4 Key Insights From "Rest" by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

Alex has four key insights about the benefits of rest:

1. Work and rest are partners

“Rest is an essential component of good work. World-class musicians, Olympic athletes, writers, designers, and other accomplished and creative people alternate daily periods of intense work and concentration with long breaks.

“It is clear that the brain’s creative work is never done, that even in its resting state the brain is plugging away at problems, examining and tossing out possible answers, looking for novelty. This is a process we can’t really control. But by learning to rest better, we can support it.”

2. Rest is active

“Even apparently passive forms of rest turn out to be more physically active than we expect. When you go to sleep, your brain doesn’t switch off. It gets busy consolidating memories, reviewing the day’s events, and going over problems you’ve been working on.

3. Rest is a skill

“Rest turns out to be like sex or singing or running. Everyone basically knows how to do it, but with a little work and understanding, you can learn to do it a lot better.”

People who become world-class performers practice what you would call deliberate rest. “It’s often in these periods of deliberate rest and apparent leisure – when you’re not obviously working or trying to work – that you can have some of your best ideas.”

4. Deliberate rest stimulates and sustains creativity

Great writers, scientists and artists balance busy lives with deep play.

“The steadiness and consistency that deliberate rest enforces helps explain why those who discover it have longer creative lives, pursue careers as artists or writers while holding down other jobs, and may even discover completely new interests or produce new works when the rest of us are ready to retire.”

“Figures as different as Charles Dickens, Henri Poincare and Ingmar Bergman all shared a passion for their work and an almost superhuman capacity to focus. Yet when you look closely at their daily lives, they only spent a few hours a day doing what we would recognise as their most important work.

“If some of history’s greatest figures didn’t put in immensely long hours, maybe the key to unlocking the secret of their creativity lies in understanding not just how they laboured but how they rested.”

Alex explores the work of Charles Darwin who started work at 8am and by noon would declare “I’ve done a good day’s work.” He would then take a walk in the countryside, return for lunch and some letter writing, take a nap, a further walk in the countryside and then do an hour or so’s work until 5.30pm.

On this basis he wrote 18 books including The Origin of the Species, “probably the single most famous book in the history of science.”

He describes similar patterns to the work of Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope and – more recently – JG Ballard, Scott Adams and Stephen King.

A survey of scientists working lives in the early 1950s found intriguing results. Scientists who spent 25 hours in the workplace were no more productive, in terms of articles written, than those who spent 5 hours. Those working 60+ hours a week were the least productive of all.

The idea that people need 10,000 hours of intensive practice to become great at something is based on the work of Malcolm Gladwell. However, Alex explores the research that this is founded on and finds that people also needed 12,500 hours of deliberate rest (often from naps in the afternoon) and 30,000 hours of sleep.

An afternoon nap was central to Winston Churchill’s work as Prime Minister during the war. Naps were also a daily routine for US generals George Marshall and Douglas MacArthur, as well as President Kennedy and President Johnson.

Alex concludes by quoting archaeologist John Lubbock: “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. Rest is not idleness.”

Discover the dangers of long-hour culture and the benefits of rest from Alex Soojung-Kim Pang at this year’s Happy Workplaces Conference.

Related blogs

• What is Mindfulness? — Our Senior Facilitator Paul Gapper explains about Mindfulness and what it is, in this short video - with an excellent comparison to David Attenborough.
• Andrew Barnes: Why the 4 Day Week is the Future of Work — The founder of the 4 Day Week movement talks about the benefits and data supporting it in this video from the 2022 Happy workplaces Conference.
• Could a 4 Day Week Work in Your Sector? Yes! — Henry highlights various sectors where the 4 Day Week has proven to be a success in this blog.

Next Conference: 2025 Happy Workplaces Conference

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