Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
Recently I’ve read the book “Rest: Why you get more done when you work less” by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang’s and felt that most of the themes resonated with me and my professional philosophy as a psychologist and relaxation therapist.
Even though the title might sound a little contra-intuitive to people I immediately knew what he meant. High productivity must be balanced out with times of relaxation. What these times of relaxation look like is highly individual. Some people relax while they withdraw to paint or read, while others find peace surrounded by friends to catch up.
There are however a few attributes that we should make sure this time fulfills for ourselves, so that we can get the most out of it:
- It should take you away from mental strain. What do I mean by that? The activities that are most straining over longer periods of time often involve more attention than we suspect. This is why a whole day of binge-watching TV-shows on Netflix often leaves you stressed and exhausted, even if you haven’t really been doing all that much. As a general rule you can say that when less information is flooding your senses while you take time off, the stronger the relaxing effect will be.
- You should make time for it, even if you have loads to do. Nowadays, it is basically impossible to ever be really done with work. There’s always an email to answer, a social media post to finish and a contact to get back in touch with. It never ends. So this is why we must put make especially sure that we take some time off and away from tasks.
- Consider how and when you nap. Especially right now, when most of us are near-constantly at home, the bed can be a enticing place to spend more time than usual. However, it is not always advisable to nap for longer periods of time, especially later in the day. A nap basically resets your Melatonin-level in your brain. Melatonin is the hormone that indicates “sleepiness” to your brain. By taking a nap you lower your levels, which makes you feel less sleepy. If you are taking a quick nap for ca. 20-30 minutes after lunch, you are probably alright. Problems might arise on the other hand when you decide to sleep for an hour or more later in the day. The closer you are getting with your nap to the time that you plan on going to sleep at night, the more likely it will be for you to struggle with not feeling sleepy enough to fall asleep at the end of the day.
- If you don’t take naps, consider starting this habit. Many connect naps with their childhood. There is however no reason to abandon this practice as an adult. Napping has many positive effects for our mental well-being. A brief nap, as mentioned above, can give you that extra jolt of energy to continue your day as your best self. Motivation is highly related to sleep, which is why a sleepy person is less likely to work out or progress with their private projects. Sleep is also highly important for memory consolidation and problem solving. Studies showed that people who interrupted a mentally straining task with a nap were able to continue work on it productively afterwards, whereas others who didn’t nap did not find new creative solutions to the problem-solving exercises that they were given.
- You don’t need to work for 10 hours to be a highly-productive person. In fact, Soojung-Kim Pang points out that many of the historically most productive people have been working for only about 4 hours each day. He supports this anecdotal evidence with science that show people usually aren’t able to work effectively and focused for longer than a few hours each day. I have made this experience in my own working-life as well. Usually, I start working in the morning, but find that after lunch my productivity drastically declines. Incidentally this is about 4 hours after I started to work.
How to you “rest”? Let me know in the comments.
Photo by Hernan Sanchez on Unsplash
Margaretha Madoures 