Annotations
In his book The Use of Life (1895), the Victorian author John Lubbock wrote: Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summers day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the blue sky, is by no means a waste of time.
Moreover, studies show that good rest is not idleness. The most restorative forms of rest are active, not passive. Further, rest is a skill: with practice, you can learn to get better at it, and to get more out of it.
First, schedule your work around periods of uninterrupted, highly focused blocks of 90-120 minutes, followed by rest breaks of 20-30 minutes.
Second, schedule those work periods so you do your most important tasks during your periods of peak energy and focus (your ‘circadian highs’).
Winston Churchill advised that, for busy people: ‘It is not enough merely to switch off the lights which play upon the main and ordinary field of interest; a new field of interest must be illuminated.’
No matter what you choose, though, it should be mentally absorbing, provide you with some of the same psychological rewards as your best work, but in a very different context, and away from work’s problems.
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.
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.
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.
If work and rest are partners, an important step toward resting better is learning how to work more effectively, to use your time more efficiently, thus creating more space in your days for rest.
First, set up as much as you can the night before.
Second, plan out the next day’s work.
Third, and perhaps most important, getting the work done early creates more space for rest.