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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Quit - A Review

Quitters never win and winners never quit.

At least, that’s what I’ve heard many times so far in my middle-aged existence.

Many of the cultural myths that we celebrate tell the stories of underdogs who didn’t quit when they were up against unthinkable odds and someone came through. Stories like Rudy light up our collective imaginations as we see the little guy, too dumb to go to Notre Dame and too small to get onto the field of play, fight his way through practice for years until he finally gets a moment on the field. All of that happened because he did not quit.

It's a good story. Anyone who can watch Rudy and not get excited has a heart two sizes too small.

But that story is a one in a million. It’s a beautiful story. It’s romantic. It also only accounts for a tiny piece of Rudy’s own story, or the thousands of different ways that his story could have ended had he chosen just a little differently. Those might not have ended up on the big screen, but we have no idea what his energy and effort could have led to in an alternate universe where he didn’t invest so much of himself into being a mediocre college football player.

The point isn’t the Rudy Ruettiger story, though. The point is that we have made it a sign of weakness to recognize that we are going the wrong way, pursuing the wrong dream, and that the best course of action is to turn around. That’s what quitting can be. It can be deciding to go a different way.

What if sometimes the quitting is the best way to make progress in life?

Annie Duke’s recent book, Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away, is about looking at quitting in a different way and recognizing that sometimes it is really the best choice available.

Duke was once a professional poker player. She recognizes, as Kenny Rogers used to sing, “You've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, and know when to run.” One of the basic skills every poker player needs to have is recognizing when the odds are stacking against you and folding the hand. Quit is really about learning to recognize when it is time to step away from a hand so that you can play another hand. It’s about learning when to quit.

Of course, the assumption Duke makes is that the sort of people who are reading her book are people that are going to quit one activity to go start another. A professional athlete might retire because his joints are creaky and he can’t run as fast, but generally the competitive drive that got them to the peak of their sport pushes them to strive in another area. Duke’s book is for the sort of person that is going to attack the next goal, at which they might have a better chance of succeeding.

Quit falls into the category of a lot of other self-help, productivity, and organizational psychology book. Duke is a popularizer who cites studies performed by others, but communicates them in a way that is easily accessible and more helpful than a peer reviewed article with a bunch of tables. There are citations of Daniel Kahneman, Richard Thaler, and some of the other usual subjects. This is an airplane book. It takes a few hours to read, can be put down and picked up with ease, and offers some self-improvement along the way.

One of the deep flaws of this book is that the motivations behind sticking to it or quitting are shallow and instrumental. It’s all about money and self-fulfillment. Given that, it’s not surprising that Duke recommends her decision making for divorce in cases where a spouse isn’t helping someone achieve their full potential. There is little room for duty and integrity in this book. It’s all about my happiness and my success.

At the same time, the thought process behind decision making can be helpful for an individual or organization that is stuck in a rut. There are too many church programs that persist for years after the people that drove them are gone or their purpose is being efficiently fulfilled. Sometimes we need to cut our losses in a ministry and move on to something that fits better with the current need or the current members of the congregation.

Taken with a grain of salt, there is a chunk of good advice in this popular-level book. Sometimes we need to put our heads down and keep pushing forward. But we also need to recognize that when we do that, we are giving up opportunities for something else. Sometimes we need to look at other opportunities and recognize they provide a better return on the investment of our time. Efficiency and success isn’t the only thing that matters, but sometimes it does matter. Sometimes we need to know when to quit.

Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away

By Duke, Annie

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