“ activities that are rewarding on their own, but take on additional layers of meaning and personal significance.” - Alex Pang, Rest And deep play is the perfect way to embody that concept. I can’t stress enough how transformative this idea was for me. Work only contributes a quarter to the success formula.īut how exactly should you fill your time of deliberate rest? This brings us to my favorite idea of the entire book. In fact, it’s far more critical what high performers do when they’re not working.įrom this perspective, the rule should be closer to 10,000 hours of deliberate practice, 12,500 hours of deliberate rest, and 30,000 hours of sleep. He points out that it’s wrong to only look at the time spent working. ![]() Pang noticed a crucial flaw in Gladwell’s theory. This concept, popularized in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, says that you need 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to master any skill. In one of my favorite passages, Pang debunks the 10,000-hour rule. You can’t work without rest, and you can’t rest without work. Put differently: Rest is not the absence of work. The better you are at resting, the better you will be at working.” Well, that’s because many of us have the wrong idea of rest. You recharge while being physically or mentally active. Instead of slumping into your couch cushions and distracting yourself with Netflix, deliberate rest is all about engagement. It’s a play on the concept of “deliberate practice,” which says that learning a skill should be systematic and challenging rather than drifting with the tides. One of the lessons that stuck most with me from this book is that rest doesn’t magically come your way. You have to resist the lure of busyness, make time for rest, take it seriously, and protect it from a world that is intent on stealing it.” - Alex Pang, Rest This brings up an important question: What should you do when you’re not working? 2. Don’t trick yourself into believing that you can conquer the world in 24 hours. To paraphrase Pang, you should organize your life around your work, not your days. Burnout erupts when we desperately force things to be different than they really are. I know not everyone has the luxury to stop after four hours and kick back on a hammock. If you’ve spent more than four hours on intense work, stop forcing it.And for the rest of the day? Don’t worry about the usual chaos of meetings and phone calls. But you need a time frame to immerse yourself in your most vital projects. Start your day early and do the work that matters most to you.What does this mean for you? Here are two takeaways: When we do intense, creative work, our productivity peaks after a few hours and then crashes into the sewers. Turns out, productivity is not a straight line but more like a bell curve. Maya Angelou, Stephen King, Ernest Hemingway - these people and many more ended their workday after four hours. Many of the most prolific creatives figured this out intuitively. And it’s not just the scientific evidence. The ones who worked 60 hours were the least productive. So, how many hours should you spend working daily? The answer is surprisingly plain:Ī study shows that scientists who worked 35 hours a week were only half as productive as those working 20 hours a week. ![]() Their towering creative achievements result from modest working hours.” “When you look at history’s most creative figures, you’re immediately confronted with a paradox … Their creativity and productivity … were not the result of endless hours of toil. More work equals more results.īut what if this advice is flawed? And not just that, but plain-out counterproductive? Here’s what Pang found: And so, from childhood on, we imagine productivity as a straight line. We grow up with the notion that “the more work you put in, the more you get out of something.” That’s particularly true if you grew up in Western culture. They’re the three most vital, unique lessons I’ve extracted from the book. Plus, he adds a few spicy new ideas into the mix I’ve never seen before (and I’ve seen a lot). Pang presents the overdone advice in a fresh light with remarkable science. This is why I say: we should consume advice for rest until it seeps into our primitive brain stems. “If your work is your self, when you cease to work, you cease to exist.” - Alex Pang, Rest And worst of all, work has become our core identity. A burnout epidemic is rampantly spreading. We prioritize work over relationships and recovery. And yes, this includes lots of familiar advice: morning routines, walking, sleep, exercise, sabbaticals. In Rest, Alex Pang explains the importance and methods of, well, rest.
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