Parenthood and the need for recovery: we need time away from even our most meaningful work
Slate has a piece by Elissa Strauss explaining "Why retreats for moms are a terrible idea." I'll admit that I'd never heard of retreats for moms, other than
Sabbaticals, work-life balance, and leisure vs. idleness
Bowdoin professor Kristen Ghodsee writes in the Chronicle Vitae about her experience on sabbatical in Europe, and how that life compares to American academic culture: I still worked
Automation, leisure, and the problem of avoiding “overwork for some and starvation for others”
In her essay on the meaning of leisure, Washington Post editor Christine Emba notes that Uber recently announced that it would debut self-driving cars in Pittsburgh later this fall. This, she argues, marks another step
Americans “have lost our understanding of what leisure time should be and why it has value”
Washington Post editor Christine Emba has a good essay on our need to rethink the meaning and use of leisure. Americans "have lost our understanding of what leisure
Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield: “People can only think really hard for 6 to 8 hours a day”
I talk briefly about it in REST, but I'm planning a piece that's a deep dive into thinking about working hours in the tech industry, and how some
Boris Johnson and the dangers of overwork
I confess that this is not a quote that made it into REST (there's already lots of Churchill, anyway): He boasted to me in the humble-brag way peculiar
“let yourself be ‘lazy’ enough to only focus on what’s critical”
Good advice from Bill Gates (whose "think week" tradition earns him a place in REST): “Bill Gates once said he liked hiring smart, lazy people because they know
Judy Wacjman on technology and time pressure
There’s a great interview with LSE sociologist Judy Wajcman about her latest book, Pressed for Time: I have been skeptical about the story that acceleration is a purely
The costs of being always-available in academia
In REST, I talk a lot about why being able to unplug from work and detach emotionally and psychologically are good in the both the short term and
Work and sleep deprivation in the film industry
An interesting piece in Psychology Today about how Hollywood filming schedules mess with sleep patterns, and the dangers that causes: Within the entertainment business there has been much