Name: Rest
ISBN: 9780465074877

Alex Pang

One of Silicon Valley’s sharpest strategists shows that success doesn’t demand longer, harder hours, it demands that you work less

Why You Get More Done When You Work Less

Rest

Fred Rivett

Rest is a skill, and one that can be learned and practiced and nurtured.

Scientists have found that the happiness and relaxation we feel on vacation peaks after about a week, while the psychological benefits of a vacation last up to two months. The ideal vacation schedule is to take a week off every three months.

Meanwhile, in Obliquity John Kay observes that companies that flourished when they focused on great work and customer service often stumble when new executive teams institute strategies focused on improving financial performance. Companies that put profits first, Kay argues, are more likely to lose money than those that treat profit as a by-product of doing great work.

One of his contemporaries said that Watson had time for girls and tennis because he was a genius. But Woolf and Kay made me think: Maybe he was a genius because he made time for girls and tennis.

Just as an astronomer exposes a photographic plate for hours to "reveal stars so far away that even the most powerful telescopes fail to reveal them to the naked eye, so too are "time and concentration" needed to "allow the intellect to perceive a ray of light in the darkness of the most complex problem.”

This state of sustained concentration "refines judgment, enriches analytical powers, spurs constructive imagination, And—by focusing all light of reason on the darkness of a problem—allows unforeseen and subtle relationships to be discovered. Reaching it, he warns, requires "severe abstention and renunciation." One must avoid distractions like "malicious gossip" and newspapers, the "intellectual dispersion and waste of time required by social activity, and anything else that loosens "the creative tension of the mind" and "that quality of tone that nerve cells acquire when adapted to a particular subject." But this does not mnean that the investigator should try to concentrate all the time. Diversions that are “light and promote the association of new ideas” are to be taken freely. Long walks, art, and music offer good material for a break. And if, after a period of sustained concentration, a breakthrough does not come, "yet we feel success is just around the corner, try resting for a while." A few weeks of relaxation and quiet in the countryside brings calmness and clarity to the mind" and provides intellectual refreshment. Even getting there can provide creative stimulus: "the powerful vibration of the locomotive and the spiritual solitude of the railway car," he savs, will often "suggest ideas that are ultimately confirmed in the laboratory.”

When Raichle started looking at scans of people's brains when they weren't reading text but resting between tasks and staring at a blank screen, he was surprised to see that the subjects' brains didn't just quiet down; instead, a second, different set of regions switched on. When people turned their attention outward again, that region switched off, and other regions lit up. This resting-state activity wasn't just scattered or random, either; it was as coordinated as when people were reading.

According to one model of creative thinking, new ideas are created in a two-step process: first, the brain generates lots of ideas, and second, it evaluates them. Ideas that are both novel and original are passed on from the unconscious to the conscious mind.

Studies of paradoxical functional facilitation, in which people who've had brain injuries, strokes, or degenerative brain diseases affecting the left temporoparietal region—the part of the brain where the evaluative center resides—suddenly develop new creative abilities or an obsession with painting or playing music, also provide evidence for the two-stage model of creative cognition. In one especially compelling case, a forty-six-year-old Israeli accountant developed an interest in drawing days after having a stroke. He had never studied art, but he was sketching and then painting while in the hospital; at home a month later, he was turning out several works a day. As his recovery proceeded and his old cognitive abilities returned, though, his artistic abilities receded; after eight months, he was back to normal, and he could no longer paint.

First, the great students didn't just practice more than the average, they practiced more deliberately. During deliberate practice, Ericsson explained, you're "engaging with full concentration in a special activity to improve one's performance." You're not just doing reps, lobbing balls, or playing scales. Deliberate practice is focused, structured, and offers clear goals and feedback; it requires paying attention to what you're doing and observing how you can improve.

There's little that's inherently or immediately pleasurable in deliberate practice, so you need a strong sense that these long hours will pay off, and that you're not just improving your career prospects but also crafting a professional and personal identity. You don't just do it for the fat stacks. You do it because it reinforces your sense of who you are and who you will become.

"Deliberate practice," they observed, "is an effortful activity that can be sustained only for a limited time each day." Practice too little and you never become world-class. Practice too much, though, and you increase the odds of being struck down by injury, draining yourself mentally, or burning out. To succeed, students must "avoid exhaustion" and "limit practice to an amount from which they can completely recover on a daily or weekly basis."

"My morning is all about stilling the outside world so my mind can soar." Like many writers, he keeps this routine because creativity "is not something you can summon on command," he says. "The best you can do is set an attractive trap and wait. My mornings are the trap.”

Many writers believe they are more creative in the mornings, agreeing with Mario Vargas Llosa that "the early hours of the day... are the most creative hours." It turns out that scientists have been able to validate their intuition. Especially for night owls like me, they find, working in the early mornings can boost your creativity.

Trollope kept to his routine by keeping a diary with a daily writing schedule for each book and tracking how many words he had written each day, “so that if at any time I have slipped into idleness for a day or two, the record of that idleness has been there, staring me in the face, and demanding of me increased labour."

The reason it's necessary to start writing, and to keep writ- ing, is that creativity doesn't drive the work; the work drives creativity. A routine creates a landing place for the muse.

When the researchers dug into the numbers, they noticed something else: employees who exhibited more creativity had jobs with a higher proportion of routine, but they also had more control over their work. Their daily work consisted of tasks they could learn to do automatically, but because they could choose how to organize their work, they became more reflective about how things worked, better able to notice how they might be improved, and more likely to feel able to make suggestions. Routinization of work, the researchers concluded, does not have to diminish creativity; if it's accompanied by freedom, routine can enhance creativity.

Roald Dahl was always careful to leave something unfinished so that he would "never come back to a blank page" in the morning, he said.

Many writers start their careers believing that the best work is done in bursts of inspiration only to discover that they do higher-quality work and get more done if they pace themselves.

Whether they’ve looked at memories of creative people or measured the effects of breaks on performance on divergence tests, they've found that breaks provide a fairly consistent boost to creative thinking. For a long time, the why has been elusive. The two competing positions were nicely summarized by Henri Poincaré. "It might be said that the conscious work has been more fruitful because it has been interrupted and the rest has given back to the mind its force and freshness," he wrote. "But it is more probable that this rest has been filled out with unconscious work.”

This book paired with Jon Acuff's Soundtracks were a great resource for me. Good to consider that life's success is also built on rest. 

BC Hark

Interesting read with lots of anecdotes about the benefits of rest (both active and passive), thought provoking about the optimal amount of work (it’s less than you’d expect) and what to do when not working.

Luca Conti

Seppur non abbia imparato molto di più di ciò che non sapessi già, è bene﻿ confrontarsi con altri punti di vista e soprattutto fonti differenziate su un tema che mi sta a cuore: vivere consapevolmente, in equilibrio.

Ogni capitolo﻿ del libro di Alex Soojung-Kim Pang è dedicato a un'azione legata al riposo: routine del mattino﻿, dormire, camminare, fare un sonnellino, fermarsi, giocare, fare esercizio fisico e altro. Ogni capitolo﻿ cita personaggi noti del passato - Charles Darwin è quello che mi è rimasto più impresso - quali esempi di come queste pratiche contribuiscano al benessere psico-fisico, con un vantaggio anche sul piano del lavoro﻿ e della produttività. Darwin lavorava circa 4 ore al giorno, divise tra mattina﻿ e pomeriggio﻿, intervallando lunghe passeggiate, un buon pranzo e un sonnellino..

continua su http://www.lucaconti.it/2017/02/16/ri...

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

In our 24-7 global economy, rest feels like a luxury at best and a weakness at worst. We see work and rest as competitors - but what if they're actually partners in a productive, balanced life? Blending rigorous scientific research with examples of writers, painters and thinkers - from Darwin to Stephen King - Silicon Valley futurist and business consultant Alex Soojung-Kim Pang exposes how we've underestimated the power of rest for our success. Though it's as natural as breathing, it's also a skill we can all learn to boost our creativity and productivity. Full of tips for upping our downtime, from sleep to hobbies to vacation, Rest is a new roadmap for finding renewed energy and inspiration, and getting more done.

Jesper Bylund

While the central ideas are important, and some of the practical tips worthwhile, I find the book a typical american self-help books. Basically and endless tirade of repetitive examples to sell you on a core idea.
Read a abbreviated version, or get a cliffs notes, or on Blinkist. Don't read the book.

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Harry Butcher

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"In our 24-7 global economy, rest feels like a luxury at best and a weakness at worst. We see work and rest as competitors - but what if they're actually partners in a productive, balanced life? Blending rigorous scientific research with examples of writers, painters and thinkers - from Darwin to Stephen King - Silicon Valley futurist and business consultant Alex Soojung-Kim Pang exposes how we've underestimated the power of rest for our success. Though it's as natural as breathing, it's also a skill we can all learn to boost our creativity and productivity. Full of tips for upping our downtime, from sleep to hobbies to vacation, Rest is a new roadmap for finding renewed energy and inspiration, and getting more done."

Rest Why You Get More Done When You Work Less