How can I have a better rest ethic?

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans – John Lennon

I would like to have sustained output without it requiring grinding, excessive intensity, or feeling like pushing on a string. I know I am capable of this.

I have “focus time” blocks of a couple hours during which I work. I have noticed that not reaching a minimum number of daily hours, being interrupted, or getting distracted during this time can cause a lot of internal annoyance. I have tried things like LeechBlock, turning the internet off in the morning, coworking, etc, with the express purpose of “minimizing distractions”. Especially with a kid, things will happen and this mindset is a little silly.

Meditations For Mortals chapter 21 (titled “What’s an interruption, anyway?”) makes the point that scheduling and trying to “protect” such focus blocks can make distractions feel worse & can cause more things to seem like interruptions in the first place. A (cliched but accurate) example from the book:

Suppose it’s 4.10 p.m., on a day when it’s not my turn for school pickup, and I’m focusing hard in my office at home when my son bursts in, to tell me excitedly of his preparations for the school play. A small moment of connection, the kind of thing life’s supposed to be about – except that if my time-boxing plan deems 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. an hour for deep focus, then his entrance is suddenly an intrusion, one more minor way in my which my day has gone wrong.

Focus blocks seen as distraction-free bastions of time can turn them into tools to control oneself. That is pushing on a string & inward-facing grinding to me.

So what is the alternative?

Meditations For Mortals suggests “approaching the phenomena we pejoratively label ‘interruptions’ and ‘distractions’ a little more neutrally,” because calling something a distraction or an interruption presumes it’s not good for you. But perhaps it’s really an unexpected opportunity. Or, as You and Your Research puts it:

I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don’t know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important.

Distractions and interruptions can keep you connected to the real world, including your family. Those are great points.

Another, somewhat orthogonal, angle of attack is making it easier to get back into a focused mode. That way, distractions or interruptions are not a big deal because you know you can quickly get back to focusing on whatever you were doing. Rather than seeing focus as something that is precious, fragile, and easy to lose, what if it instead felt abundant, able to be conjured nearly on demand?

This is one of the tactics discussed in The Art Of Learning – what ultimately matters for performance is how well you can rest, not necessarily how intensely you can focus.

The book provides ideas on how to practice resting & releasing tension:

If you are interested in really improving as a performer, I would suggest incorporating the rhythm of stress and recovery into all aspects of your life… So, if you are reading a book and lose focus, put the book down, take some deep breaths, and pick it up again with a fresh eye. If you are at work and find yourself running out of mental stamina, take a break, wash your face, and come back renewed. It would be an excellent idea to spend a few minutes a day doing some simple meditation practice in which your mind gathers and releases with the ebb and flow of your breath. This will help connect your physical interval training to the mental arenas. If you enjoy the experience, gradually build up your mental stamina and spend more time at it. When practiced properly, Tai Chi Chuan, Yoga, or many forms of sitting meditation can be excellent vehicles for this work.

As we get better and better at releasing tension and coming back with a full tank of gas in our everyday activities, both physical and mental, we will gain confidence in our abilities to move back and forth between concentration, adrenaline flow, physical exertion (any kind of stress), and relaxation. I can’t tell you how liberating it is to know that relaxation is just a blink away from full awareness. Besides adding to your psychological and physical resilience, this opens up some wonderful and surprising new possibilities. For one thing, now that your conscious mind is free to take little breaks, you’ll be delighted by the surges of creativity that will emerge out of your unconscious. You’ll become more attuned to your intuition and will slowly become more and more true to yourself stylistically. The unconscious mind is a powerful tool, and learning how to relax under pressure is a key first step to tapping into its potential.

Seen in this light, the useful part of a technique like Pomodoro may be that it forces you to take a break, rather than the focus periods themselves.

Some ways I might practice the rhythm of stress & recovery in daily life:

• Interval training
• Pomodoro
• Do Nothing meditation
• Taking naps (I am so bad at this!)