4 reasons to take rest more seriously

When you first meet someone, you are forced into the often tedious back-and-forth known as small talk. “How do you know Mark?” you ask, utterly uncaring for the answer. But the most common opening move in small talk, at least in many Western cultures, is the dreaded, “So, what do you do for a living?”

We tend to define ourselves by our work. In some ways, this is unsurprising; most people spend approximately one-third of their lives at work. But it’s also a touch depressing. After all, what does someone’s day job really tell you about who they are? A much better, and certainly more interesting, question would be, “So, what do you do in your leisure time?”

In this week’s Mini Philosophy interview, I spoke with Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, the bestselling author of Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less. Soojung-Kim Pang is the founder of the 4 Day Week Studio and a vocal advocate for working less but doing more.

Here are four reasons why we should take rest more seriously.

1. It makes you better at your job

“I wrote Rest for people like myself — professionals who see work as a great source of meaning and satisfaction, who are a little perfectionist, and who like the idea of doing work that has an impact on the world,” Soojung-Kim Pang tells me. “And I wanted to make the argument that even for people like us, it makes sense to make a place for rest in our everyday lives, because it acts as a source of renewal, as a springboard for new ideas, and because it can help us be more creative and do more of the kind of work that we love to do.”

Soojung-Kim Pang’s point is that if you want to be good at your job — and if your job makes you happy — then the best way to do that is to give yourself good rest. Working longer and harder does not always give the best results. There is a kind of law of diminishing returns with labor, or a bell curve. If you work two hours a day, not much is going to get done. If you work fifteen hours a day, a lot of those hours are going to be wasted. Rest more to work better and happier.

2. Today’s rest is tomorrow’s success

“Charles Townes spent several years working on the laser when he was a young professor at Columbia University, and his bosses — including two Nobel Prize winners and Manhattan Project alums — thought that the work was going absolutely nowhere. They said he was throwing away a promising career on an intellectual dead end. And Townes had nothing substantive to show for his work — until the moment he made it work. So, was the value of those years zero until he switched on the laser?

The value of a day’s work in the factory or on the farm is much easier to assess: at the end of the day you’ve plowed the field or produced goods with a known value. With creative work, there can be a long incubation period that looks unproductive but produces something enduring, or a work that never finds its audience, or a work (like the laser) that others build on and use in ways you never imagine. All these outcomes are beyond your control, which makes it much harder to value that work in the moment — or even a year or a decade later.”

When you rest properly — in activity and passion projects, and not just vegetating on the sofa — then you are not “doing nothing.” You are developing your skills, tuning your aptitudes, and expanding your knowledge. A personal example, here: I have always read for “fun.” I then started to write for “fun.” I honed my writing voice and learned the writing trade — all in the long Sunday hours “not working.” Now, here I am, having turned leisure into work.

3. The more we rest, the more we do

“When you ask people at companies that implement 4-day work weeks how they spend their free time, it turns out that they do ridiculously wholesome things with it. They spend time with family and friends, they do volunteer work, take up serious hobbies, or do professional development. And companies report that people are more productive, have better ideas, and are more collaborative. So, it’s a win for everyone.”

The idea that “the devil makes work for idle hands” is an old one — and it’s also a false one. The evidence suggests that if you give people the space to do “what they want,” then it turns out that most people want to do good things. They care for relatives, learn a new skill, and grow as human beings. In the 1950s and 60s, the psychologist Douglas McGregor argued that there are two kinds of viewing the world. Theory X thinkers assume humans are lazy, feckless layabouts who need to be busy if they’re not to cause trouble. Theory Y thinking assumes that humans will thrive on responsibility and turn their effort to good. What Soojung-Kim Pang is saying is that the evidence shows we should all be Theory Y thinkers more often.

4. Rest is the best retirement plan

“One of the benefits of learning to take rest seriously earlier in life is that it plants the seeds for a healthier, happier life decades later. Experts on aging tell us that how we live in our 40s and 50s plays an outsized role in how healthy we are in our 70s and 80s, and how well we are able to adjust to the challenges of retirement.

It turns out, all the things I talk about in my book — pursuing serious hobbies, being physically active, taking naps — improve our physical and cognitive health later in life. They also give us the resources that we need to have a happier retirement.

For too many people, retirement is an existential challenge, because after decades of working, they don’t know who they are outside their jobs. Remove the framework of occupation and professional status, and those people are bereft. If, on the other hand, you have decades of hobbies that have enriched your life, made you stronger, and kept you mentally sharp, retirement is less like a huge life change and more like an adjustment of the balance between work and rest.”

In other words, if you see your life as defined by your work, then what is there left to “life” when you retire? Save yourself the time and the effort now, and “get a life” now. Don’t wait until you’re 80 years old to realize that you need a passion or a hobby or friends to talk to. Most people squirrel a bit of money away every month into their retirement plan. What Soojung-Kim Pang is saying is that we should devote a bit of time to developing ourselves every month, as well.