Creative Productivity through Rest

There are thousands of books about trying to crack the productivity code. As someone who feels perpetually busy, with more books to read than I could ever actually consume and more dreams that I have life for, the desire to be more efficient and more effective has a real weight. After all, there is a great big world out there that needs to hear the gospel. How are we going to get it done in this life?

The answer is that we will not. In fact, as Kelly Kapic reminds us, God does not expect us to get everything done. However, we are supposed to live wisely, “making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.” (Eph 5:16)

In other words, productivity is not the ultimate goal of life, but it can be a good and godly thing.

Many productivity books, like How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, are designed to pack already full days to the max. They teach us to how to push harder, get more in, and get more done.

For some people, motivation and prioritization may, indeed, be the pressing need, but for many of us the real problem is that we are overworked and under rested. Particularly for those of us whose work requires creative thinking and problem solving, there needs to be space in the days, the weeks, and the months to slow down, rest, and let creativity happen.

A Different Approach to Creative Productivity

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang wrote Rest: When You Get More Done When You Work Less to encourage harried professionals to reconsider their “always on” approach to productivity. It may be that we can get more done by actually working less.

Through this readable and engaging book, Pang shows how our culture gets a great deal backward. The pursuit of efficiency as people have increasingly viewed themselves as machines has tended to push out the natural rhythms of life.

Pang offers suggestions for becoming more creative. He discusses the need to cap work sessions to the length when deliberate focus can be maintained. Practicing an instrument for eight hours in a given day is unlikely to produce the positive effect of a significantly shorter practice period where mental focus and acuity are highest. Pang brings data that demonstrates that many of the most productive people have limited their work hours but been very focused when they do work. Additionally, having set routines, taking walks, breaking up the day with naps, stopping mid-idea, and sleeping well (mostly at night) are vital to creativity. It is little wonder than many of us can barely function, because we are really exhausted. We are trying too hard to be successful; perhaps if we took our foot off the gas and structured our lives around creating the right environment for creativity can happen, then the muse will visit.

Assuming one can begin the creative process Pang gives some tools for sustaining it. This includes having periods of recovery. Even during wartimes significant strategists benefited from getting away to allow emotional and mental rest. While the mind rests, creativity may be improved through bodily activity, by focused recreation (e.g., playing chess). For many creative professionals, time away from the grind for a sabbatical may also benefit the ability to produce well.

The Big Difference

Especially as Artificial Intelligence threatens (promises?) to replace the repetitive sorts of human effort, people will need to find ways to be more creative. Low cognitive white-collar work like number crunching, basic research, and form processing may be automated. What computers can’t do is venture into the unknown, care effectively for people, and move beyond mimicry to innovation. (Some may contest these statements, but we shall see.) Rather than simply finding ways to grind out more form reviews in a given day, humans will need to relearn how to invent, to dazzle, and the puzzle through. We may have to shift away from our mechanized understanding of the world toward a more creaturely self-image.

Part of what Pang offers is a recipe for being human in a somewhat inhumane world. Of course, for anyone to buy the book, especially in an airport where the title itself might be enough to attract the attention of a weary business travel, Pang has to sell productivity as the ultimate goal. I think there is a better story and a better purpose that Pang’s ideas can be applied toward.

Rest is remarkable in the banality of most of its suggestions. The techniques Pang recommends are ancient and well-proven. We have just forgotten what it means not to be in a hurry. Rest is, however, encouraging in its appeal for readers to return to a pace that can be maintained. This may not be the book anyone asked for, but it may be just the book many of us needed. Time will tell.

Rest

By Pang, Alex Soojung-Kim

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