Stop working to get more done? A foreign concept in the age of hustle culture. Many of us have experienced burnout or exhaustion at some point in our lives. For creatives, this can result in writer’s block, creative fatigue, or the inability to find inspiration.
During an interview about his book Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less, author Alex Soojung-Kim Pang says he studied the rest habits of highly productive people. “I started to think that maybe the secret had to do not just with how they work or their innate intelligence but also with the way they rested.”
What he found was a pattern amongst famous scientists, artists, and authors of “working very intensively a few hours a day and then resting deliberately in various ways.” While our bosses at the office might frown on this approach, we can modify the idea to work within our work environments.
Rest can help us be more creative and find solutions to problems that elude our conscious efforts to solve them.
When we do restorative activities like go for a walk, our subconscious minds relax and “explore different combinations of ideas…And then once it has arrived at one that looks promising…pops into [our] heads as an Aha! moment.” (Pang)
Saundra Dalton-Smith, M.D., poses the idea of seven types of rest we need to combat exhaustion. Physical, mental, sensory, emotional, social, creative, and spiritual. Dalton-Smith says that one way to achieve creative rest is “to surround yourself with inspiration while simultaneously taking the pressure off to ‘do’ something with it.” One way to do this, she suggests, is by “surrounding yourself with nature and simply allowing yourself to feel.”
This is an excellent approach to vacations. You may need creative rest right now. If so, keep this in mind. Next time you’re at the beach and feeling inspired, don’t get out the notebook. Just let yourself relax and appreciate the view.
I have my own experience with restorative rest. In June of 2021 I left my job in publishing to take a 6-month creative sabbatical. The result of that deliberate rest was the start of a new business. Take it from me, rest can change your life. Even if you can’t take six months off, you can take a day.
We have one month of summer left. Let’s use it wisely.