Elizabeth Millard draws a link between the role of rest in serious exercise, and in creative lives, in her new article “How To Recharge And Replenish Your Body Between Workouts.” “Mastering both rest days and recovery time should be an essential part of your fitness plan,” she explains. “Another major benefactor of rest time is your brain.”

The literature on rest and recovery in fitness is gigantic, but it’s not one I drew on in any depth in Rest, mainly because I already had my hands full, and because it would have taken me a long time to wade through all the competing claims and develop the confidence with the literature necessary to make my own argument. (I do talk about how exercise can be a form of deliberate rest, and how lots of very smart people were devoted athletes.) So it’s good to see someone else outline the case!