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Funny how hustle porn rears up so aggressively during the literal one week a year that the US actually reliably treats as a holiday? FUNNY! Anyway here are some favorite things about rest:
The "10,000 hours rule" (never a rule, decried by a thousand cognitive scientists, plucked from research to be cast into podcast-perpetual-pandering by Gladwell, Like He Does) in original context actually talks about deliberate practice and *rest* cycles.
Creativity research reliably documents the importance of deep rest, and that the people privileged to be able to live highly creative lives often have these deep rest cycles built in. Has been missed in research often but profoundly predictive of work outcomes when included.
Rest is required for learning (& forgetting is required for learning!). Learning isn't just mashing more content into a bucket-brain forever. Lots of effects (from deliberate practice to spacing) show cram/work 'til you drop methods are inefficient, destructive in the longterm.
Sleep is protective of long-term cognitive health in so many ways that it's up there with exercise and food as an absolute basic building block, not just of daily functioning, but of cognitive health in aging.
I don't believe we need to justify rest--but it is *clearly* tied to performance. High performers worked far fewer hours than we think. When you look into famous intellectual figures that people tweet hustle porn about, they did not work the 80+ hour weeks we have normalized.
Getting downtime, mind-wandering time, nondirected time, has shown strong associations with creativity and innovation. It makes sense. You need space to wonder about things that *don't seem productive* otherwise why would they be innovative??
Achievement by supposed lone figures rides on the labor of all. Many of us come from families that have had to work every moment & had that work only expand the privilegeds' time. I think...I think that sometimes resting is reclaiming, healing intergenerational exploitation.
So rest up, friends. You have earned rest because you are a living creature who exists on this planet. If you want to devote yourself to high achievement, you are justified in rest by understanding the complexity of how achievement functions.
