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it's Adam Grant. I host a podcast called Rethinking about the science of what makes us tick. This season, we're talking to Richard Branson about risk taking. We don't
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live forever and we might as well throw ourselves wholeheartedly into our lives. And if one ended up going earlier, at least we'd live very, very full lives. Find and follow
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Rethinking with Adam Grant, wherever you're listening. And now, Adam Wibrew takes the TED stage. So
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I lead teams of data scientists and we solve business problems using difficult analytics. And when I start working with someone new, I ask them how I will know if they're struggling. I don't mean struggling with a business problem or with a difficult analytics, they don't struggle with that. I mean struggling with their mental health. And to make them feel comfortable to tell me, because I want them to tell me, I tell them how they will know if I'm struggling. So I might be just unrealistically calm, or they get any kind of message from me at all before 9 in the morning. Because I'm not a morning person. Message before 9, very bad sign. Now I do this because I have suffered from anxiety and depression and it was horrible. And if there was a magic button I could press that would rid the world of those two things, I'd press it straight away. But if that button only worked for me, if all it meant is that I wouldn't have got depressed, I'd leave it alone. And that's because of some things that happened in the weeks and months as I was recovering from depression, but also things that happened years later when I started talking about it at work and it improved my relationships with colleagues. So let's get back in time. It's 2012. It's a Friday morning in May and and the sun is out in London. And I'm walking to work along the banks of the Thames, and all around there are British flags flying, and there's this quiet excitement in the city. And that's because the Olympics were coming there in two months' time. And that morning, like every other morning at the time, I'd woken up about three hours earlier than normal, thinking and worrying about work. And I'd got up, just retching with anxiety, and gone to the bathroom and been sick. And I felt a bit better after that, made my way to work.
