Kurt Vonnegut: “I get up at 7:30 and work four hours a day.”
One of the most consistent findings in REST is how many really prolific and creative people do their most important work in about four focused hours a day.
Deliberate rest and daily schedules
Writer and artist Carey Dunne has a piece in Quartz that talks about deliberate rest and daily schedules, and argues for shorter, more focused working days: An underlying assumption
Leisure activities and mental health: The case of unemployment
While I was writing REST, one of the things I realized about practices like daily walks and deep play is that, in addition to the direct benefits they
“a routine was essential for the prose writing”
Poet Jacob Polley in The Guardian about his routine and the differences between writing prose and poetry:
Former Navy SEAL commanders on waking up early
One of the things that surprised me when I was researching REST was how many really creative people got up early in the morning, and did their most
The value of flexibility: What workers will pay for different kinds of flexible working arrangements
If you ask people if they like flexibility in their jobs, they generally say, yes. But do they like it more than, say, stability or benefits? Would they trade
The most important creative collaboration of your life is with your own Muse
Henri Poincaré was one of the most astute observers of the relationship between the conscious and subsconcious mind in creative work, and he developed a pretty high degree of
John Littlewood’s advice to mathematicians: 4-hour days, acquire the art of “thinking vaguely,” and “work all out or rest completely”
Cambridge from the bell tower at St Mary's Church I've quoted from this before, but I love John Littlewood's essay “The mathematician’s art of work,” In this extract, the
“it was usual in Cambridge to do our main work at night, 9:30 to 2:00 or later:” John Littlewood on morning work
The great English mathematician John Littlewood wrote an essay called “The mathematician’s art of work,” published in The Mathematical Intelligencer in 1978. (Here's a link, though it's behind a firewall.) It's full
On creative lives and the art of saying “no”
One of the striking things I noticed when writing REST was how often the people I was studying said no to things, arranged their lives to smoothy avoid