworks, if you're interested, Al.

22:13Leanne:She used the first one, sorry, the hexagon framework, which views organisations basically is systems made up of six interconnected parts. So you've got people, culture, goals, processes, infrastructure, and technology. And they're all related in a way that means that when one part fails, the other parts will start to feel the pressure. Right. The second theory she used is called learning from failure. So this draws on lots of classic work that basically suggests that the healthiest organizations are obsessed with learning from errors, not hiding from them. This kind of the root of psychological safety.

22:51Leanne:So Charlotte used these frameworks to analyse inquiry documents from the post office scandal, witness statements, internal reports, and she conducted expert interviews with people in psychology leadership and governance who had studied or experienced the case. Her findings were brutal, but absolutely fair. So why did this happen? How could this possibly be allowed to happen? First, mismanagement. So sub postmasters were ignored. They were undertrained. They were left without support. Many tried to report technical faults, but their warnings were dismissed. There was no assistant for listening, no mental health support, no sense of safety.

23:29Leanne:Charlotte called it organisational neglect. And I agree. Second, a breakdown in collaboration. So this is the post office in Fujitsu. So the company behind the Horizon platform, they failed to work together. So Fujitsu even charged the post office to access crucial system data, effectively blocking investigations that could have cleared sub-postmasters' names. Third, an over-reliance on technology. So leadership placed blind faith in Horizon's accuracy. Reports of faults were seen as personal failings, not evidence. And this overconfidence created what Charlotte calls a failure culture. So basically an environment where errors weren't data, they were defiance.

24:11Leanne:and finally a failure to design healthy social systems so Charlotte's analysis showed but the real problem wasn't just software it was how people managed the system so communication was poor culture was defensive leadership was morally detached as one of the interview interviewees put it it wasn't the technology that failed it was the people running it so Charlotte's conclusion was pretty damning the horizon scandal wasn't a technology failure it was a human systems failure the product of fear, denial, and a total absence of psychological safety. Al thoughts? Yeah, my second to last job was working for a pub for a company called Punch Taverns, and they used a Fujitsu system.

24:53And I noticed money, I was a manager of the business, I noticed money going missing. So first of all, it was only a couple hundred quid, I put it back. Then about 2 ,000 were missing over a period of like two weeks. So I went to my area manager and said, look, I really need some help with this. He said, put it back or you're getting fired. and then more money went missing and he fired me. So I don't know. I've got no proof, but it was a Fujitsu system and it was exactly the same thing. And that...

25:19Leanne:Around the same time. Around the same time. That was about 1999. And I remember that just... I was maybe 22, 23 or something. And that destroyed me. It really did. It took me ages to get my confidence back. So, yes, I applaud you, Charlotte, for bringing this back into the fore. unfortunately I've got no proof about myself and I'm like that was 25 years ago so I've forgotten all about it. I think it was though. I think it was. Your dad is convinced as well. We've talked about it with your dad in terms and he's very analytical and very measured and it just, there's so many similarities that line up.

25:55Leanne:I honestly think you were a victim of the same. There was a couple more managers who got sacked for firing, sacked for theft around the same time as well. So yeah, an awesome MSC dissertation there. Thank you so much Charlotte. If you like that, check out a couple of weeks ago we talked about mary lou's research um that looked at volunteers and motivation if you have just finished your msc dissertation or maybe you graduated a couple years ago and you think it's something we would be interested in send it in get in touch get on linkedin uh look in the show notes or emails there i'll leave all the links fabulous okay well it is time for a small break and then after that we've got the truth or lie segment where we're going to talk about whether time goes faster as you get older and of course our world famous week we work by surgery where I put your question to the answer in a second.

26:40Welcome back. This is our relatively new segment. I'm really, really enjoying this. Basically, this is where we take popular beliefs and we hold them up to the evidence and the person holding it is going to be Leanne, obviously. So today we're looking at something almost everyone feels at some point. Time seems to speed up as we get older. Oh my good God. Yes.

27:00Leanne:Oh my God. As I'm hurtling towards was my 50th birthday um days and weeks seem to be minutes and and hours uh so when you're a kid you imagine remember the school holidays they were like they were years long now well i don't know what's happened to 2025 is it 25 or 26 i don't even know i know you can tell me it's 2013 i believe you so the question we've got for you today leanne is very straightforward does time really accelerate or is something else happening before we dive into this one i just want to give a quicker overview of time perception i actually did this for my undergrad dissertation yeah i was on time the perception of time if there was a podcast back then you could have sent your undergrad researching i know i know i think it's on the shelf behind you actually we'll talk about next week um so basically in terms of time perception we don't have an internal watch internal clock and actually that's what my research looked into um so it's not that we measure time essentially we interpret it so different areas of our brain are responsible for how they create a sense of duration.

28:00Leanne:So there's lots of different aspects that are going to feed into this. It's not that we have an internal clock that speeds up as we get older, just as a little context. So in terms of where the idea came from, we can actually trace it back to the late 19th century. A philosopher called William James, he suggested that childhood feels slower because it's filled with novelty, while adulthood becomes more repetitive and therefore feels quicker. It was an observation, It wasn't a theory test at the time, but it is one that modern research still examines in quite a lot of detail. So in terms of the case for why we feel the time going quicker as we get older, one of the most robust findings comes from two psychologists who studied 1800 people aged 16 to 80.

28:47Leanne:What do we like about this, Al? Large sample, good spread of ages. Participants were asked how fast the last week, month, year and decade had felt. The short intervals showed up as no different. So the week, the month were rated as quick by almost everyone. But the decade was completely different. Older adults were much more likely to say the last 10 years had gone quickly. So the key finding was that older adults compress long periods of time more than younger adults. And the authors explain that this is because of retrospective memory effect. So basically long periods depend on how many meaningful events you can recall.

29:29Leanne:Older adults retrieved fewer distinct markers, which shortens the remembered duration. So basically what James said in the 1800s, that the lack of novelty means that time goes quicker. There was then a follow-up study with 800 participants that test this further. And this time people reported what the past decade actually contained. So pushing this theory more. So they'd ask people, did they have major life events, any challenges, changes, or long periods of routines? And again, they found that short intervals still felt quick, regardless of any age, but the decade only felt quick when there had been less novelty.

30:11Leanne:So novelty is a big, big important factor here. A very recent study, 2025, this year from Cambridge, 577 adults watched the same eight minute scene from a Hitchcock movie whilst undergoing fMRI scanning. So scanning of the brain. Researchers tracked what is called neural state transitions, which basically reveal how the brain breaks the experience into discrete moments. What they found is that younger adults showed rapid transitions. They're basically putting in more markers to create more small segments of how they see this time duration. Whereas older adults had fewer transitions, so they would hold each neural stage for longer.

30:59Leanne:And why that's important is that in terms of old adults, if they segment experiences into fewer events, then it means fewer markers, which means that the memory sees that period is feeling shorter. okay fewer event markers make it feel shorter which is why time passes quicker got it right okay love it so so far it seems like a combination of how we're experiencing our life in terms of how quickly or slowly time passes and how our brains are working and how they're processing and how that changes as we do get older that is why time might feel that it's moving quicker as we get older but the idea in that neat little box could be misleading and of course there are always nuances um so in terms of older adults they don't consistently experience a present more quickly as such so in researchers use short interval timing tasks so basically they'll ask somebody to judge was this second or minute so they'll do it in different ways so they'll play a note and say how long was that or they'll get someone to press a button for eight seconds when we're doing that age differences almost disappear right and in some studies older adults even overestimated durations because this short interval timing really relies on more attentional mechanisms that do remain relatively stable with age and obviously in terms of a healthy healthy brain so what this basically is showing us out is that this acceleration of time isn't happening in the moment it's happening in hindsight that it's not that life is physically moving faster it's that our brain has recorded um or if it has recorded fewer distinct events then that period feels condensed when you look back on it feels like it's gone really quickly and covid demonstrated this perfectly because we all experience so much monotony that it just distorted our sense of time entirely regardless of age.

33:02Leanne:So yeah again it's that lack of novelty that seems to speed up time as we get older. We have a lot more new and fresh experiences in our younger years. So in terms of is it true or is it lie? It is true that older adults remember long stretches of life as shorter because these event boundaries blur, novelty decreases, neural processing slows, fewer memories are formed, and the result is basically a compressed sense of the past. But it's not entirely true in that time itself accelerates when we get older. It's not simply that time is moving more quickly. Our moment-to-moment time perception remains relatively consistent over our entire lifespan.

33:50Leanne:so really if you want time to go a bit slower as you get older um need to look to do new things inject some novelty into your life so yeah it's a really really interesting interesting area um yeah if you want some some details on the research get in touch um and i'll send it through to you lovely also get in touch if you have an idea for the truth lies and work very much like to hear your thoughts okay it's on to my favorite time of the week which is our world famous weekly workplace surgery where i put your questions to leanne um and also not only leanne these days we've got a couple of experts uh we've got a couple of people from the curve group who talk about transactional hr and hr law and then we've got harry kramer from smart clinic who talks about occupational health these are two areas a lot of people seem to think oh occupational psychologist she's gonna know yes we get so many questions about it yeah and so and so we thought no let's bring in some actual experts in that so question number one how does one deal with imposter syndrome as a business owner.

34:47I added the one just to make it sound a bit fancier. I started my business in 2021 after running someone else's company for a decade. It's gone better than I could have imagined. We're growing fast. The team is thriving. Looks like a success. But some days I wake up and I feel like I don't deserve any of it. Like somehow I've got away with something. It knocks my confidence. I can't always shake it. Do other business owners feel this too? And if you have been through it, how do you get past it? Ooh, Lee, what are your thoughts?