Seeing as we all spend so many hours working, and most of us spend less time outdoors than is good for us, I had the idea of trying to work outside for an hour a day. Being a writer, I mostly just need my laptop or a piece of paper. The internet is, if I’m honest, at least as much of a distraction as a blessing. And my addiction to tea breaks could easily be mitigated with a flask.

I don’t like wasting time when I’m supposed to be working, so I limited myself to working in places close to my shed. I was curious to see whether this experiment would be just a bit of fun for a lazy dilettante (“writer”), or if it might also be something that you (smart person with an actual proper job) might benefit from too.

I decided to go out each day and find a bench to work on for an hour. Two really hard things for me are:

• Not getting distracted
• Feeling inspired

Would connecting with nature and getting some fresh air, Vitamin D and birdsong be at all compatible with productive work?

Here’s what I found.

The internet is such an integral part of my day that I often felt annoyed at being able to look things up / fire off quick messages / faff around wasting my life checking BBC Sport for the 18th time this morning.

And yet, the enforced constraint of knowing that for the next hour the only useful thing that I could do was to write, plan or edit meant that I became both efficient and creatively freed-up. I liked it.

My eager-to-be-distracted personality enjoyed listening to birds, squinting at the sun and taking off my woolly hat / putting it back on again.

But those distractions felt more gentle and less jarring than my usual shed-based antics of checking emails and putting the kettle on. I stayed more connected to my work and got plenty done.

It’s a sprint, not a marathon.

Rather than the writer’s agony of thinking, ‘I have an entire day ahead of me – this is torture’, I was able to tackle my hour on the bench more like a sprint. ‘Right, I’m only here for an hour, let’s try to bosh out a thousand words.’

The Pomodoro technique of working through short sprints and brief rests definitely helps me get more done.

Occasionally a quizzical dog walker would ask me what I was doing. It’s clearly not normal to see people working outside on their laptops where I live.

But everyone I explained myself to said something like, ‘ooh, that’s a really nice idea.’

I think there’s something inherently appealing about getting outside more, if your work permits it, but it’s not something we are accustomed to considering.

Sunshine makes everything in my life feel better. Sure, that’s impacted a lot by the changing seasons, but I can also help myself in the darker months by building in outdoor habits like this.

Even just moving a couple of metres to sit on a log outside my shed felt like a novelty, a treat, and gave me a refreshing jolt of spring air.

Climbing a tree is a fun addition to any hour of work.

Anyone you do a Zoom call with while you’re working outside will be jealous, even if you have to make do with scratchy phone signal. Maybe this is a good starting point to changing habits and conventions – when you next need to do a Zoom call, try and do it outside?

Purely in the name of finishing off this post with a smile, I headed to the pub late one afternoon for a Guinness and a brainstorm.

Whilst I think it would be an exceptionally bad idea for me to make a habit of this, I did very much enjoy it!

On top of that, the relaxed mood and the change of scene was really helpful in turning up new ideas for projects I can write about. A fun but also effective hour in the sunshine. (Am I allowed to claim back that Guinness and salt and vinegar crisps as a working tax claim, I wonder?!)

• If you’ve enjoyed my experiment, why don’t you give it a try yourself for a few days?