Quotes from Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

If you want rest, you have to take it. You have to resist the lure of busyness, make time for rest, take it seriously, and protect it from a world that is intent on stealing it. History

If your work is your self, when you cease to work, you cease to exist.

One thing at a time" will always perform a better day's work than doing two or three things at a time. By following this rule, one person will do more in a day than another does in a week.

In the classic Zen in the Art of Archery, Eugen Herrigel's teacher urged him always to take his next shot unburdened by previous failures to hit the target; as he improved, his teacher urged him not to be influenced by his successes either, to stay in the present moment.

Routinization of work, the researchers concluded, does not have to diminish creativity; if it's accompanied by freedom, routine can enhance creativity.

When we treat workaholics as heroes, we express a belief that labor rather than contemplation is the wellspring of great ideas and that the success of individuals and companies is a measure of their long hours.

As Jessica de Bloom, a psychologist at the University of Tampere and vacation researcher, puts it, vacations are like sleep: you need to take them regularly to benefit.

Strenuous exercise can retrain your body's reaction to stressors. Exposing yourself to predictable, incremental physical stressors in the gym or the playing field increases your capacity to be calm and clear-headed in stressful real-world situations.

Pablo Picasso said, "Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.

Rest is not something that the world gives us. It's never been a gift. It's never been something you do when you've finished everything else. If you want rest, you have to take it. You have to resist the lure of busyness, make time for rest, take it seriously, and protect it from a world that is intent on stealing it.

Most of them have desktop computers rather than laptops, which makes it easier to separate their real-world and digital lives;

Rest doesn't just magically appear when we need it,

The production of myelin by OPCs in the brains of infants and children helps explain how they do smart things; the incomplete myelination of the prefrontal cortex in the brains of teens helps explain why they do stupid things.)

Visual tasks, emotionally laden experiences, and procedural memories (for example, hard-to-describe skills like riding a bike) tend to be consolidated during REM sleep, while declarative memories (things like lists of words) are consolidated during slow-wave sleep.

The supreme quality of great men is the power of resting. Anxiety, restlessness, fretting are marks of weakness. —J. R. SEELEY

Talking with Moraveji is the closest I've come to interacting with a character from the science-fiction show Lost: He has the appropriately exotic biography, personality, and good looks to be a passenger on Oceanic 815 and the technical skills to be part of the shadowy Dharma project.

4 major factors contribute to recovery: Relaxation, Control, Mastery Experiences, and Mental Detachment from work.

The supreme quality of great men is the power of resting. Anxiety, restlessness, fretting are marks of weakness.

How we spend out non-working hours determines very largely how capably or incapably we spend our working hours.

Each little update - each individual bit of social information - is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends' and family members' lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting.

But I've also come to see our respect for overwork as, perhaps a bit paradoxically, intellectually lazy. Measuring time is literally the easiest way to assess someone's dedication and productivity, but it's also very unreliable.

if it's accompanied by freedom, routine can enhance creativity.

It is wonderful how much work can be got through in a day, if we go by the rule—map out our time, divide it off, and take up one thing regularly after another. To drift through our work, or to rush through it in a helter-skelter fashion, ends in comparatively little being done. "One thing at a time" will always perform a better day's work than doing two or three things at a time. By following this rule, one person will do more in a day than another does in a week.

For organizations, burnout contributes to declines in productivity, a more stressed and unhappy workplace, and greater turnover. And it's often an organization's most talented and valuable workers who are most likely to burn out.