My Washington Post interview: “How Charles Darwin used rest to be more productive”
I'm in today's Washington Post, thanks to Brigid Schulte, a Post contributor and author of Overwhelmed. In the United States, we work among the longest hours of any
“the person who initiates the solution to a problem is different from the one who solves it”
An interesting aside in Santiago Ramón y Cajal's Advice for a Young Investigator on neuroplasticity, creativity, and identity: When one reflects on the ability that humans display for modifying and refining
“What if describing someone as mundane was a new compliment?”
James Hamblin talks to Manoush Zomorodi about boredom and creativity. It's whimsical, but still, nicely done.
WNYC’s Bored and Brilliant challenge
WNYC’s Bored and Brilliant challenge starts today. What’s on the agenda? As you move from place to place, keep your phone in your pocket, out of your direct line of sight.
“Nothing’s wrong, I’m just going off to be bored”
The Sydney Morning Herald has a piece about Neil Gaiman's search for boredom. Neil Gaiman tried a novel New Year's resolution last year: he took a four-month hiatus
“How can one look happy when he is thinking about the anomalous Zeeman effect?”
Yet another anecdote on walking and mind-wandering, this time from Chemistry World: In late 1922, Wolfgang Pauli took an aimless stroll through Copenhagen’s beautiful streets, deep in thought. Presently,
“the work has been done while one slept or shopped or talked with friends”
From Graham Greene's The End of the Affair (quoted by Rachel Toor in her Chronicle of Higher Ed piece on the habits of productive writers): "I was trying
Is there a downside to seeing everything as a skill?
Skill sees to be everywhere, and everything, it seems, is now a skill. Compassion is a skill, as you can discover in a day-long seminar with Kristen New. In
“electrical illumination revolutionised the night and, in turn, sleep”
A nice piece in Aeon by Scottish writer Karen Emslie about segmented sleep, featuring the (pioneering and incredibly innovative) work of Virginia Tech historian A. Roger Ekirch, and why it
Stephen King on writing as “creative sleep”
One of the arguments I'm building in the rest project is that for creative people, work and rest are not opposites, but partners. We think of rest as