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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From Strength to Strength - A Review

Getting old is not for wimps, as the saying goes. I was about thirty when changing my sleep patterns to do rotating shiftwork became much more difficult. In the past decade or so I’ve found it more challenging to read and absorb as fast as I used to. (To be fair, that may have more to do with my smartphone habits, as Nicholas Carr seems to show in The Shallows.) My workout routine now includes as much effort to avoid injury as it does trying to push the limits to achieve new goals. It’s a hard thing to go through the aging process, especially in a culture that so significantly values youth.

Arthur Brooks, former president of American Enterprise Institute, offers a difficult diagnosis for those around middle age in his recent book, From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life. Thankfully, he chases that bad news with a healthy dose of encouragement and some helpful suggestions for how to best use the second half of life.

Summary

The book begins with Brooks telling the story of someone well known (he does not identify him) melting down on a plane because he felt like all his work had been for nothing. Having been at the top of his game, in his later years he knew he no longer measured up to that standard and judged his past accomplishments by his present ability. This is a warning. Brooks follows this anecdote with a chapter demonstrating that most people hit their decline much sooner than they recognize professionally.

The bad news is that the decline comes sooner than we would expect. The good news is that it is a particular type of decline. In general, younger people tend to be more adaptable and experience a higher degree of fluid intelligence. This is why software “upgrades” becomes “frustrating changes” at some point in life. On the other hand, there are new intelligences that open up. People tend to become wiser––having messed more things, perhaps––and they also tend to become more articulate. Some professions, especially humanities, tend to gain in acumen as time goes on, largely because of the volume of background knowledge that must be obtained. So, the bad news is tempered by some good news, as long as we are prepared to accept it and adjust ourselves to its reality.

Brooks argues that to age gracefully we must adapt our expectations. It simply isn’t feasible for a fifty year old to expect the same results with the same effort as someone in their mid-twenties. In fact, we are likely to work ourselves to death if we try to even those things out. That is why burnout around middle age is so common. Rather than crash and burn, we should attempt to adjust our expectations gradually. We should remember that we are going to die and live with both the anticipation of what that means and the realization of the limitations that brings. As a result, we should focus more on deep relationships and our spiritual journey (which for Brooks is a blend of Eastern religion and Roman Catholicism), be honest about our changing expectations with those around, and ultimately look for new opportunities that can best use our changing abilities.

Analysis

My own experience in corporate America has reminded me that there is something broken about our expectations. People are expected to continue to ascend the ladder through promotions, often into positions that are increasingly demanding and which absorb more and more time. The end is either fizzling into failure through breakdown or a job transition to another company once the backlog builds too high, or retirement after years of back-breaking effort. Rather than a natural parabola, career progressions appear to be upward sloping lines that end in a sudden drop.

What Brooks recommends is, therefore, a drastic improvement. It is also the sort of advice that could benefit many people who are clinging to past successes earned when the mind worked more swiftly or long hours of focus on a screen seemed less daunting. Accepting Brooks’ advice can change someone’s self-perception from one of loathing to one of hope. In general, this is a good thing.

On the other hand, some of the adjustments to Brooks affirms for later in life would be good for younger folks too. We should not wait until we are on the downhill side of life to focus on community and faith. The advice may be good for those who have neglected those aspects of their lives earlier on, but it is a mistake to presume that those good things can wait to be cultivated. It may be that by investing in one’s religious life and deepening relationships may preclude making it to the pinnacle of success, but it also may prevent the crash from coming. Counterfactuals are hard to conceive, but worth considering.

Conclusion

This is a useful book. There is wisdom in much of what Brooks writes, and this is no exception. As someone who has experienced real decline in several areas of his life, Brooks is speaking as one who is on the journey and is seeking to encourage on the road. From Strength to Strength may be just the sort of book that helps someone struggling with decline from despairing when the inevitable changes come. On the other hand, for those still on the rise, this may be the sort of warning that drives people to reconsider the path they take to make the decline less precipitous.

From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life

By Brooks, Arthur C.

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