A Change IS a Rest
Episode Stats
Summary
Alex Sujung Kim-Pong is a writer, consultant, and academic, as well as the author of Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less. In this episode, we begin our conversation with why many people feel overworked in the modern age, how quality rest is an antidote, and how Alex defines rest as something that can be active rather than passive.
Transcript
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I'm Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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One of my favorite sayings is that a change is as good as a rest. It captures an idea
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I found true in my own life, that doing something different, even if it takes effort, is just
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as rejuvenating, and in fact, more so than doing nothing.
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Well, my guest today would tweak this maxim slightly to say that change is a rest. His
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name is Alex Sujung Kim-Pong, and he's a writer, consultant, and academic, as well as the
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author of Rest, Why You Get More Done When You Work Less. We begin our conversation with
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why many people feel overworked in the modern age, how quality rest is an antidote, and how
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Alex defines rest as something that can be active rather than passive, and even thought
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of as a skill. We discuss why rest is valuable, even with seemingly unstrenuous knowledge work,
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and how apparently unproductive mind-wandering can, in fact, make you more productive and
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creative. Alex shares how many hours of focused, cognitive work you're really capable of putting
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in each day, and how successful people tend to set up their daily routine, including
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why it's effective to stop work each day in the middle of a task. We also discuss why
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you want to layer periods of rest and work in your schedule, how hobbies offer a sense
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of autonomy that's crucial in making rest refreshing, and how exercise plays a key role
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in recovery from work, even amongst brainy intellectuals. Along the way, Alex shares insights
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in the lives of eminent men like Eisenhower, Hemingway, and Viktor Frankl, and how to get better
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rest, become better at your craft, and lengthen the longevity of your career. After the show's
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over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash rest.
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All right, Alex, Sujung Kim-Peng, welcome to the show.
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So you've written a book called Rest, which addresses the problem of overwork, and we might
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think this is a modern problem. This has been a problem in America going back a long time.
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You point out in the book that guys like William James were writing about the problem of overwork
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in America back in the 19th century, but in many ways, people today seem just more burnt out than
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ever compared to the past. What's behind that? What do you think is going on there?
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The more proximate causes for our current epidemic of burnout, first of all, are that we have these
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models of success that really derive from the 70s and 80s and the explosion of high tech and the
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finance industries where we had this new vision of American success where you became rich and
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successful not by paying your dues and working your way up the ladder, but by spectacular disruptive
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moves that you could only pull off when you're brilliant and young and obsessed and lucky.
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At the same time, we've also had a kind of erosion of job and career stability and career ladders
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that have, for all the rest of us, put pressures on us to work more less by choice than by necessity
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or in order to demonstrate our indispensability to our employers. And then we've also moved from
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economic activity where productivity was easily measurable to work that's harder to evaluate.
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And in that environment, time in the office has become a proxy for productivity and commitment.
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And then finally, we've had information technologies that have allowed us to now carry our offices
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around in our pockets, allowing work to spread out to colonize more of our time. So that's a
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complicated answer, but I think that the reason it's worth diving into that is to show that,
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you know, the problem with overwork is one that consists of a whole bunch of really gigantic
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interconnected parts. And so, you know, as a result of all of this complicated stuff,
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not only is leisure devalued, you know, not only do we have less time for rest in our daily lives,
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but even the concept of leisure gets devalued as something that is worth pursuing or is worth rewarding.
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And you use your book to argue for the real value of leisure, of rest, and we'll get to that here in a
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bit. But before we do, based on your research, how do you define rest?
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You know, well, I think fundamentally, you know, rest is time we spend recovering the mental and
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physical energy that we spend sort of working, usually for a wage, usually for someone else.
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And, you know, in the everyday sense, we tend to think of rest as something that's entirely passive,
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right? It's something that you do with a remote in one hand and like a bag of snacks in the other.
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But, you know, when I was writing the book, I realized that actually, you know, while that
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has its place, rest is actually something rather more complicated. You know, for one thing,
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there's a lot of rest that is active. First of all, there's a lot going on at the level of cellular
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or brain repair when we sleep or when we're just like, you know, sort of lying around. But activities
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like exercise, like walking, that are active are actually very mentally and psychologically
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restorative. You know, another thing I realized was that rest is actually a skill. It's something
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that we can get better at over time. And we can learn how to integrate it into our daily schedules
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to both increase recovery and to boost creativity. And a lot of history's most famously creative and
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So let's talk about what rest does for us. I think the assumption is that most people have
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like, well, if you work more, you're gonna be more productive and it's just, you're gonna get
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more done. Particularly with mind work, office work. If you're a farmer, like working hard all the
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time, you obviously, you know you have to take a break. You're just physically exhausted.
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So what does the research say? What happens to our bodies, our brains, whenever we take a step back
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from the keyboard and just decompress and take some rest?
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Yeah. You know, I think first off, you were exactly right that we underestimate just how
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physically demanding and taxing knowledge work is. The brain actually turns out to be really a very
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greedy consumer of oxygen and sugar. And so it's, you know, so serious mental work can be as draining
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as sort of physical labor, just in a different sort of way. But what science tells us now is that
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during downtimes, sort of mentally what goes on is when you like clear your head and sort of zone out
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and try and think of nothing. It's actually not the case that your brain just sort of shuts off.
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What happens is that it shifts modes from sort of conscious mode to something that neuroscientists
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call the default mode network, which is a series of connections between parts of the brain,
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particularly ones that involve like visual thinking and creativity. And what's interesting
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about this is that the default mode network seems to be sort of seems to be the thing that is
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working on your behalf when you are, you know, when you suddenly solve problems that had
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eluded your conscious effort. So this is something actually that we see every day, right? You're
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trying to remember the name of the actor who is in that, who is in the movie and the TV show and that
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other thing and their name is on the tip of your tongue. And then five minutes later, you're doing
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something else and oh, it pops into your head. That's the default mode network continuing to
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work on problems even when your attention has shifted elsewhere. And it turns out that especially
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in areas where you've studied really hard, you're well trained, the default mode network is capable of
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doing pretty amazing things in those areas. And the effect, its ability is powerful enough so that
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some people organize their daily routines so that they can have these alternating periods of really
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focused work and then these periods of mind wandering so that there is, and this is sort of a key to
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understanding how it is that they're able to be both highly productive and highly creative. They're
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making use of both of these periods in a way that also gives them more downtime, more rest time,
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and lets them live happier and more sustainable lives.
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But if you're checking your email at night or over the weekend and do it like that, you're not
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letting you, you can't access that default network as well as you could have if you just completely
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Exactly. No, you need stuff like, you know, basically when you're doing stuff like sort of email,
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social media checks, it doesn't, you know, for most of us, it does not provide the sort of
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level of disengagement that let's say, you know, going for a walk or doing something else to clear
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your head does. That really is a lot closer to kind of low value cognitive activity. But I think
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really, you know, something where you are able to space out a little bit where you can really kind
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of let your attention go is the zone where the default mode is able to take over and, you know,
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So doing something that looks unproductive can actually make you more productive because you
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can get more insights that could just lead to big gains in some, some area of your work.
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Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think that one of the, you know, you see these stories
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of like mathematicians or composers who have these, you know, amazing moments of insight,
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you know, these aha moments. And it turns out that, you know, it's, there's almost always when
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you widen the lens a little bit, these periods where they've been working really hard on these
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problems. And then, you know, and they don't get anywhere. There's some critical block that
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they can't quite get over and they put it aside. And it's in that incubation period,
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as scientists call it, that period where they're not actually working consciously on it, that their
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creative minds are able to solve it. But in order to access that, you've first of all got to create
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that downtime where your subconscious can work on it. And then also there's good evidence that
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practicing that actually makes you better at unconscious problem solving, which sounds kind
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of sort of counterintuitive or sort of, you know, sort of hippie California, but it's no more mysterious
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than our ability to do things like learn languages or recognize faces. We don't know exactly how that
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works, but we know we're actually pretty good at it. Well, so to get the benefit of that incubation
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period where your default network is, you know, working on the, chewing on the problem while your
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mind want walking or exercising, doing whatever, you still got to put in some work, like some actual
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work. What does the research say about like how much you actually need to work so that you can
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actually be productive? Right. So at the daily level, most of us are capable of doing really hard,
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sustained creative or cognitive work for about four or five hours a day. And that's in bursts of like
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90 minutes or so. And then we need breaks in order to just recover, you know, recover our attention,
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recover our energy. And once you move past that, there is always, you know, like letters that you can
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answer or sort of low intensity cognitive work that you can take on. But the core of your day is that
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four to five hours of really serious head sort of heads down time. Now, what really creative people
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who have a lot of control over their schedules are able to do is alternate, kind of break those up.
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So you do like three or four hours, and then you have this period where you go off and you do something
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that looks totally unproductive, go work in the garden, go for a long walk. But what's happening
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actually is that you've got unsolved problems that are still kind of running around in your head when
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you go out on the running trail or wherever. And while you're out there, your subconscious keeps
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working on these, even while, you know, you are, you know, working on your mile split time,
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or you're admiring the trees and trees in the clouds. And so by constructing days where you're
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layering these alternating periods of work and rest, you're able to both sort of work better,
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and sort of work in a more sustainable way, and do better work.
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What I like about rest is you find all these historical examples of great thinkers and creative
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people who kind of counterintuitive, like just sort of they fell upon this, like they kind of figured
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it out on their own without the science. What was interesting with the how much they worked in a
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day, most of them like worked four to five hours tops, that's it. Like, yeah, like, and then after
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that, they would just go go garden or walk, like, you know, Charles Darwin, wake up, he'd work four
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hours, and then he just go for a walk the rest of the day.
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Yeah, you know, and Darwin got a lot done. It's really, it's pretty amazing. I mean, these,
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you know, and what these people realized, like 100 years before consultants today who talk about like
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maximizing attention and energy rather than maximizing, you know, maximizing time at work,
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or, you know, athletic trainers who talk about the importance of rest time, you know, and sort of,
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you know, sing the praises of, you know, intensive workouts with breaks. People like Darwin kind of
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discovered on their own that this was a great way to work and a great way to be able to do the kinds
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And with these insights that, you know, if working four hours a day of concentrated work,
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and then using the rest of the day to rest and sort of decompress and let that default network
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system do its work, what does that have to say about our current work setup where it's like 40 to
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You know, I think what it tells us is that if we were really interested in creating environments in
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which people could do their best work and be most creative, most sustainable, most productive,
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we would organize the day very differently. I mean, for one thing, you know, the sort of the office would
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not be like the carnival of distraction that it so often is today, you know, with open offices,
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with Slack channels, with Slack channels and email and messenger, or a kind of office culture in which
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it's okay to interrupt people with the one quick question that turns into, you know, a 15 minute
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diversion that throws you completely, you know, that sort of makes you lose track on sort of the
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essential thing that sort of that you were working on. I think the, you know, the work day would also
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probably be shorter that, you know, an eight hour day is not necessarily one that is going to yield
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the best results either for individuals or for organizations. And it would also be the case that
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we would build in more time for sort of better rest outside of work, that we would have better
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respect for the boundaries between work and personal life. And in some cases also build in
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for things like sabbaticals, slightly longer periods of time off, where people can really not just
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recharge, but like completely change out the kind of mental batteries that we draw upon when we're
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working. So, you know, and fortunately, we are beginning to see some companies that are experimenting
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along these lines, right, that are playing around with focus time at work, with playing around with the
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work week, or that have implemented sabbatical programs for not just for top employees, but for
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everybody. So, you know, we're starting to see some pushback against the culture of overwork, but,
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you know, it's early days with that yet. So, yeah, how do you convince your boss,
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hey boss, I only need to work four hours a day? Right. You know, I think the, you know,
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there's plenty of science that sort of that backs up that claim. I think that the, you know, first of
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all, you got to talk about sort of what else you can do in the day in order to make those four hours
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really as incredibly effective as, you know, as they could be. And I think it's also in the study
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that I've been doing of companies that are short in their work weeks, it's actually having bosses who
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recognize the value of this themselves, who've, you know, been professionals for 10 or 15 years,
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who've run companies, who have faced burnout themselves, and have a sense that maybe it doesn't
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have to be this way. Who are the ones who are most enthusiastic when people bring up the idea of
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shortening the work week or playing around with working hours, who see both, you know, the benefits to it,
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but also see the possibility that this is, you know, this is not just a crazy idea, but it's something
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that is achievable and can deliver benefits. We're going to take a quick break for your word from our
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sponsors. And now back to the show. One thing you note in, in rest is that a lot of these highly
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productive, prolific writers, thinkers, one of the things they did, so they got the most out of that
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four to five hours they were working is that they had a very meticulous morning routine.
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What was it about the morning routine that bolsters creativity and productivity? Are there
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any, like, routines from, you know, people you highlighted that stood out to you?
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Right. You know, I think that, you know, mornings, first off, I was amazed at how many people,
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including, like, people who engaged in some fairly, sort of, self-destructive activity and
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pharmacological experimentation were still, you know, really meticulous about and disciplined around
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their morning routines, right? Ernest Hemingway, even though he was a notoriously heavy drinker,
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was up at six every morning writing. And the thing is that mornings turn out to be amazing for deeply
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focused and kind of solitary creative work, not so much collaboration. But, you know, I found when I
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was writing, started writing trade press books, that I do my best writing between five and eight in the
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morning. And I'm someone who, in college, never started, you know, never started homework until
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Letterman was done, right? But it turns out there's a quality to those early hours that isn't found any
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other time. And for those of us who aren't natural early risers, the fact that you're kind of, that
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you're a little bleary actually makes you a little bit more creative. It's like the door to the
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subconscious stays open a little bit longer, sort of, because you're working against your chronotype.
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But to get, you know, however, in order to get the most out of it, I think people do two things.
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And one of them is that they set up as much as possible the night before, right? You don't want
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to have to make any decisions about what to wear or what to work on first, or, you know, which coffee
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to have, you just want to, like, set all that up so that you can focus on the stuff that really matters
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and give yourself the most time to work on your most meaningful stuff. And the second thing that
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it turns out sounds counterintuitive, but is really valuable, is to stop work the previous day
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in mid-sentence. Like, don't go to the end of the chapter, either conceptually or literally if you're
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a writer to stop in mid-sentence. And this makes it easier to get started in the next morning.
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But it also encourages your creative subconscious to keep thinking about the end of that sentence
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and to think about kind of the next paragraph and the next problem to be taken up. And so,
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in a way, what you're doing in the early morning is kind of harvesting work that your, you know,
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your creative mind has already kind of prepared for you.
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Yeah, Hemingway did that stop mid-sentence tactic.
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Exactly. No, you know, and so many writers do this, you know, whether it's Raymond Chandler
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or Dickens, or it turns out to be a really common practice. And, you know, for some people,
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it's mainly about not having to face the existential terror of the blank page first, you know, first off,
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right? Finishing that line of dialogue is a little bit like a writing exercise or a warm-up to get you
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started. But it turns out that there's also some stuff that kind of goes on under the hood of cognition
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So, these guys, they were doing like their hard work first, like the stuff that actually brought
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home the bacon. Like, if you're a writer, you're writing. If you're a painter, you're painting. If you're
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a composer, you're composing. And then they would save, like, I mean, they didn't, Hemingway didn't have
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email, but he, you know, letters. Like, they would write letters in the afternoon.
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Right. No, you definitely, you know, you do your most important work first. You don't get up at
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five in the morning in order to work on, you know, in order to, like, clear out your inbox.
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And I know that, you know, there are examples of people in the business world who get up early
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so that they can see what's going on in the market in, you know, some other country. That's really kind
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of a different thing. That's more like time shifting in order to get, you know, in order to arbitrage
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some sort of advantage. And while that's something that works in sort of in those worlds, for creative
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work, it's really about giving yourself time, undisturbed time when no one else is up, to work
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on stuff that really matters to you. All right. So, do the hard stuff first. Don't finish it. Like,
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leave a little bit unfinished so that your brain, your unconscious can work on it. And so, you can
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harvest that the next day. And one thing that these guys, a lot of these guys who were prolific writers,
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thinkers, et cetera, that what they would do when they took a step away from whatever they
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were doing, their work, they'd go on, well, a lot of these guys just walked. What is it about
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walking that makes you, like, come up with ideas? Well, partly, it's simply the physical act of
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moving stimulates creative thinking. We don't know exactly why walking is valuable as opposed to just
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being out in nature or being wheeled around in a wheelchair. And there are actually people who have
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compared to the creative benefits of walking versus being pushed around someplace. But it turns out
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that there is something about walking that stimulates those creative juices. Now, it's also
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the case that exposure to nature or to non-office surroundings also does provide a little bit of a
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benefit. But I think for most of us, walking is something that we can do easily, naturally. It
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doesn't take a lot of, you know, special equipment. So, we can move very quickly from our desk to this
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other mode. And the fact that we can move quickly from that one mode to the other, I think also makes
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it a little bit more likely that our, you know, our minds are going to keep turning over the thing that
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we were just working on, the problem that we hadn't solved yet, and make some progress, make some progress
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on it, even as we are, you know, doing a couple circuits around the park.
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So, yeah, a lot of famous walkers include Darwin. We mentioned Darwin. Kant. A lot of philosophers
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were walkers. I guess, I mean, it's, yeah, I mean, I guess it goes back to like Socrates and
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Eric, like those guys walked around while they're philosophizing.
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Oh, yeah. No, that was, yeah, the, the, the, what of the peripatetic philosophers were walking
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Yeah. So, they, they, they, they grasped that idea that creative ideas come when you're, when you're
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walking. I thought that was interesting. The studies they did were, it was like, they compared
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treadmill, like indoors, and then just walking outdoors. And there was no, like, you can walk,
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you could walk on a treadmill, and you still get the same benefit.
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Yes. No, there's virtually identical benefits compared to being out in nature. And so, that's
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the indication that, that there is some creative stimulus specifically to walking, and in particular,
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walking at your own pace. If you've got to walk really slowly or really quickly,
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for you, then the benefit gets hindered a little bit. I think mainly because you've got to think
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a little bit more about keeping up with the, you know, with the person or group that you're
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And like, again, like, I think the point, you made this in the book too, is like, walking
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is something you want to do when you're not doing that highly focused work. Because I think a lot
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of people hear this, like, oh, walking is creative. I'm going to get a walking treadmill desk,
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and then walk all the time at the office. No, like, you got to do that four hours where you're
00:24:05.220
just, you know, riding and just super intense, and then go for a walk to recover, take a break.
00:24:10.780
Exactly. Yeah. No, I think that trying to mix deeply focused time with leisure time is going
00:24:18.620
to end up ruining both of them. These are both bright, vivid colors, but, you know, don't swirl
00:24:24.300
One of my favorite chapters is where you look at the career of Dwight D. Eisenhower, particularly
00:24:29.480
as a time in Europe when he was Allied Commander, about the importance of taking, just completely
00:24:34.760
taking time off and not even thinking about really important work. And this is a guy, again,
00:24:38.720
he's, he's overseeing a world war, yet he still made it a priority just to get away from it
00:24:44.520
all. Tell us about that, because I thought it was really interesting.
00:24:47.120
Yeah. So, you know, when Eisenhower goes over as Supreme Allied Commander, he's based in London,
00:24:53.220
he's got to both organize, you know, American efforts in Europe and also deal with our British
00:24:59.320
allies and others. It's an incredibly demanding, challenging job. You know, some of it's politics,
00:25:05.360
some of it's strategy, it's long 18-hour days. And Eisenhower is a guy who was never really that
00:25:12.000
comfortable dealing with, like, you know, aristocrats and fancy stuff. He always was a lot
00:25:18.960
more comfortable in, you know, kind of humbler surroundings. And he discovered very quickly that
00:25:25.300
he needed to get away regularly from all of that in order to, like, be able to do good work.
00:25:32.940
Actually, George Marshall, his commander, pretty much told him that he was, he had to figure that
00:25:37.440
out or he was going to get replaced. He found a place called Telegraph Cottage, which was
00:25:41.980
a little house, sort of outside London, no phone. Actually, nobody except his, like, his immediate senior
00:25:50.740
staff even knew where it was. So, it really was a getaway for him. And whenever he could,
00:25:57.540
he would go down there on the weekends, you know, they would sort of eat very simple meals,
00:26:02.140
he would go for long walks, it was beside a golf course, which he really liked. And so, it was a
00:26:07.800
chance for him to completely detach from the challenges of the war. And I think what it teaches
00:26:16.020
us, first off, is the power of detachment, right? The fact that he didn't take work there, that it
00:26:22.600
was basically invisible, both for security and kind of political reasons, meant that he was really
00:26:29.100
completely able to put his mind elsewhere and to just get some serious rest and recovery.
00:26:35.620
Another thing that it teaches us is, like, the power of having this kind of rhythm of work and rest,
00:26:43.840
you know, not just two weeks vacation every year, you know, that you might or might not get,
00:26:50.680
but these regular alternations of work and rest, whether it's during the day or the week,
00:26:55.620
is really amazingly beneficial. And I think, you know, and then finally, that, you know, no matter how
00:27:00.900
important you think your job is, probably winning, you know, it's probably not as important as winning
00:27:06.520
World War II. And if Ike could do this, then, you know, I think maybe we should all take a step back
00:27:13.100
and think about whether this kind of rest is something that could make our work and our lives
00:27:19.820
better. Yeah. And the other thing that stood out to me, he had complete control of what he did there.
00:27:24.540
Like, he did what he wanted. He played golf, he read cowboy novels, he'd even cook for himself.
00:27:29.200
Yeah. Is that something he wanted to do? So, it comes back to that autonomy. Like, he took control
00:27:33.820
of his rest and what he did. Right. You know, and that sense of control is something that's
00:27:38.860
really important as one of the things that helps define rest, right? I mean, control is never
00:27:46.000
something that most of us dislike having. But, you know, when you look at things like really serious
00:27:52.320
hobbies that busy people have, things like, you know, Winston Churchill, for example,
00:27:59.100
was a pretty good amateur painter. Eisenhower was too, for that matter. But, you know, you see people
00:28:03.840
who are like really serious sailors or rock climbers or, you know, or musicians. And one of the things
00:28:11.840
that defines, that makes that work, that makes that stuff a pleasure is that it's a space in which you
00:28:19.960
can exercise some control and exercise some skill. You know, Churchill talked about painting as being
00:28:26.520
great because it was like politics. So, for him, it was in both, you needed a clear vision of what
00:28:33.540
you wanted to do. You had to be strategic in your use of resources. But he had complete control over
00:28:40.300
what went into his paintings. You know, he didn't have like the labor party standing over his shoulder,
00:28:45.920
criticizing his choice of color and trying to erase his clouds and, you know, and fill in their own
00:28:50.480
stuff. The painting was completely his in a way that made it really, really valuable and escape.
00:28:56.800
And so, I think that, you know, particularly for people who are in challenging jobs or that have,
00:29:02.920
you know, and work that has a lot of uncertainty about it, having those kinds of hobbies, that time
00:29:07.640
that is yours and that you are in control of is really critical for maximizing your, you know,
00:29:18.840
maximizing your recovery and for, you know, simply maximizing your enjoyment.
00:29:24.560
Yeah, that was another interesting chapter. We talked about the different hobbies some of these
00:29:27.480
people had. And again, it goes to that idea that rest isn't just sitting around watching Netflix
00:29:31.640
necessarily. Rest is actually can be very active. So, Churchill painted, Eisenhower played golf,
00:29:37.060
he painted, you know, Einstein famously, you know, he played the violin. A lot of scientists are like,
00:29:42.800
oh, who is it? Feynman? He was, like, he did magic or something like that.
00:29:46.640
So, they all... He did magic, you know, he's very famously photographed for the lectures in quantum
00:29:52.180
physics. The cover photo for the author photo has him playing the bongo drums. So, you know,
00:29:59.160
even though he wasn't quite as serious a musician as some, you know, he recognized the value of at
00:30:05.100
least looking like a musician in that kind of context. Well, another hobby that a lot of these
00:30:11.560
people you highlight in the book take up is exercise. And I was, you know, like this, I was
00:30:16.700
impressed with some of, like, the mathematicians, people you wouldn't think of being athletes.
00:30:21.220
Actually, a lot of them were serious athletes. So, what role does exercise play in our recovery from
00:30:25.740
work? Yeah, you know, that was a surprise for me because growing up, you know, in the South,
00:30:30.940
you know, I went to a high school where athletes and academic kids basically lived in different
00:30:35.100
universes. And so, I was really surprised to see how many great minds are also great athletes.
00:30:42.500
But it turns out that, you know, exercise or sports, they provide both a great mental break from work.
00:30:48.760
You know, one of the things about something like mountain climbing is that it is incredibly engaging
00:30:53.780
and you don't think about your work or think about office politics when you are, you know, 800 feet
00:30:59.300
up a sheer cliff. So, you know, you have no choice but to focus in the moment. And that's part of what
00:31:04.800
makes it really appealing for busy people. But also, you know, there are physical benefits that
00:31:10.500
come from serious exercise. But also, there seems to be something about, sort of, there are also
00:31:18.600
psychological benefits, right? There was this amazing study of Southern California scientists
00:31:24.820
looking at their lives over the course of nearly 50 years. And when they started out, this was a cohort
00:31:30.820
that had all come from top universities. They were very promising young scientists. And over the
00:31:36.860
decades, they split into two groups, a very high-performing group, including four Nobel Prize
00:31:42.060
winners, and a second group that wasn't nearly as accomplished. And the thing that separated the top
00:31:47.520
group from the bottom was sports. And it wasn't the bottom group that played sports. It was the top
00:31:54.940
group, right? You know, they were cyclists. They were surfers. They were really serious skiers. And
00:32:01.760
it seemed that taking sports seriously helped them manage their time better. It helped them manage
00:32:08.120
sort of the stresses of work. But it also gave them a certain kind of, you know, a certain degree of
00:32:15.180
kind of cycle, a willingness to take risks, right? A degree of resilience, you know, a kind of degree of
00:32:20.340
courage that translated from, you know, or of the surf at Big Sur or Manhattan Beach to their
00:32:28.820
scientific pursuits as well. And so, for all of those reasons, it turns out that, you know, sports
00:32:36.040
and exercise turn out to be really good for you, you know, if you have really serious intellectual and
00:32:44.080
You mentioned mountain climbing, and that surprised me the most about, like, I didn't know, like, for
00:32:48.420
example, Viktor Frankl. He's a mountain climber. He had no clue that he was a serious mountain
00:32:53.580
No, he was, you know, and I mean, Frankl, you know, sort of Frankl, who wrote, you know,
00:32:57.980
Man's Search for Meaning and spent time in concentration camps. You know, this was a guy who
00:33:02.380
went climbing in Austria, where, you know, where he was from, you know, after the Nazis had banned
00:33:08.380
it, you know, to, sort of, to Jews. So, he was, he was really, really devoted as a climber.
00:33:14.660
And one of the things that he said about it late in life was that, you know, you think
00:33:20.300
that climbing is all about strength, and when you're young, it might be. But as you get older,
00:33:26.660
it's something that, you know, basically, you can continue to get better at, even if you don't
00:33:32.280
get stronger. And he himself, I think, did his last serious climb around, like, 80 or so.
00:33:39.260
And so, I think that the, you know, one of the other really cool things I see that inspires me
00:33:45.740
is people like Frankl and others choosing things that are not just physically strenuous, but are
00:33:53.780
also things that they can get better at over the course of their entire lives. And, you know,
00:34:00.160
provide a degree of sustenance and restoration that can give them, you know, long and quite happy
00:34:12.800
Yeah. Also, yes, absolutely. You know, I think, again, you know, Frankl, Frankl may have stopped
00:34:17.580
climbing in his early 80s, but, you know, he kept, he kept working pretty much right up until,
00:34:22.840
until the end of his life. And a lot of the people I write about are like that. They have,
00:34:28.600
you know, they publish, they publish their last books, like, literally the last year that they're
00:34:33.800
alive. And I think there is, there is a lot to be said for envisioning, envisioning a life in which
00:34:41.640
you're able to work that way. You know, I think we think of, we are enamored by the idea of being
00:34:48.480
super successful, super young, right? Making the 30 under 30 list for whatever it is that we're in.
00:34:54.980
But, that kind of pursuit of success at a very young age often comes at a really terrible cost.
00:35:04.440
And if you think about what lifespans are like now, you know, it is possible if you stay healthy
00:35:10.660
to, you know, easily make it into your 80s or 90s or probably past 100 now. You have to ask yourself,
00:35:18.060
you know, do you want to peak at 30 and then spend the next 70 years trying to figure out what to do with
00:35:23.620
your life? Or is it better to craft a life in which you can do the things that you love,
00:35:30.140
in which you can continue to explore these areas that you are super passionate about for decades
00:35:37.700
rather than for years? Are there things that you would be able to do, things that you can give the
00:35:43.280
world that you might be able to give decades from now if only you craft your life in the right way
00:35:51.100
today to make that possible? You know, Daniel Eamon Tversky, one of the inventors of behavioral
00:35:56.860
economics, said that people waste years working on the wrong problems because they don't waste
00:36:04.600
hours. You know, and what he meant was that, you know, you need to spend time like just hanging out
00:36:10.960
and going on long walks and talking to interesting people in order to come up with the really serious
00:36:17.000
ideas, the research really worth doing. And I think in a similar kind of way that if you think
00:36:23.680
a little more about what kind of life, what kind of life you want to lead over the course,
00:36:31.520
not just of the next couple years, but really over the course of the next few decades, then you can,
00:36:37.160
you know, you will set yourself up for a kind of success and a quality of life that can serve you
00:36:44.840
very well and can let you give more to the world than you would be able to otherwise.
00:36:53.020
So it sounds like, I mean, the first thing that if someone wants to start putting this stuff into
00:36:55.460
practice, some of the things we talked about, the first thing is just be mindful, like actually
00:36:58.720
think about your rest and plan it out. Don't just let it sort of happen to you. Like maybe this weekend,
00:37:05.000
you plan out what you're going to do this weekend.
00:37:07.200
Absolutely. You know, I think the first thing you've got to do is take rest seriously enough
00:37:11.160
to make space for it in your life, right? I think we, you know, if you assume that,
00:37:16.980
oh, you know, you'll, you'll rest when you've got time, right? When you, or when you're done with
00:37:22.860
everything, you never will because we're never done with everything now. And so, you know,
00:37:28.040
actually blocking out time for it, thinking a little bit about what you would really like to do,
00:37:33.780
you know, what stuff really engages you and sort of giving yourself permission to pursue that
00:37:39.940
with the recognition that it is going to pay off in sometimes very direct and also indirect ways
00:37:48.440
is the first really critical thing. And from that, a whole bunch of other good things can follow in
00:37:56.960
terms of, you know, making better use of your time, you know, being a better planner, being a little bit
00:38:02.360
more ruthless about saying no to things that have marginal value in favor of, you know, having that
00:38:10.320
full day where you can do, you know, the hike to the 12,000 foot peak. So, but it all starts with
00:38:17.860
taking rest seriously and starting to block out time for it. Well, Alex, where can people go to learn
00:38:21.880
more about your work? So, well, my last two books are called rest and shorter. I've become a fan of
00:38:28.840
really short titles. And my own company is called strategy and rest. And the website for that,
00:38:36.100
where I've also been continued writing about these issues is www.strategy.rest. It's rest is now a top
00:38:44.440
level domain. And starting in the new year, I'm actually going to be launching a series of online
00:38:49.840
courses that people can sort of get to from the company site. So if you really want to understand
00:38:56.840
how you can put this into place in your own lives and your own companies, start with there and see
00:39:04.040
where you go and good luck. All right, Alex, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:39:07.760
Oh, thank you. It's been really great. My guest today was Alex Soonjong Kim Pong. He is the author
00:39:13.360
of the book rest. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find out more
00:39:16.940
information about his work at his website strategy.rest. Also check out our show notes at
00:39:21.080
aom.is slash rest. We find links to resources. We delve deeper into this topic.
00:39:32.660
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website at
00:39:36.200
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00:39:39.540
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