The Art of Deliberate Rest and Why You Get More Done When You Do Less with Bestselling Author and Researcher Alex Soojung-Kim Pang Part 2

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What are the ways that we can take deliberate rest? Why is it important to take breaks? What can we do to improve our creativity and focus? Join me as I continue my conversation with bestselling author Alex Soojung-Kim Pang as he shares more valuable insights from his book Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less.

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Topics Discussed in this Episode:

The ways that you can practice deliberate rest
The importance of taking breaks
The benefits of incorporating breaks into your schedule
The importance of working on creativity and focus
Play and heartfulness and doing things that you love
Exercise and the benefits it brings
How exercise becomes part of your deliberate rest or deliberate recovery program

Key Takeaways:

Walking stimulates creativity. Even if you’re just walking on a treadmill facing a cinder block wall, you do better on creativity tests than you do if you’re just sitting.
There is some evidence that suggests that the better you are at being able to focus your mind, the better you are at being able to unfocus it in a way that is restorative and creative.
Not doing meditation very well is so much better than not doing it at all.
Meditation does not necessarily need to be using an app or not using an app or sitting in a conventional position, eyes shut, deep breathing. It could be painting, it could be knitting, it could be walking. If you’re getting the meditative benefits, it counts.
Having periods where you can take back control over your time and decide what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it, that is a really important component of rest and recovery.
Focus follows a rhythm.

Action Steps:

Take walks.
Practice meditation.
Create more time by saying no to more things.

Alex said:

“Mind wandering is not your brain jumping from one subject to another subject to another subject, but rather, the mind having a certain kind of openness and serenity at its best that is actually similar to the kind of mental state that you get into when you meditate.”

“There’s a wider range of things that we should think of as restful and is restorative. And just as… there are lots of contexts in which we can practice mindfulness, so, too, are the range of things that turn out to be restful are more diverse than conventional wisdom teach us.”

Thanks for listening!

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Links to things we discuss in the show: