Rest is not trivial, nor is it a thing to enjoy on the side if you happen to have the time. Rather, it is something to be taken seriously and be bulldozed for if necessary.
These are my notes from Alex Soojung-Kim Pang's book "Rest", which was the right book at the right time – just as I was getting tired.
The supreme quality of great men is the power of resting. Anxiety, restlessness, fretting are marks of weakness.
– J. R. Seeley
Throughout history, many of the greatest minds regardless of their field, found ample time for vacations, daily naps, long walks, and extended weekends. Even as they may have been borderline workaholic during their youth – as they matured, they learned to slow down, lean back and develop routines that made rest become an important part of their lives. It wasn't easy, as they first had to become sensitive and observe carefully what worked best for them.
While great many geniuses burned out early or died young, surprisingly many lived far into an old age and remained active until the very end. But in order to achieve this, they had to observe, experiment and learn it all for themselves.
World goes brr
Life was straightforward in the past. Technologies that were supposed to make us more flexible ended up chaining us down harder. It feels as if our perpetually uncertain economy and competing modern-day demands force us to accept this madness or be replaced. It's almost as if turning off this 24-hour always-on world would be unthinkable by now!
Only in recent history has "working hard" signalled pride rather than shame
– Nassim Taleb
Just like Bertie Charles of Forbes wrote: "How we spend our non-working hours determines very largely how capably or incapably we spend our working hours."
Rest is not something the world just gives us, it was never a gift. It was never just something you do when everything else is finished. If you want rest, you have to take it and resist the lure of busyness. You have to make time for it and take it seriously in a world that is hell bent on stealing it from you.
Rest is a skill
Basically everyone knows how to do it, but with a little work and understanding, you can learn to do it better. At its best, rest can be profoundly refreshing and restoring, but because it is different for different people, you'll have to find out what works best for you.
Don't think about rest as a life-hack or a tool to increase your value in the marketplace. Don't consider it a mindless or passive activity.
Deliberate rest is not only physically and psychologically restorative, but also mentally productive. It feels counter-intuitive to think of it as a skill you'd have to learn in order to do it well.
There is no blueprint or pattern to follow, nor a single system, or a way of working. Our brains, workplace rhythms and demands are too varied – our creativity too multifaceted, and lives too different to provide a simple recommendation. In spite of this, the principle of deliberate rest can be adapted to any job or a workplace if you realise the following:
- Work and rest are two sides of the same coin
- Rest is a partner to your best work
- You can get more from rest when you become better at it, and let it take a more prominent place in your life
The challenge is not to avoid working, but to find a better balance. This increases your chances of living the life you want and become better at your life's work.
Actions
Doing only one thing at a time, ample physical movement, regular naps, sleep and detachment, as well as knowing when to stop best can make all the difference.
It is wonderful how much work can be got through in a day, if we go by the rule – map out our time, divide it off, and take up one thing regularly after another. To drift through our work, or to rush through it in a helter-skelter fashion, ends in a comparatively little being done. "One thing at a time" will always perform a better day's work than doing two or three things at a time. By following this rule one person will do more in a day than another does in a week.
– Thomas Mitchell
Walking helps your thoughts flow: “I have walked myself into my best thoughts,” declared the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. In Silicon Valley, walking meetings have become commonplace.
It is quite nice to have an office and even nicer to have a warm, well-furnished home. But my mind often comes to a standstill after some hours indoors. So I take a walk. Once outside, my mind immediately begins to move freely and instinctively over my subject. Ideas come rushing to my mind, without being called. Soon enough, the best answer emerges from the jumble. I realise what I can do, what I should do, and what I must abandon.
– Eugene Wigner
What about taking a nap? Naps were commonplace in the past, but are now largely out of favour. We think of napping being reserved for children – not for adults, and much less so for leaders and serious minds. Needless to say, napping is by now a proven tool to focus, recover and get new ideas.
But when to stop so you don't get stuck?
The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day, you will never be stuck. Always stop while you are going good and don’t think about it or worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start.
– Ernest Hemingway
How about sleep? I think below quote summarizes it, and Walker's book Why We Sleep supports this thought nicely.
If sleep doesn’t serve some vital function, it is the biggest mistake evolution ever made.
– Allan Rechtschaffen
Ability to put work out of your mind and attend to other things before going to sleep turns out to be incredibly important for recovery, particularly in high-stress unpredictable jobs requiring a lot of emotional control.
Rest stimulates and sustains
The creative process never stops and your brain's creative work is never done. It hums even as you sleep – connecting ideas, solving problems, examining answers and looking for novelty. This continues even as you exercise or spend time with others.
Some of us are lucky enough to have jobs that deserve our very best, letting us bring our lessons of deliberate rest along with us. Ideally, our work gives our lives meaning and brings us pleasure when it goes well – or justifies our fight and sacrifice when it does not. However, the quality of our lives is largely determined by how well we are able to do it.
Today's workplace, however, tends to weaken our spirit and move us backward.
It is simply wrong to assume that most panicked and frantic workers are the most serious ones. Just like William James wrote: "eagerness, breathlessness, and anxiety are not signs of strength: they are signs of weakness and bad coordination."
It is the unemotional, reserved, calm, detached warrior who wins, not the hothead seeking vengeance and not the ambitious seeker of fortune.
– Sun Tzu
Rest makes your output sustainable giving you revitalised strength to continue bringing your best. If you don't rest and cannot turn off, you will burn out and have little to show for it. On the other hand, if you become a bit more sensitive and listen to yourself, you'll get more done for longer in your life.
It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquillity and occupation, which give happiness.
– Thomas Jefferson
John Lubbock on the difference between idleness and leisure: “Leisure is one of the grandest blessings, idleness one of the greatest curses,” he said, and “one is the source of happiness, the other of misery.” Rest, he claimed, gets often mistaken for idleness, but it is not. “To lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer’s day,” Lubbock stated, “listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the blue sky, is by no means a waste of time.”
When we treat rest as work’s partner, recognize it as a playground for the creative mind and a springboard for new ideas, and see it as an activity that we can practice and improve, we elevate rest into something that can help calm our days, organize our lives, give us more time, and help us achieve more while working less.
Lubbock was right.