I have started to allow myself maximum rest time and work intensely in small sprints. It is the sharpest and most innovative I am when working on creative endeavors. A well rested mind can find solutions and be innovative far beyond what one can achieve by blunting their minds with overwork.
“Forty hour workweeks are a relic of the Industrial Age. Knowledge workers function like athletes — train and sprint, then rest and reassess.” - Naval Ravikant
The hands and our brain are two entirely different tools. The capacities they have and the processes they take to rejuvenate are entirely different. The physical tangible industrial age (of hands) has moved far behind into the past to make way for the information age (of the brain) that we are steeped so deeply into.
As long as rest is not defined as part of meaningful input for 'work' to happen and lesser hours put into jobs are stigmatized, there is no hope for creation and innovation. A dull mind focused heavily on one area can rarely be aware to draw wisdom from other disciplines. Focus by definition means elimination, something we ought to dread when it comes to creativity.
Eventually everything connects - people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se.” -Charles Eames
The traces of industrial age thinking continue to repress creative endeavors as minds of the past continue to confuse long hours to be better and more. As long as we gauge efficiency not by the impact of output but by quantity of time input we are creating a poisoned, regurgitated culture with micro-increments towards progress, if at all.
Scientific observations in the area of Default Mode Network (DMN) too have now allowed us to know the importance of 'not doing anything'.
Naval's Observations can be broken down as:
Train: Read, consume healthy content, engage with knowledge
Sprint: This is Output - create (be it code, writing, designing, etc.)
Rest: Sleep, meditate, day-dream, play music, dance, garden / clean
Reassess: Look at your work and reassess, do you need training or more rest? if not jump into another sprint
Unfortunately, not all jobs require one to be creative and / or contribute thought or innovations to this world we live in. Anthropologist David Graeber notes that most jobs neatly fit into the category of 'Bullshit Jobs' and are not only highly paid but also well-respected even though their contribution to economy or the value system of humanity is non-existent. What I know for sure is working long hours and hoping to come up with the most innovative thought is paradoxical and a Bullshit Idea.
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