By Alex Soojung-Kim Pang | May 11, 2017
Rest has a bad rap in our culture. Most of us think about rest as merely the absence of work—not something valuable in its own right. Sometimes, it’s even equated with laziness.
But nothing could be further from the truth.
Rest is an essential component of working well and working smart. In my new book, Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less, I outline some of the fascinating research that shows how rest helps us to think, innovate, and increase our productivity, and what we can do to rest more effectively.
Even in our brain’s resting state—when we are not directly focused on a task—it’s still active, engaging its “default network” to plug away at problems, examine and toss out possible answers, and look for new information. We may not be able to control these processes completely; but by learning to rest better, we can support them, let them work, and take notice when they uncover something that deserves our attention.
