Rest - Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
Why You Get More Done When You Work Less
[bq] “Rest is not work’s adversary. Rest is work’s partner. They complement and complete each other.”
Respect for overwork is, paradoxically, intellectually lazy.
Now, many high-performers wear stress and overwork as a badge of honor. But in previous times high-performers found lots of time for vacations, naps and absece from work, especially as they got more mature and more successful
[bq] “Restorative daytime naps, insight-generating long walks, vigorous exercise, and lengthy actions aren’t unproductive distractions, they help creative people do their work.”
Work and Rest are partners!
Subconscious mind processes a lot during downtime and allows for creative insights
Rest is active!
Physical activity can be very restful.
Even seemingly passive activities like naps still require an active mind, consolidating memories, reviewing problems, etc.
Rest is a skill!
Deliberate rest very different from just zoning out in front of TV.
Like breathing, everyone can do it, but if mastered it becomes a powerful tool.
Deliberate rest stimulates and sustains creativity.
Strict boundaries between work and rest are important.
The Problem of Rest
[q] “Only in recent history has ‘working hard’ signaled pride rather than shame”
- Nassim Taleb
Clear conceptual separation of work and rest a “historical accident” that started in industrial revolution. Labour unions fought over shorter hours, paid vacations, etc. which contributed to a sense that rest and work were opposites.
Problem is also that productivity very hard to measure for creative workers. “Busyness” is a much easier/clearer metric.
Workers literally end up “performing” busyness. Even worse in open office setting and with constant connectivity.
Historically, working hours declined with increased productivity, but in the 1970s it reversed for knowledge workers.
Amount of informal work also increasing. E.g. modern parenting more “invasive” and time intensive.
Modern industry/bureaucracy changed the way we think about intellectual activity, knowledge as something that is manufactured/produced. In ancient times knowledge work and leisure were closely linked, “intellectus” (as opposed to “ratio”) as “an attitude of non-activity, inward calm”. Leisure was seen as basis of culture.
Open office also based on assumption that ideas come from brainstorms and chance encounters, not deep thinking/contemplation.
Resting brain almost as active as concentrated brain, consolidating memories and searching for solutions to problems. But if occupied with distractions like Slack/Facebook, this is hindered.
The Science of Rest
[q] “The greatest geniuses sometimes accomplish more when they work less.”
- Leonardo da Vinci
During rest, brain switches to highly active Default Mode Network (DMN). Found that DMN activity highly correlated with intelligence, empathy, emotional judgement, and even overall sanity.
Implies that rest is critical to health, development, and productivity.
Up to half of waking time is spent “mind-wandering”. Just like DMN, this is also involved in important processes.
Often wander to past or future, understanding past events from different perspective, and making plans.
Also wander to recent problems, but view them in a looser way than when focused on them. “Secret of creativity” (Michael Corballis)
Mind-wandering between tasks boosts creativity.
Mind-wandering taps into same regions as DMN and connects regions that are not usually active together during focused cognition.
Brains of creative people have stronger connections in DMN, allowing their brains to keep working when they rest.
Also have suppressed areas in DMN of creative people. Left temporoparietal region responsible for subconscious idea evaluation seems to be less active, suppressing fewer ideas.
These insights explain “aha” moments. First put in lots of work, then hit a wall and give up, but unconscious mind keeps working on it and suddenly presents a solution.
Graham Wallace’s 4 stages
Preparation: Hard work, thinking, examining problem from every angle
Incubation: Let subconscious work, feel like answer is getting closer, don’t force it or it might disappear
Illumination: Insight appears
Verification: Again use a conscious effort to use/verify the inspiration
Incubation and Illumination, while subconscious, should be treated as skills.
Four Hours
Paradox of most creative figures: They organize their lives around work, but not their days
Have huge creative success with modest “working” hours.
Darwin only worked three 90 minute periods a day and otherwise spent time on long walks, naps, or lost in thought.
John Lubbock also had days full of down time, and was a public advocate of it.
Scientists are particularly good examples for high productivity with lots of rest.
Their output is also relatively easy to quantify in terms of publications, books, awards, etc.
Poincare extremely prolific and universal. Spent his active work hours 10am-noon and 5-7pm, enough to wrap his head around a problem and then let his subconscious take over.
G. H. Hardy also believed that 4 hours conscious work is the maximum for a mathematician, and filling the other time with “busywork” is extremely counterproductive.
Zelst and Kerr study measured number of papers vs. hours spent per week (in lab).
Result: M-shape with the first, highest (!) peak at 10-20 hours per week, and a second much smaller peak at 50 hours. In fact, 50 hours are as productive as 5. 60+ hours least productive of all.
Also studied work time at home, which peaked at 3-3.5 hours. Much of creative work at home or off campus.
Many novelists have similar “4 hours but no more” experience.
Ericsson et al study: Key to improvement is deliberate (!) practice, with clear feedback and observing how one can improve. This insight lead to “10,000 hour rule” for greatness. And that rule is very welcome in a world that treats business, stress and overwork as virtues rather than vices. But original study also showed that deliberate practice must be limited per day, again 4 hours seemed like ideal tool number.
Even more interesting (and more ignored since), study also showed difference in rest of top performers. Slept one hour more than average performers. Their leisure time was also more structured/planned. “Deliberate practice and deliberate rest”.
World class performance “comes after 10,000 hours deliberate practice, 12,500 hours deliberate rest, and 30,000 hours of sleep.”
Morning Routine
[q] “[Creativity] is not something you can summon on command. The best you can do is set an attractive trap and wait. My mornings are the trap.”
- Scott Adams
Common features of successful creatives:
Start early
Follow a well thought-out routine
The world doesn’t give us time for rest, we have to take it!
Many creatives (even night owls) seem to get particular creative boosts from working in the morning
Study by Wieth and Zacks: Creative problems are easier at low (!) of circadian rhythm, when inhibition is suppressed. Also easier to be distracted at these times, but this might actually not be a problem, but a way to even greater creativity by making new associations. [Just need to make sure that it’s “good” distraction and mind wandering, not slack/email]
Another key factor: Establishing a routine, working at the same time every day, and blocking that time entirely for deep work.
Paraphrasing Raymond Chandler: You don’t have to work during those hours, but you can’t do anything else.
Waiting for inspiration to strike is misguided. Need to sit down and start, even if uninspired. The inspiration will come. Work drives creativity, not the other way round.
Often thought of as opposites, but routine can enhance creativity.
Routine also needs to be used around rest, to protect it like a fortification from encroaching work.
[q] “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working”
- Pablo Picasso
Walk
[q] “I have walked myself into my best thoughts”
- Søren Kirkegaard
Tony Schwartz: Many executives sho are smart about maintaining their energy take afternoon walks.
Many insights came on walks, e.g.:
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle
Poincare’s insights on Fuchsian functions
Hamilton’s insight on quaternions
Rubik’s design of the Rubik’s cube
While the actual insights came on walks, still followed the overall pattern of preparation, incubation, and illumination
Common complaint: How can something as ubiquitous as walking help creativity.
But studies (e.g. Oppezzo and Schwartz) showed that people are much better at creative problems when walking, but worse at problems that require focus and attention to detail. Same study also showed that effects from walking persist even after walk is over.
Follow up study compared walking outside to inside in empty room facing a wall. Surprisingly no difference, i.e. the effect comes from walking itself, not the environment.
Nap
Napping can be seen as a skill, if mastered allowing creative boosts, physical restoration, and probing boundaries between conscious and unconscious mind
Many creatives and leaders use naps either to break up their deep work or to “incubate” after getting the 4 hours done in the morning.
Effectively divides a working day into two, allowing a “two-shift day”.
Obvious benefit:
Increase alertness
Decrease fatigue
Mednick study: Nap of >1 hour greatly improves memory. Crucial is to get one full REM cycle. Regular naps have compound effects.
Other studies showed naps of as little as 5 min having positive effects on memory (although less)
Other Mednick study: If timed right, a 60-90 minute nap can have same effect on cognitive function as 8 hour sleep (although without the physical restoration effects)
Hypnagogic state can be an even more powerful (and difficult) tool, e.g. Dali’s “slumber with a key”. Much of incubation and illumination can happen in dreams, but often locked away if not accessed properly.
Stop
A counterintuitive but effective form of deliberate rest is to stop working at just the right point (e.g. Hemingway)
Stop when you know what comes next. Help “start hot” the next day, instead of starting with a completely blank page.
Also provides fuel for subconscious and DMN. Breaks are more than just a chance for recovery, they are active parts in the creative process.
Study by Sydney Centre for the Mind: Task of Creativity with total duration 4 minutes, 3 different test groups
Continuous 4 minutes
2 min, break with similar task, 2 min
2 min, break with different task, 2 min
In second 2 min, Group 3 dramatically outperformed groups 1 and 2 (who performed similar).
Same study showed that “creative people are better able to utilize nonconscious processes” and “the activation of such processes is greatest when a future task is anticipated”.
Leaving work unfinished fuels this process
[bq] “Today’s workplace respects overwork, even though it’s counterproductive, and treats four-hour days as ‘contemptibly slack’, even though they produce superior results”
Stopping at the right time requires self-awareness but can give huge payoffs.
Sleep
During sleep, body shifts into maintenance mode, storing energy, fixing/repairing damaged cells, growing, cleaning brain from toxins, process experiences and subconsciously work on problems.
Most repair happens during deep slow-wave sleep, memory consolidation during REM sleep.
Myelin production also mainly in REM sleep.
Maiken Nedergaard: Brain is either “awake and aware, or asleep and cleaning up”
Cerebrospinal fluid barely moves during waking time, but becomes active in sleep due to shrinking glia (the maintenance workers of the brain) and clears toxins and waste products.
Sleep deprivation doesn’t only affect reflexes, decision making and ability to learn, but also has physical effects such as weekend immune system.
Bad sleep in middl ages can be a factor in developing dementia later in life.
Naps can’t replace the restorative/repair effects of proper sleep, but can to some extent provide the cognitive benefits
Procedural memories (hard to describe skills like playing an instrument) consolidated during REM sleep, declarative memories (like memorizing a poem) during slow-wave sleep.
[q] “Dreaming can be understood as an intensified version of waking mind-wandering”
- Kieran Fox
Humans sleep shorter, but “more intense” (larger fraction of REM and slow-wave sleep) than other primates. Might be one factor in our success.
Sustaining Creativity
[q] “The best rest for doing one thing is doing another thing […]. It is the vigorous use of idle time that will broaden your education, make you a more efficient specialist, a happier man, a more useful citizen. It will help you to understand the rest of the world and will make you more resourceful.”
- Wilder Penfield, “The Use of Idleness”
Recovery
[q] “The supreme quality of great men is the power of resting. Anxiety, restlessness, fretting are marks of weakness.”
- J. R. Seeley
Detachment, the ability to put work completely out of your mind and attend to other things, is tremendously important for physical/mental recovery.
Eisenhower during the war found a secret retreat where he played gold and bridge and any talk about “work” was forbidden.
Workers who skip vacations actually cost their companies money. Errors, lost productivity, higher turnover, shorter careers, less initiative,…
Common misconception: Have reservoir of mental energy that gets drained by work and filled by long, leisurely vacations
Delaying vacation can be a lost opportunity for creative breakthrough
Survey: One in five startup founders got idea for startup on a vacation.
Sonnentag: Four major factors for recovery:
Relaxation
Control
Mastery experience
Mental detachment
Commonly only think of relaxation but ignore the others.
Control means being able to decide how to spend time, energy and attention.
Mastery experiences are challenging and mentally absorbing, but paradoxically these flow states are crucial for recovery and life satisfaction.
Etzion, Eden, Lapidot: Workers who had to do annual service in Israeli military came back as rested as if they had been on vacation, thanks to complete detachment from work.
Detachment as important for evening and weekends, as for long vacations.
Mastery experiences help detachment since they push everything else out of the mind. Many scientists avid musicians.
Crucial: Need to escape work related distractions/interruptions.
Also from Etzien et al study: Effects don’t last long. Long vacation boost only lasts 3-4 weeks. Hence shorter more regular vacations are more effective
The most creative/productive workers are those who can unplug completely from work.
Recovery/rest is active, not passive!
Exercise
Eiduson, Bernstein, Garnier study: Most successful scientists have strong “urge to experiment athletically as well as scientifically”
Exercise “induces profound structural brain plasticity” and directly improves brain just like muscles and cardiovascular system.
Boosts production of neurotrophins, proteins encouraging formation/growth of neurons.
Endurance exercise releases hormone irisin, which in turn triggers production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor BDNF
Running seems particularly good for neurogenesis.
Direct effects of exercise on productivity/creativity stronger the more regular they are
Also indirect benefits: Better cardiovascular system implies better blood flow/energy transport to the brain
Also both releases stress and build tolerance against future stress.
[bq] “When we think of work and rest as opposites, or treat exercise as something that would be good to do when we finally have time, we risk becoming […] low-achievers. […] We should recognize that they do world-class work because they are physically active”
Deep Play
[q] “The cultivation of a hobby and new forms of interest is therefore a policy of first importance to a public man”
- Winston Churchill
Deep Play: Activities that are fun and rewarding in their own right, but take on a much larger meaning and personal significance.
Activities require at least one of four features to be deep play
Mentally absorbing
New context in which to apply existing skills
Clear rules and rewards
Provide a connection to the past
Some popular activities among scientists, politicians and other creative leaders: Painting, climbing, sailing,…
Deep play, sustained over long periods, can also turn into a new career or produce unexpected masterpieces. [ex] Wilder Penfield became a writer when retiring from science at age 70.
Deep play demands exclusive focus. Even if the skills/challenges are similar to ones work skills/challenges it provides a very clear boundary.
Root-Bernstein study: Elite scientists shared the belief that “time relaxing or engaging in their hobbies [is] valuable to their scientific efficiency”. Low achievers assumed they would do better work by doing more work and their careers suffered for it.
Sabbaticals
Designer Stefan Sagmeister takes one year sabbatical every 7 years. Shows that it’s both feasible and profitable to take time off to explore deep ideas.
Feran Adria’s El Bulli closed 6 months every year.
[bq] “To keep up, it’s good sometimes to slow down”
Even busy executives can manage; Bill Gates did one “think week” per year.
Sabbaticals improve employee satisfaction, sense of clarity, and retention
[q] Historian Josiah Bunting III about successful generals with little previous war experience: They took advantage of “leisure to think, to ponder, to write” instead of a “culture of what we may call ‘visible busyness’”
More traveling doesn’t help, but extended exposure to other places and cultures increases creativity.
Adam Galinsky study: Bicultural Silicon Valley engineers get promoted faster and have better reputations
The most fruitful sabbaticals, like rest, are active.
Conclusion: The Restful Life
[q] “It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and occupation, which give happiness.”
- Thomas Jefferson
[bq] “Taking rest seriously requires recognizing its importance, claiming our right to rest, and carving out and defending space for rest in our lives.”
[bq] “Busyness is not a means to accomplishment, but an obstacle to it”
[q] “Eagerness, breathlessness, and anxiety are not signs of strength: they are signs of weakness and of bad coordination.”
- William James
Eiduson study: Most successful scientists “saw work and leisure as connected and supportive”, not competing for time.
Top performers more likely to call themselves lazy than normal people.
[q] “To lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer’s day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the blue sky is by no means a waste of time.”
- John Lubbock
[bq] “When we treat rest as work’s equal partner, recognize it as a playground for the creative mind and 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. […] Rest is not idleness!!"