“The greatest geniuses sometimes accomplish more when they work less.”
Leonardo Da Vinci
Today many subscribe to hustle culture and believe that to be successful in business, a career, or a creative endeavor, it is necessary to work long hours, burn the midnight oil, and sacrifice leisure, rest, and sleep. But many who follow this lifestyle of relentless work become chronically stressed out and mentally and physically exhausted. In this video, we offer a healthier and more sustainable approach to success that does not require sacrificing rest and leisure. For as we will explore, rest is a companion of productive work, not its antithesis, and when we learn how to harness the power of rest it is possible to work less hours each day and yet still be more productive than our workaholic peers.
In his book Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang writes:
“Many of us are interested in how to work better, but we don’t think very much about how to rest better…But this is a mistake…We underestimate how much good serious rest can do us. And we also underestimate how much we can do if we take rest seriously.”
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less
In 1899, the great American psychologist William James noticed that his fellow countrymen were becoming accustomed to working long hours. Instead of having a positive effect on economic output and individual well-being, James predicted that this way of life would not only increase “the frequency and severity of our [mental] breakdowns”, but also lead to less productivity. Or as he wrote in his essay The Gospel of Relaxation:
“[If working long hours and] living excitedly and hurriedly would only enable us to do more…[there] would be some compensation, some excuse, for going on so. But the exact reverse is the case.”
William James, The Gospel of Relaxation
James identified a truth that is largely lost in the modern day: that being, the number of hours spent working is not a good measure of productivity. As anyone who has worked in an office can attest it is possible to “work” all day yet accomplish very little, and there is evidence suggesting that after a certain number of hours, working more becomes counterproductive.
At the start of the 21st century, the Canadian health service studied over 30,000 Canadians in the public and private sector to obtain insights about how people spent their time at work, and as Johann Hari notes in Stolen Focus, their findings revealed “that as work hours swell and swell, people get more distracted and less productive, and [they] concluded: “These workloads are not sustainable.”” (Johann Hari, Stolen Focus)
In the early 1950s, the psychology professors Raymond Van Zelst and Willard Kerr asked colleagues how many hours they spent in the office and then plotted these hours against the number of scientific articles they published. Rather than showing a linear relationship where more hours translated into more output, the data formed an M-shaped curve. Scientists who worked between 10 and 20 hours a week published more articles than those who worked less than 10. But after that the graph took an unexpected turn as scientists who worked 35 hours a week produced only half as many articles as those who worked 25 hours, and those clocking 50 hours produced the same number of articles as scientists who worked 5 hours. The so-called workaholics — those spending 60 or more hours a week in the office — were the least productive of all.
To past generations, these findings would not have been surprising. Before the First Industrial Revolution, it was common sense that resting well is required to work well and that the human mind can only handle a certain amount of concentrated work each day. In his book Leisure: The Basis of Culture, the 20th century German philosopher Josef Pieper explained that ancient and medieval philosophers took for granted that leisure, or what Pieper described as “an attitude of non-activity, of inward calm”, is just as important to intellectual work as active and disciplined focus. Or as Alex Soojung-Kim Pang writes:
“In previous centuries, leading authors, scientists, politicians, and businessmen created masterpieces, won elections, and captained industries while finding ample time for long walks and regular naps, weekends away, even weeks-long vacations.”
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less
Charles Darwin, for example, started his day with a short walk and breakfast and then he sat down to work at 8 am. At 9:30 he took a break to read his daily mail. At 10:30 he went back to work until noon. And as Mason Currey writes in Daily Rituals: How Artists Work: “Darwin considered this the end of his workday, and would often remark in a satisfied voice, “I’ve done a good day’s work.”” After lunch Darwin spent the rest of his day going for walks, playing backgammon, and taking naps. On this schedule of working a few hours in the morning and resting the remainder of the day, Darwin wrote 19 books including the Origin of Species which instituted a radical paradigm shift in the way we see the world. And as Alex Soojung-Kim Pang writes:
“[Many accomplished individuals], working in disparate fields in different times, all shared a passion for their work, a terrific ambition to succeed, 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 recognize as their most important work. The rest of the time, they were hiking mountains, taking naps, going on walks with friends, or just sitting and thinking. Their creativity and productivity, in other words, were not the result of endless hours of toil. Their towering creative achievements result from modest “working” hours.”
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less
The reason some people are able to excel while working only a few hours a day isn’t necessarily because they are smarter than everyone else — it is because they have learned to harness the power of rest. Many think that when we rest we are not being productive, but this is a fallacy. For not only does rest recharge the mind and body, but it also activates a part of the brain that operates outside of conscious awareness and that is capable of processing work-related ideas, tasks, and problems.
Mainstream scientists used to believe that the brain was only fully active when it was consciously engaged in a task or train of thought. But with the advent of fMRI technology, neuroscientists discovered a network of unconscious and interconnected brain regions that becomes active when we rest and let our mind wander. They called this the default mode network, and studies have revealed that this network is involved in processing experiences, consolidating memories, and generating creative solutions to the tasks that occupy us during our conscious working hours. And as Alex Soojung-Kim Pang explains:
“The brain automatically switches on a default mode network…as soon as people stop concentrating on external tasks…studies suggest that the default mode network is a source of raw creative energy…it’s 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, let it work, and take notice when it’s found something that deserves our attention.”
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less
That the unconscious mind continues to work even when we are resting has been intuitively known by some of the most prolific individuals of the past. For example, in reflecting on why resting enhances creativity and productivity the renowned mathematician and polymath Henri Poincaré wrote:
“It might be said that the conscious work has been more fruitful because it has been interrupted and the rest has given back to the mind its force and freshness. But it is more probable that this rest has been filled out with unconscious work.”
Henri Poincaré, Mathematical Creation
Most of us would love to have a doppelgänger who would continue to do our work while we relax, play, nap, or pursue hobbies. What most of us don’t realize is that our unconscious mind is a type of doppelgänger, but the catch is that it only gets to work when our conscious mind releases its grip on work and we take time to rest. Ernest Hemingway, for instance, advised that we should limit the time we spend working on a task or project each day, for “if you think about it consciously or worry about it [for too long] you will kill it and your brain will be tired.” After we have spent sufficient time on a work-related task Hemingway recommended that we step away from our work and rest, because “your subconscious will continue to work on it all the time.”
But this raises the question: How many hours should we work each day? After surveying the daily habits of some of the most productive individuals in history, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang notes that many of them limited themselves to working between three to five hours a day. Anthony Trollope, a 19th century English novelist who wrote 47 novels, explained that: “All those I think who have lived as literary men,—working daily as literary labourers—will agree with me that three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write.” William Osler, a professor at John Hopkins School of Medicine and the creator of the first residency program for doctors, advised his students to study no more than “Four or five hours daily—it is not much to ask.” G.H Hardy, one of the greatest British mathematicians in history, wrote that: “Four hours of creative work a day is about the limit for a mathematician.” Or as Soojung-Kim Pang writes:
“The pattern of working four hard hours [daily] with occasional breaks isn’t just confined to scientists, writers, or other people who are already successful, well-established, and have the freedom to set their own schedules. You can also see it among students who go on to become leaders in their fields.”
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less
If possible, it is best to get our focused work done first thing in the morning, as our mind is freshest in the morning and more creative as we are still transitioning between the state of unconscious sleep and conscious wakefulness. The Irish writer, Edna O’Brien, for example, wrote that in the morning she felt herself to be “nearer to the unconscious, the source of inspiration.” Completing a solid block of work in the morning also allows us to rest and enjoy the remainder of the day, guilt free, and this rest activates the part of our unconscious mind which continues to work on the tasks and ideas we were focusing on in the morning.
“…the world does not give us time for rest, that we have to take it. The early start makes room in the day for rest. It gives us the right to rest. It can also boost your creativity during those working hours and prime your subconscious mind to keep working even when you turn your attention to other things.”
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less
We should give as much thought and care to how we rest as to how we work, as some forms of rest are more restorative and better at priming our unconscious mind to continue working. What is more, one of the main activities that occupies people when they are not working – scrolling through social media – is not restful as it overwhelms the mind with stimuli and studies have shown that the constant attentional switching between posts, pictures, and videos, is mentally exhausting.
Rather than staring at our phone, one of the best forms of rest is to stare into space and let our mind wander. Studies have shown that mind-wandering is not a waste of time but a critical cognitive activity that helps us make sense of the world, digest experiences, process ideas, and make new connections between things – which is the basis of creativity. “Mind-wandering is the secret of creativity,” wrote the psychologist Michael Corballis. Or as Johann Hari writes in Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention:
“…the more you let your mind wander, the better you are at having organised personal goals, being creative, and making patient, long-term decisions. You will be able to do these things better if you let your mind drift…I thought that mind-wandering…was the opposite of attention, and that’s why I felt guilty about doing it. I realised I was wrong. It is actually a different form of attention – and a necessary one.”
Johann Hari, Stolen Focus
We can let our mind wander when physically resting or when walking or hiking, which is another of the favorite forms of rest of the most productive figures in history. “I have walked myself into my best thoughts,” wrote the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. The great German author Thomas Mann dedicated his mornings to writing and noted that, “afternoons are for reading, for my much too mountainous correspondence and for walks.” Not only is walking physically healthy as it stimulates blood flow, but when we walk the surrounding environment passively engages our attention, promotes mind-wandering, and places our conscious mind in a pleasant revery that stimulates creativity and the activation of our creative unconscious. Paul Dirac, a renowned theoretical physicist at Cambridge University, explained that on his daily walks “I would not intentionally think about my work…I found these occasions most profitable for new ideas.” Or as the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote: “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.”
Taking afternoon naps is another powerful form of rest. The Swedish psychologist Anders Ericsson has dedicated his career to studying individuals who become elite in their field. His work is the basis of the well-known idea that it takes 10,000 hours of focused practice or work to become an expert. What is often overlooked in Ericsson’s research is that top performing individuals sleep, on average, an hour more per day than their less accomplished peers and that this extra sleep comes in the form of daily naps. “Naps are essential to my [working] process.”, wrote the science fiction writer William Gibson. Or as Soojung-Kim Pang writes:
“[World-class performance] comes after 10,000 hours of deliberate practice, 12,500 hours of deliberate rest, and 30,000 hours of sleep.”
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less
Physical activity, be it exercise or playing sports, is another form of rest which highly productive individuals engage in to fill out their days. In the 1950s, the UCLA sociologist Bernice Eiduson initiated a study to investigate what separates accomplished scientists from their less-accomplished colleagues. She found a group of young scientists at UCLA and followed their life trajectory for more than 20 years. After Eiduson passed away, her collaborator continued the study and discovered that the scientists who had the most successful careers showed “an unusual urge to experiment athletically as well as scientifically.” The scientists who had average or below average careers, in contrast, reported low participation in sports and exercise. One obvious reason why athletic activities contribute to career success is that due to the mind-body connection a strong and healthy body supports a sharp and focused mind. A less obvious reason is that intense physical activity makes it nearly impossible to consciously dwell on work-related thoughts. This mental rest primes the unconscious mind to continue generating insights and solutions to tasks and problems in the background.
“We shouldn’t be surprised that people manage to be physically active and do world-class work. We should recognize that they do world-class work because they are physically active.”
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less
Participating in hobbies or pastimes that are unrelated to work, be it playing chess, gardening, playing an instrument, or reading fiction, are also excellent forms of rest. Winston Churchill, for example, found relaxation and a much-needed escape from the complexities and pressures of political work by dedicating time each afternoon to painting. And as he astutely observed:
“[The] cultivation of a hobby and new forms of interest is a policy of first importance to a public man. 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…the tired parts of the mind can be rested and strengthened, not merely by rest, but by using other parts.”
Winston Churchill, Painting as a Pastime
Working in the morning and resting for the remainder of the day is far more feasible for those who have flexibility in their schedules and aren’t bound to a traditional 8- or 9-hour office routine. However, if we have enough freedom to organize our days this way, it is a worthwhile experiment that can boost productivity, allow time for rest and hobbies, and ultimately support a healthy work-life balance that prevents the early burnout that so many people experience in their careers.
Prioritizing daily rest also sculpts a great character. Overworking breeds the anxiety that there is never enough time to accomplish everything we want or need to do. No matter where we are or what we are doing, we feel rushed and trapped in a cycle of urgency. And as the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard observed: “Of all ridiculous things in the world, what strikes me as the most ridiculous of all is being busy in the world, to be a man quick to his meals and quick to his work…” (Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or) Great characters, in contrast, do not live under this burden of relentless haste. Instead, they possess an inner calm that is cultivated by carving out ample time each day for rest. For as the 19th century English historian J.R. Seeley observed:
“The supreme quality of great men is the power of resting. Anxiety, restlessness, fretting are marks of weakness.”
J.R. Seeley
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