Rest - Softcover

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241217288 ISBN 13: 9780241217283

Publisher: Penguin Life, 2017

Synopsis

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About this title

From the Author

I became interested in the importance of rest in creative lives began when I noticed a paradox: many of history's most accomplished thinkers, artists, writers, and composers organized their lives around their work, but not their days. Figures as diverse as Charles Darwin, Salvador Dali, and Maya Angelou think about their work constantly, and achieve much more than most of us, yet they spend fewer hours laboring than we do. What accounts for their success?
The key is not the quantity of their work, but the quality of their rest. Many super-creative and -productive people take a distinctive approach to rest. 

• They see rest as a skill: like speaking or running, it's something we all do naturally, and can learn to do better. 
• They learn to harness mind-wandering: they develop habits that give their brains a break, or give their unconscious minds time to explore new ideas. 
• They treat rest with respect, and make time for it in their daily schedules. 
• They recognize rest as a resource that can extend their creative lives.

Rest blends history, biography, and recent work in neuroscience and psychology to uncover the critical but under-recognized role rest plays in the lives of creative people. It shows how creative figures structure their days to make good use of rest, and why long walks, afternoon naps, vigorous exercise, and "deep play" stimulate creative work and sustain creative lives.

About the Author

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang has spent the past twenty years studying people, technology, and the worlds they make. A professional futurist with a PhD in the history of science, he is a former Microsoft Research fellow, a visiting scholar at Stanford and Oxford universities, and a senior consultant at Strategic Business Insights, a Silicon Valley-based think tank. His writings have appeared in Scientific American, American Scientist, and the Los Angeles Times Book Review, as well as in many academic publications.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Life
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0241217288
• ISBN 13: 9780241217283
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320