The Art of Manliness - A Change IS a Rest

00:00:00.000 I'm Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.200 One of my favorite sayings is that a change is as good as a rest. It captures an idea

00:00:15.700 I found true in my own life, that doing something different, even if it takes effort, is just

00:00:19.600 as rejuvenating, and in fact, more so than doing nothing.

00:00:22.940 Well, my guest today would tweak this maxim slightly to say that change is a rest. His

00:00:26.860 name is Alex Sujung Kim-Pong, and he's a writer, consultant, and academic, as well as the

00:00:30.840 author of Rest, Why You Get More Done When You Work Less. We begin our conversation with

00:00:34.880 why many people feel overworked in the modern age, how quality rest is an antidote, and how

00:00:39.160 Alex defines rest as something that can be active rather than passive, and even thought

00:00:42.840 of as a skill. We discuss why rest is valuable, even with seemingly unstrenuous knowledge work,

00:00:47.300 and how apparently unproductive mind-wandering can, in fact, make you more productive and

00:00:51.340 creative. Alex shares how many hours of focused, cognitive work you're really capable of putting

00:00:55.740 in each day, and how successful people tend to set up their daily routine, including

00:00:59.320 why it's effective to stop work each day in the middle of a task. We also discuss why

00:01:02.980 you want to layer periods of rest and work in your schedule, how hobbies offer a sense

00:01:06.580 of autonomy that's crucial in making rest refreshing, and how exercise plays a key role

00:01:10.920 in recovery from work, even amongst brainy intellectuals. Along the way, Alex shares insights

00:01:15.420 in the lives of eminent men like Eisenhower, Hemingway, and Viktor Frankl, and how to get better

00:01:19.380 rest, become better at your craft, and lengthen the longevity of your career. After the show's

00:01:23.400 over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash rest.

00:01:35.580 All right, Alex, Sujung Kim-Peng, welcome to the show.

00:01:38.400 Hey, thanks very much for having me.

00:01:40.160 So you've written a book called Rest, which addresses the problem of overwork, and we might

00:01:44.640 think this is a modern problem. This has been a problem in America going back a long time.

00:01:48.140 You point out in the book that guys like William James were writing about the problem of overwork

00:01:52.500 in America back in the 19th century, but in many ways, people today seem just more burnt out than

00:01:57.000 ever compared to the past. What's behind that? What do you think is going on there?

00:02:01.240 The more proximate causes for our current epidemic of burnout, first of all, are that we have these

00:02:08.220 models of success that really derive from the 70s and 80s and the explosion of high tech and the

00:02:15.300 finance industries where we had this new vision of American success where you became rich and

00:02:21.920 successful not by paying your dues and working your way up the ladder, but by spectacular disruptive

00:02:28.980 moves that you could only pull off when you're brilliant and young and obsessed and lucky.

00:02:34.040 At the same time, we've also had a kind of erosion of job and career stability and career ladders

00:02:43.100 that have, for all the rest of us, put pressures on us to work more less by choice than by necessity

00:02:51.140 or in order to demonstrate our indispensability to our employers. And then we've also moved from

00:02:59.100 economic activity where productivity was easily measurable to work that's harder to evaluate.

00:03:05.740 And in that environment, time in the office has become a proxy for productivity and commitment.

00:03:10.540 And then finally, we've had information technologies that have allowed us to now carry our offices

00:03:15.220 around in our pockets, allowing work to spread out to colonize more of our time. So that's a

00:03:20.980 complicated answer, but I think that the reason it's worth diving into that is to show that,

00:03:25.600 you know, the problem with overwork is one that consists of a whole bunch of really gigantic

00:03:30.040 interconnected parts. And so, you know, as a result of all of this complicated stuff,

00:03:37.000 not only is leisure devalued, you know, not only do we have less time for rest in our daily lives,

00:03:42.540 but even the concept of leisure gets devalued as something that is worth pursuing or is worth rewarding.

00:03:50.120 And you use your book to argue for the real value of leisure, of rest, and we'll get to that here in a

00:03:54.500 bit. But before we do, based on your research, how do you define rest?

00:03:59.940 You know, well, I think fundamentally, you know, rest is time we spend recovering the mental and

00:04:05.800 physical energy that we spend sort of working, usually for a wage, usually for someone else.

00:04:11.880 And, you know, in the everyday sense, we tend to think of rest as something that's entirely passive,

00:04:17.460 right? It's something that you do with a remote in one hand and like a bag of snacks in the other.

00:04:22.160 But, you know, when I was writing the book, I realized that actually, you know, while that

00:04:28.500 has its place, rest is actually something rather more complicated. You know, for one thing,

00:04:33.220 there's a lot of rest that is active. First of all, there's a lot going on at the level of cellular

00:04:39.260 or brain repair when we sleep or when we're just like, you know, sort of lying around. But activities

00:04:46.660 like exercise, like walking, that are active are actually very mentally and psychologically

00:04:53.160 restorative. You know, another thing I realized was that rest is actually a skill. It's something

00:04:58.020 that we can get better at over time. And we can learn how to integrate it into our daily schedules

00:05:05.000 to both increase recovery and to boost creativity. And a lot of history's most famously creative and

00:05:13.620 prolific people learned to do exactly that.

00:05:17.120 So let's talk about what rest does for us. I think the assumption is that most people have

00:05:21.200 like, well, if you work more, you're gonna be more productive and it's just, you're gonna get

00:05:24.380 more done. Particularly with mind work, office work. If you're a farmer, like working hard all the

00:05:30.240 time, you obviously, you know you have to take a break. You're just physically exhausted.

00:05:34.280 Office work, it's not so much.

00:05:36.820 So what does the research say? What happens to our bodies, our brains, whenever we take a step back

00:05:43.160 from the keyboard and just decompress and take some rest?

00:05:47.360 Yeah. You know, I think first off, you were exactly right that we underestimate just how

00:05:52.360 physically demanding and taxing knowledge work is. The brain actually turns out to be really a very

00:05:59.760 greedy consumer of oxygen and sugar. And so it's, you know, so serious mental work can be as draining

00:06:09.480 as sort of physical labor, just in a different sort of way. But what science tells us now is that

00:06:16.080 during downtimes, sort of mentally what goes on is when you like clear your head and sort of zone out

00:06:22.460 and try and think of nothing. It's actually not the case that your brain just sort of shuts off.

00:06:27.300 What happens is that it shifts modes from sort of conscious mode to something that neuroscientists

00:06:34.220 call the default mode network, which is a series of connections between parts of the brain,

00:06:40.100 particularly ones that involve like visual thinking and creativity. And what's interesting

00:06:46.440 about this is that the default mode network seems to be sort of seems to be the thing that is

00:06:55.500 working on your behalf when you are, you know, when you suddenly solve problems that had

00:07:02.420 eluded your conscious effort. So this is something actually that we see every day, right? You're

00:07:06.500 trying to remember the name of the actor who is in that, who is in the movie and the TV show and that

00:07:12.060 other thing and their name is on the tip of your tongue. And then five minutes later, you're doing

00:07:16.740 something else and oh, it pops into your head. That's the default mode network continuing to

00:07:21.900 work on problems even when your attention has shifted elsewhere. And it turns out that especially

00:07:27.740 in areas where you've studied really hard, you're well trained, the default mode network is capable of

00:07:34.240 doing pretty amazing things in those areas. And the effect, its ability is powerful enough so that

00:07:41.580 some people organize their daily routines so that they can have these alternating periods of really

00:07:47.820 focused work and then these periods of mind wandering so that there is, and this is sort of a key to

00:07:56.560 understanding how it is that they're able to be both highly productive and highly creative. They're

00:08:02.920 making use of both of these periods in a way that also gives them more downtime, more rest time,

00:08:10.740 and lets them live happier and more sustainable lives.

00:08:15.740 But if you're checking your email at night or over the weekend and do it like that, you're not

00:08:19.960 letting you, you can't access that default network as well as you could have if you just completely

00:08:25.600 stepped away.

00:08:27.060 Exactly. No, you need stuff like, you know, basically when you're doing stuff like sort of email,

00:08:32.480 social media checks, it doesn't, you know, for most of us, it does not provide the sort of

00:08:37.720 level of disengagement that let's say, you know, going for a walk or doing something else to clear

00:08:44.100 your head does. That really is a lot closer to kind of low value cognitive activity. But I think

00:08:49.900 really, you know, something where you are able to space out a little bit where you can really kind

00:08:54.380 of let your attention go is the zone where the default mode is able to take over and, you know,

00:09:00.720 able to work its magic.

00:09:01.780 So doing something that looks unproductive can actually make you more productive because you

00:09:05.220 can get more insights that could just lead to big gains in some, some area of your work.

00:09:09.960 Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think that one of the, you know, you see these stories

00:09:13.940 of like mathematicians or composers who have these, you know, amazing moments of insight,

00:09:20.420 you know, these aha moments. And it turns out that, you know, it's, there's almost always when

00:09:26.100 you widen the lens a little bit, these periods where they've been working really hard on these

00:09:31.120 problems. And then, you know, and they don't get anywhere. There's some critical block that

00:09:36.240 they can't quite get over and they put it aside. And it's in that incubation period,

00:09:43.480 as scientists call it, that period where they're not actually working consciously on it, that their

00:09:49.760 creative minds are able to solve it. But in order to access that, you've first of all got to create

00:09:54.940 that downtime where your subconscious can work on it. And then also there's good evidence that

00:10:02.780 practicing that actually makes you better at unconscious problem solving, which sounds kind

00:10:10.120 of sort of counterintuitive or sort of, you know, sort of hippie California, but it's no more mysterious

00:10:16.420 than our ability to do things like learn languages or recognize faces. We don't know exactly how that

00:10:21.780 works, but we know we're actually pretty good at it. Well, so to get the benefit of that incubation

00:10:26.040 period where your default network is, you know, working on the, chewing on the problem while your

00:10:29.880 mind want walking or exercising, doing whatever, you still got to put in some work, like some actual

00:10:34.560 work. What does the research say about like how much you actually need to work so that you can

00:10:40.560 actually be productive? Right. So at the daily level, most of us are capable of doing really hard,

00:10:48.340 sustained creative or cognitive work for about four or five hours a day. And that's in bursts of like

00:10:54.800 90 minutes or so. And then we need breaks in order to just recover, you know, recover our attention,

00:11:00.940 recover our energy. And once you move past that, there is always, you know, like letters that you can

00:11:09.580 answer or sort of low intensity cognitive work that you can take on. But the core of your day is that

00:11:16.280 four to five hours of really serious head sort of heads down time. Now, what really creative people

00:11:22.740 who have a lot of control over their schedules are able to do is alternate, kind of break those up.

00:11:28.700 So you do like three or four hours, and then you have this period where you go off and you do something

00:11:35.160 that looks totally unproductive, go work in the garden, go for a long walk. But what's happening

00:11:40.180 actually is that you've got unsolved problems that are still kind of running around in your head when

00:11:45.060 you go out on the running trail or wherever. And while you're out there, your subconscious keeps

00:11:51.000 working on these, even while, you know, you are, you know, working on your mile split time,

00:11:57.400 or you're admiring the trees and trees in the clouds. And so by constructing days where you're

00:12:03.100 layering these alternating periods of work and rest, you're able to both sort of work better,

00:12:11.060 and sort of work in a more sustainable way, and do better work.

00:12:16.500 What I like about rest is you find all these historical examples of great thinkers and creative

00:12:21.320 people who kind of counterintuitive, like just sort of they fell upon this, like they kind of figured

00:12:26.100 it out on their own without the science. What was interesting with the how much they worked in a

00:12:29.900 day, most of them like worked four to five hours tops, that's it. Like, yeah, like, and then after

00:12:37.040 that, they would just go go garden or walk, like, you know, Charles Darwin, wake up, he'd work four

00:12:41.220 hours, and then he just go for a walk the rest of the day.

00:12:43.940 Yeah, you know, and Darwin got a lot done. It's really, it's pretty amazing. I mean, these,

00:12:49.440 you know, and what these people realized, like 100 years before consultants today who talk about like

00:12:56.740 maximizing attention and energy rather than maximizing, you know, maximizing time at work,

00:13:02.460 or, you know, athletic trainers who talk about the importance of rest time, you know, and sort of,

00:13:09.720 you know, sing the praises of, you know, intensive workouts with breaks. People like Darwin kind of

00:13:16.540 discovered on their own that this was a great way to work and a great way to be able to do the kinds

00:13:23.740 of work that they really love to do.

00:13:26.720 And with these insights that, you know, if working four hours a day of concentrated work,

00:13:31.700 and then using the rest of the day to rest and sort of decompress and let that default network

00:13:36.580 system do its work, what does that have to say about our current work setup where it's like 40 to

00:13:41.120 50 hours a week?

00:13:42.920 You know, I think what it tells us is that if we were really interested in creating environments in

00:13:48.480 which people could do their best work and be most creative, most sustainable, most productive,

00:13:55.800 we would organize the day very differently. I mean, for one thing, you know, the sort of the office would

00:14:00.800 not be like the carnival of distraction that it so often is today, you know, with open offices,

00:14:07.440 with Slack channels, with Slack channels and email and messenger, or a kind of office culture in which

00:14:15.100 it's okay to interrupt people with the one quick question that turns into, you know, a 15 minute

00:14:21.020 diversion that throws you completely, you know, that sort of makes you lose track on sort of the

00:14:27.280 essential thing that sort of that you were working on. I think the, you know, the work day would also

00:14:31.300 probably be shorter that, you know, an eight hour day is not necessarily one that is going to yield

00:14:38.760 the best results either for individuals or for organizations. And it would also be the case that

00:14:46.720 we would build in more time for sort of better rest outside of work, that we would have better

00:14:53.560 respect for the boundaries between work and personal life. And in some cases also build in

00:14:57.960 for things like sabbaticals, slightly longer periods of time off, where people can really not just

00:15:04.180 recharge, but like completely change out the kind of mental batteries that we draw upon when we're

00:15:11.220 working. So, you know, and fortunately, we are beginning to see some companies that are experimenting

00:15:17.340 along these lines, right, that are playing around with focus time at work, with playing around with the

00:15:23.080 work week, or that have implemented sabbatical programs for not just for top employees, but for

00:15:29.860 everybody. So, you know, we're starting to see some pushback against the culture of overwork, but,

00:15:37.320 you know, it's early days with that yet. So, yeah, how do you convince your boss,

00:15:41.480 hey boss, I only need to work four hours a day? Right. You know, I think the, you know,

00:15:48.100 there's plenty of science that sort of that backs up that claim. I think that the, you know, first of

00:15:54.000 all, you got to talk about sort of what else you can do in the day in order to make those four hours

00:15:59.760 really as incredibly effective as, you know, as they could be. And I think it's also in the study

00:16:07.840 that I've been doing of companies that are short in their work weeks, it's actually having bosses who

00:16:12.720 recognize the value of this themselves, who've, you know, been professionals for 10 or 15 years,

00:16:18.440 who've run companies, who have faced burnout themselves, and have a sense that maybe it doesn't

00:16:25.860 have to be this way. Who are the ones who are most enthusiastic when people bring up the idea of

00:16:32.620 shortening the work week or playing around with working hours, who see both, you know, the benefits to it,

00:16:38.600 but also see the possibility that this is, you know, this is not just a crazy idea, but it's something

00:16:46.060 that is achievable and can deliver benefits. We're going to take a quick break for your word from our

00:16:50.420 sponsors. And now back to the show. One thing you note in, in rest is that a lot of these highly

00:16:58.860 productive, prolific writers, thinkers, one of the things they did, so they got the most out of that

00:17:03.520 four to five hours they were working is that they had a very meticulous morning routine.

00:17:08.600 What was it about the morning routine that bolsters creativity and productivity? Are there

00:17:13.120 any, like, routines from, you know, people you highlighted that stood out to you?

00:17:16.700 Right. You know, I think that, you know, mornings, first off, I was amazed at how many people,

00:17:22.420 including, like, people who engaged in some fairly, sort of, self-destructive activity and

00:17:28.460 pharmacological experimentation were still, you know, really meticulous about and disciplined around

00:17:36.180 their morning routines, right? Ernest Hemingway, even though he was a notoriously heavy drinker,

00:17:41.260 was up at six every morning writing. And the thing is that mornings turn out to be amazing for deeply

00:17:47.340 focused and kind of solitary creative work, not so much collaboration. But, you know, I found when I

00:17:54.480 was writing, started writing trade press books, that I do my best writing between five and eight in the

00:18:01.260 morning. And I'm someone who, in college, never started, you know, never started homework until

00:18:05.600 Letterman was done, right? But it turns out there's a quality to those early hours that isn't found any

00:18:13.260 other time. And for those of us who aren't natural early risers, the fact that you're kind of, that

00:18:19.460 you're a little bleary actually makes you a little bit more creative. It's like the door to the

00:18:24.120 subconscious stays open a little bit longer, sort of, because you're working against your chronotype.

00:18:30.240 But to get, you know, however, in order to get the most out of it, I think people do two things.

00:18:36.020 And one of them is that they set up as much as possible the night before, right? You don't want

00:18:41.980 to have to make any decisions about what to wear or what to work on first, or, you know, which coffee

00:18:48.120 to have, you just want to, like, set all that up so that you can focus on the stuff that really matters

00:18:55.900 and give yourself the most time to work on your most meaningful stuff. And the second thing that

00:19:00.920 it turns out sounds counterintuitive, but is really valuable, is to stop work the previous day

00:19:07.480 in mid-sentence. Like, don't go to the end of the chapter, either conceptually or literally if you're

00:19:13.160 a writer to stop in mid-sentence. And this makes it easier to get started in the next morning.

00:19:18.820 But it also encourages your creative subconscious to keep thinking about the end of that sentence

00:19:24.080 and to think about kind of the next paragraph and the next problem to be taken up. And so,

00:19:30.780 in a way, what you're doing in the early morning is kind of harvesting work that your, you know,

00:19:36.560 your creative mind has already kind of prepared for you.

00:19:40.020 Yeah, Hemingway did that stop mid-sentence tactic.

00:19:43.380 Exactly. No, you know, and so many writers do this, you know, whether it's Raymond Chandler

00:19:49.440 or Dickens, or it turns out to be a really common practice. And, you know, for some people,

00:19:57.040 it's mainly about not having to face the existential terror of the blank page first, you know, first off,

00:20:02.780 right? Finishing that line of dialogue is a little bit like a writing exercise or a warm-up to get you

00:20:07.640 started. But it turns out that there's also some stuff that kind of goes on under the hood of cognition

00:20:12.860 that makes it a valuable practice.

00:20:16.180 So, these guys, they were doing like their hard work first, like the stuff that actually brought

00:20:20.060 home the bacon. Like, if you're a writer, you're writing. If you're a painter, you're painting. If you're

00:20:24.200 a composer, you're composing. And then they would save, like, I mean, they didn't, Hemingway didn't have

00:20:29.160 email, but he, you know, letters. Like, they would write letters in the afternoon.

00:20:32.300 Right. No, you definitely, you know, you do your most important work first. You don't get up at

00:20:39.040 five in the morning in order to work on, you know, in order to, like, clear out your inbox.

00:20:43.000 And I know that, you know, there are examples of people in the business world who get up early

00:20:47.440 so that they can see what's going on in the market in, you know, some other country. That's really kind

00:20:52.300 of a different thing. That's more like time shifting in order to get, you know, in order to arbitrage

00:20:56.680 some sort of advantage. And while that's something that works in sort of in those worlds, for creative

00:21:02.900 work, it's really about giving yourself time, undisturbed time when no one else is up, to work

00:21:09.460 on stuff that really matters to you. All right. So, do the hard stuff first. Don't finish it. Like,

00:21:13.740 leave a little bit unfinished so that your brain, your unconscious can work on it. And so, you can

00:21:18.160 harvest that the next day. And one thing that these guys, a lot of these guys who were prolific writers,

00:21:23.300 thinkers, et cetera, that what they would do when they took a step away from whatever they

00:21:27.300 were doing, their work, they'd go on, well, a lot of these guys just walked. What is it about

00:21:31.360 walking that makes you, like, come up with ideas? Well, partly, it's simply the physical act of

00:21:38.600 moving stimulates creative thinking. We don't know exactly why walking is valuable as opposed to just

00:21:44.400 being out in nature or being wheeled around in a wheelchair. And there are actually people who have

00:21:48.420 compared to the creative benefits of walking versus being pushed around someplace. But it turns out

00:21:55.300 that there is something about walking that stimulates those creative juices. Now, it's also

00:22:03.480 the case that exposure to nature or to non-office surroundings also does provide a little bit of a

00:22:10.460 benefit. But I think for most of us, walking is something that we can do easily, naturally. It

00:22:16.240 doesn't take a lot of, you know, special equipment. So, we can move very quickly from our desk to this

00:22:22.080 other mode. And the fact that we can move quickly from that one mode to the other, I think also makes

00:22:28.960 it a little bit more likely that our, you know, our minds are going to keep turning over the thing that

00:22:35.480 we were just working on, the problem that we hadn't solved yet, and make some progress, make some progress

00:22:41.380 on it, even as we are, you know, doing a couple circuits around the park.

00:22:46.160 So, yeah, a lot of famous walkers include Darwin. We mentioned Darwin. Kant. A lot of philosophers

00:22:51.100 were walkers. I guess, I mean, it's, yeah, I mean, I guess it goes back to like Socrates and

00:22:55.500 Eric, like those guys walked around while they're philosophizing.

00:22:58.320 Oh, yeah. No, that was, yeah, the, the, the, what of the peripatetic philosophers were walking

00:23:03.380 philosophers.

00:23:04.220 Yeah. So, they, they, they, they grasped that idea that creative ideas come when you're, when you're

00:23:08.060 walking. I thought that was interesting. The studies they did were, it was like, they compared

00:23:10.980 treadmill, like indoors, and then just walking outdoors. And there was no, like, you can walk,

00:23:17.280 you could walk on a treadmill, and you still get the same benefit.

00:23:21.360 Yes. No, there's virtually identical benefits compared to being out in nature. And so, that's

00:23:27.020 the indication that, that there is some creative stimulus specifically to walking, and in particular,

00:23:32.680 walking at your own pace. If you've got to walk really slowly or really quickly,

00:23:38.060 for you, then the benefit gets hindered a little bit. I think mainly because you've got to think

00:23:44.140 a little bit more about keeping up with the, you know, with the person or group that you're

00:23:48.920 walking with.

00:23:50.120 And like, again, like, I think the point, you made this in the book too, is like, walking

00:23:53.120 is something you want to do when you're not doing that highly focused work. Because I think a lot

00:23:56.400 of people hear this, like, oh, walking is creative. I'm going to get a walking treadmill desk,

00:23:59.800 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

00:24:23.700 them together.

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 0.85

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

00:32:42.460 professional ambitions.

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

00:32:52.520 climber.

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

00:34:08.280 lives for quite a long time.

00:34:11.140 You can be productive even longer.

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

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00:40:00.340 thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think

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00:40:07.400 this is Brett McKay reminding you not only to listen to the AOM podcast,

00:40:10.380 but put what you've heard into action.

00:40:19.660 Thank you.

00:40:20.140 Thank you.

The Art of Manliness - December 16, 2020

A Change IS a Rest

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