While doing some research for my upcoming book, I came across an interesting title that I hadn’t read yet called Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang. This concept is right up my alley. I’ve always been a strong believer that you are far more productive (and happy!) when you work a regular workweek and keep your nights and weekends free. Anyone who works a ton of hours, in my opinion, is inefficient at what they do. Rarely do workaholics actually provide more value for the hours they put in. Those were my observations from nearly 20 years of watching productive and unproductive people work. I wondered whether there were any scientific studies to back up those observations? It turns out, there most definitely are.
Rest vs. Work
My summary of the book is simple. Most of us get 3-4 hours of good, deep, productive work done in a day and then we need to rest or do something less intense. In his book, Pang discusses writers, scientists, engineers, artists, musicians, and a host of other professions. He walks us through a day in the life of several people — some famous (did you know Churchill took a 1-2 hour nap each day whether bombs were falling above him or not?), some not. All of them were highly successful and they all have something in common. They’d work for 3-4 hours in the morning and then stop for the day. Or, they’d work for 1-2 hours in the morning, eat lunch, nap or walk, and then work another couple of hours in the afternoon. This deliberate, concentrated but short segment of work is what led them to sustainable success.
What Really Makes you Successful?
So, could you just show up for work in the morning, go to four hours of meetings, and then go home and expect to get rewarded by your employer? Not exactly. Pang shows us that there are a number of habits that tend to make people successful, habits that support a balance of work and rest. In fact, one of Pang’s key points in the book is that work and rest compliment each other. You can’t do great work without having great rest periods and vice versa.
One of Pang’s key points in the book is that work and rest compliment each other. You can’t do great work without having great rest periods and vice versa.
Healthy Habits
There are a number of habits that can help you balance out work and rest:
- Deliberate Practice – Those 3-4 hours per day of work need to be deeply concentrative and very intentional. They can’t be meetings or include a ton of context switching. If you’re a writer, you’re writing. If you’re a violin player, you’re focused on your practice. If you’re a software engineer, you’re coding. In short, you’re doing productive work.
- Morning Routine – Most successful people tended to set-up their routines so that they could do their deliberate work in the morning. The book touched on the fact that some people aren’t morning people, but what Pang finds is that even those who are night owls tended to benefit from doing their deep thinking in the morning.
- Take Walks – Walking allows you to drift away from your work and examine it from a less intense place. Walking with someone else and discussing your project can lead to breakthroughs. Not everything you do needs to be fully concentrative. Letting your subconscious think about an issue can sometimes lead to the best ideas of all.
- Take Naps – Maybe the Spanish is are doing everything right? Apparently we all have a low point in energy around 6-8 hours after we get up in the morning. Eating lunch, then taking a nap helps to reenergize us and allows us to get back to our deep thinking work. Some people, like Salvador Dalí, can fall asleep just enough to get some really good ideas, then wake themselves up.
- Take Vacations – Many entrepreneurs end up having their best ideas when they step away from the office and do something different for a few days at a time. I know I really value the insights I have about my work when I’m on vacation. I’ve found that the plane ride home is the perfect time to think big thoughts about my work and career. However, scientists have found that the positive benefits of vacation only last about 3-4 weeks and then you’re typically back to the status quo. I take that to mean that I need to vacation once a month. 🙂
- Exercise & Hobbies – Exercise has been proven to help your work. A lot of truly successful people are also marathon runners or spend a lot of time pursuing sports of their choosing. Hobbies are the same way. Hobbies allow us to pursue something we love for fun. They take us out of our daily grind and help us build skills that tangentially help us at work.
- Take a Sabbatical – There’s a story about self-employed designer, Stefan Sagmeister, who closes up shop every seven years to take a year off. Each time he’s returned to his practice, he comes back fully energized and ends up taking his work to the next level (he won two Grammys after his first two sabbaticals). If any of my co-workers are reading this, consider this fair warning that I’m definitely doing this at some point!
A Heavy Read
This book is so necessary for the vast majority of Americans to read. Yet, Pang’s style leans more toward scientific paper than easy-to-read popular non-fiction. Readers get a heavy dose of the science behind rest and what’s going on in our brains. I found it fascinating, but I wish he’d written this book to be a little more approachable for the masses. Like I said, there are millions of people that need to hear this data. I fear some may stop reading too early. It gets better as it goes on.