The Power Of Rest

What I read: How to rest well by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang. Published December 1, 2021.

Resting is not something that comes to me easily. Whether it’s my driven father’s upbringing or the social messaging I’ve absorbed that heralds busyness as superior to idleness, finding the time and motivation to set aside productivity and embrace rest is often elusive.

My last post, Doing Nothing, addresses much the same topic as the article referenced here. I started that post this way.

One of the few mindsets passed on to me by my father that I wish didn’t stick with me so steadfastly is the belief that our time spent on Earth should always be productive. I was raised to believe busyness is a badge of honor. If the activity generates money or might in the future, it ranks even higher in the echelon of productive busyness.

Today I’m still plagued by the strong, persistent urge to always be productive. Sitting by a pool I always feel the need to be reading a book. Having dinner with friends I check my email and social media at least once (yes, this is rude) rather than fully focus on the social interaction. My to do lists have historically always gone unfinished while I’m quite aware to do lists themselves can be problematic when seeking a happier life.

Consciously I know this is not good for me. I’ve read the research. I know multi-tasking is a myth even as I attempt to do it. I know that gnawing feeling to always be doing something. Not enjoying idle downtime isn’t good. To my credit, at least at this phase of my life, I’ve learned enough to realize that continuing a pervasive, ongoing productivity mindset is not the best way to proceed going forward.

So, I’m aware of the problem. I know hyper productivity isn’t a recipe for happiness. I know all work and no play is a horrible way to live. As I’ve come to some of these realizations, I have also become aware that our worship of money (and the work that generates it) has skewed our society in often unintended negative ways.

There is nothing inherently noble about work. Nothing. I know that’s heresy to say in some circles but were life’s financial costs not a concern to us there would be no pressing need to engage in work specifically for an income. We could instead pursue only those things that bring us joy or benefit humankind. How we view work is a social construct we’ve accepted. Capitalism has indeed done some good for the world. It’s also done some rather horrible things to us too.

Honoring rest and leisure as not only equal to but more important than work is a big paradigm shift in my thinking. Perhaps some wisdom does come with age. Perhaps I’ve been lucky enough to read and hear enough alternative perspectives to realize the upside of refocusing on happiness versus money acquisition beyond what is necessary for the basics of life.

The writer invokes my favorite philosopher, Aristotle, to point out that rest and leisure are when we embark on the most meaningful and growth-oriented activities.

To Aristotle, work was drudgery and necessity; only in leisure could we cultivate our mental and moral abilities, and become better people.

We should foster the collective mindset that, when possible, rest, leisure, and the pursuit of passion projects are ultimately more important that grinding away at a job that for many of us is mostly about paying the bills.

I know we’re a long way from this cultural shift. We have all heard about work/life balance which I’ve always believed was often another way to squeeze more work out of people under the guise of caring about a worker’s welfare. Maybe that’s a cynical perspective, but I’ve seen little evidence that there is any true work/life balance until the worker is fully empowered to configure their work life to fit their unique schedules, interests, and life situations.

Anyway, it’s rather obvious that contemporary Western-style capitalism continues to worship at the altar of work hours while relegating rest and leisure to second-class status.

Today, though, it’s become commonplace to think of work and rest as opposites. Work is active and valuable: it’s where we prove our worth and create a legacy. Popular books such as What You Do Is Who You Are (2019) by the venture capitalist Ben Horowitz carry the implication that being and doing are synonymous. Busyness is a badge of honour, even a sign of moral superiority. Rest, in contrast, is often treated as if it’s passive and pointless. Indeed, I’ve noticed many people hardly think of rest as its own thing. It’s just a negative space defined by the absence of work.

Of course, we all need to work. It’s not reasonable to suggest that we have the ability to not work at all. We have to pay bills. We have to save for our future. We need to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. For now, capitalism is the system in which we must function and even if that system is modified and morphs over time it’s not likely to change dramatically in the short term. However, properly positioning work and rest as at least equally important seems prudent and practical.

So I believe we should not regard work and rest as opposites, but partners. Each supports and justifies the other. Each provides things that every person needs. You won’t fully flourish unless you master both work and rest.

Last week I took a short trip to Los Angeles. For the first time I could recall I did not take my work laptop with me. I wanted to consciously disconnect from work in a manner that has historically been difficult for me. It was a success. I went five days without checking a single work email or doing a single work-related task. It was glorious. Reflecting on those five days has allowed me to better understand my need for rest and leisure.

When I enjoy downtime, I usually don’t need or want to plan it. Going with the flow seems to be what I like. When I’m at home, I don’t usually set aside specific leisure activities at certain times. When I travel, I’m not the kind of person who plans a tight itinerary of things to do or places to see. I walk around. I pick one thing to do and let the rest of what makes up my time emanate from that.

It’s fine for this time [rest] to be unstructured and unplanned; the only bad vacation is the one you don’t take.

Setting aside time for rest is a skill like any other that can be learned and nurtured. We have a lot of social programming to overcome to honor our need for rest, but we can learn to do so. Especially if you are the highly driven worker type, it might take a while and repeated attempts to crack the code on how to best make time for rest in your life.

The article suggests a couple of steps to assist our experimentation with setting aside times of rest.

The first step is to schedule work as blocks of uninterrupted, focused time of 90-120 minutes followed by 20-30 minutes of rest. (Check out The Pomodoro Technique for another popular variation of the work/rest approach.)

The second step is to schedule your work’s most important tasks during peak energy periods. The writer refers to these are your “circadian highs”. I took The Power of When Quiz linked to in the article to determine my chronotype. It determined I was of the “bear” variety which is evidently the most common. I found it modestly useful but doubt I’ll apply its finding too stringently.

Based on my experience to date, my peak work periods fluctuate based on many factors and I don’t take any determination as to my type as written in stone. It’s an interesting data point more than anything. The writer alludes to individual variation in work focus styles.

When the word “rest” is mentioned, the mental image of someone lounging around entirely idle immediately comes to mind, but what constitutes meaningful rest might be anything but passive. Some of the best rest results from actively pursuing activities of highly engaged passion.

If you are used to keeping busy and hate the idea of slowing down, it might be comforting to realise that some of the most restorative rest is active, not just passive. Rest isn’t stopping. Churchill [Winston Churchill] continues: ‘It is no use saying … “I will lie down and think of nothing”.’ Rather, he said: ‘It is only when new cells are called into activity, when new stars become the lords of the ascendant, that relief, repose, refreshment are afforded.’

This was comforting to me because I don’t do idle well. When I want to rest and relax, I typically do something I consider fun. Reading. Non-work writing. Going to a museum. These are the kinds of activities I find most rejuvenating. Idleness without some brain cells engaged often leaves me a bit panicky to be honest.

Many of the world’s most accomplished and productive people engage is restful activities in which they are mentally fully engaged.

Sleeping a full night is something I’m grateful I can do, but napping has proven elusive all my life. I try. I lie down. My brain races. I breathe and meditate. Doesn’t help. Sleeping mid-day just hasn’t worked for me thus far. So, when I hear how powerful naps are for others it makes me want to figure out how I can benefit from that superpower.

In his 1993 study of violinists at the Berlin conservatory (that inspired Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours rule), the Swedish psychologist Anders Ericsson reported that all the students rated sleep as highly relevant to improving their performance and, moreover, that the ‘best group’ (superstars in waiting, as he called them) and the better students (very good, but not superstars) napped more in the afternoons than the third, merely ‘good’ group. The top two groups practised harder, and they appeared to nap more often as a way to recover. They planned their days more carefully and took naps in the afternoon. A 20-minute nap provides an energy boost comparable with a cup of strong coffee (without the later crash), and helps us retain new information better. And even if you can’t nap at work, improving your sleep at home, by setting a regular bedtime, and having a pre-bedtime ritual that settles mind and nerves, will pay off. Long-term studies show that good sleep provides lifetime benefits in terms of better physical health, greater emotional stability, lower levels of dementia and healthier ageing.

As for the advice given to get up early to leverage the quiet and energy of the early hours, that’s a hard no for me. I’ve tried doing work in the early morning hours. Those experiments have failed miserably. I work better mid-day and sometimes even late at night despite the data the writer presents to the contrary. Your mileage may vary, but I will stick to skewing my workday a bit later than advised in this article.

That said, I have noticed as I age that my waking and working hours have shifted slightly. I wake up and go to bed a bit earlier than I did years ago. Over time we change biologically, and our life situations change. I agree with the writer that by experimenting with and practicing conscious adjustment of our work/rest balance we are better positioned to craft the best ways to work during every phase of life.

While my morning routine is now pretty solidly established, I continue to experiment with it. At some point, it might well lose its effectiveness: our chronotypes (ie early bird vs night owl) shift as we age, the kind of work we do changes, our minds become too familiar with routines. But even if that happens, the fact that I’ve learned how to build a new practice means I have at least a decent chance of building another. We don’t just develop these routines so they’ll help us now. We develop them so we can develop more, and perhaps better ones, in the future.

The overriding message of the article is that most of us should rest more than we do, and that rest is not a nice to have. It’s a necessity if we’re to work and function optimally.

Pardon me while I go try to take a nap. Wish me luck.

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