Over the last year or so, I’ve been doing a lot of reading around the topics of resilience, wellbeing and rest. There are huge number of myths bundled up in these subjects and particularly in the topic of rest. In our typical western culture, rest seems to be strongly associated with not doing much or at worst, laziness and weakness. But these are really dangerous misconceptions.
When we talk about resilience and wellbeing, rest – and particularly deliberately chosen rest – is a fundamental. If we want to live and work well, rest is key. And it’s critical for our health and survival.
This book explores the subject of rest in its many forms and the advantages it can give. The author looks at daydreaming, sleeping, holidays, deep play, sabbaticals and napping among others. It’s packed full of anecdotes, scientific research, examples and mini case studies of some familiar high achievers like Charles Darwin, Churchill and Dickens, author Toni Morrison and director Ingmar Bergman. They all accomplished a great deal, on only four or five hours of work a day. Unfortunately, the examples he gives throughout the book are predominantly of men – I would have loved to read about more women (although the mentions of novelists Alice Munro, Joyce Carol Oates and Toni Morrison along with geneticist Barbara McClintock are very welcome).
The four biggest takeaways for me from this book are real food for thought – us mere mortals might be able to achieve the same if we were to apply a similar approach. None of this seems to be rocket science, but more like science, habit and routine applied in a different way. Here are my four:
1. Walking. The book is packed with examples of how walking can support creative thinking. Although in its basic form, walking is exercise (which helps thinking anyway by creating blood flow to the brain), it can also give our minds the opportunity to wander, helpingcreativity and problem-solving. There are countless examples of how this works – notably from Charles Darwin, who found walking so useful in creativity, he built a walking path near his home.
2. Napping. This was perhaps my biggest revelation. Many of us may have heard stories about Winston Churchill’s napping routine but again, the book explains, through scientific examples, why this approach is so important for our brains. Sleep scientists have found that even a short nap (we’re talking 20-30 minutes) can boost concentration by giving our brains the opportunity to recharge energy and so improve creativity and performance. I’m very aware that napping isn’t something we can all do in the office, but how might weintroduce it somewhere in our day, maybe over a lunch break?
3. A very early morning routine. We may all be familiar with the 5.30am club – people who share their super early routines on Instagram. Quite honestly make me feel tired just reading their updates. This is most definitely not about that. This is about following the examples set by some of history’s most creative folk who have started work at dawn or earlier. A great example given in the book is author Toni Morrison. For her, “writing before dawn began as a necessity… she was raising two children and the pre-dawn hours were the only time she could write undisturbed. Later, when writing Beloved, the “habit of getting up early… became my choice,” she said:” I realised that I was clearer-headed, more confident and generally more intelligent in the morning.”
Early morning is the time at which Morrison and others cited in the book found the peak of their creative energy (and when they have the most undisturbed thinking time). Often, it also seemed that their brains were still operating in ‘semi-sleep’ mode. Fascinating stuff.
4. Stopping at the right time. This one can feel counter-intuitive but is an approach I’ve started applying and it’s definitely working. The current received wisdom is that working harder and pushing ourselves to work longer and longer hours and finishing everything we start (perfectly!) makes us more productive. But over time, this approach could lead to burnout, stress and can most definitely inhibit creativity. Instead, the author shares lots of examples (often authors) who ‘stop working at the right point’. At this stage you can see what your next move will be, but you leave it until tomorrow- an unfinished sentence or paragraph for example. The theory is that with greater energy the next day, you’ll find it easier to get restarted. Plus, your subconscious mind may continue cogitating without your being consciously aware. It may be a prompt for new ideas and creativity in the process.
There are other ideas in this book like ‘deep play’ and a focuson sleep too – it’s all great food for thought. The over-riding takeaway for me? Trying to be busier and trying to fit in MORE work is not the answer to success it seems. Instead, planned and deliberate rest, punctuated with periods of downtime seem to be the real answer.
“People who have long creative lives, who do really great work for decades, they don’t get inspired and start work. They start work and get inspired. And they do this every day.” - Alex Soojung-Kim Pang