One of the best things about being a full-time author is the freedom to set your own schedule.
This, somewhat paradoxically, can also be one of the worst things about being an author. Because the divide between your work and the rest of your life no longer has a clear delineation, it’s easy to feel guilty about taking breaks. About not doing all the things other people claim you should be doing if you really want to succeed. After all, any minute is one that could technically be spent working toward your career goals.
And then, as a creative person, it’s easy to get excited about new projects and ideas. It’s often not long before we have a half dozen or more projects screaming for our attention. Which, in turn, can easily dial up the voice in our heads saying you need to work more, resting just isn’t an option to 11.
The ultimate reward of all these shoulds and coulds?
Working more. Making less. Feeling overextended and exhausted.
The truth I’ve discovered, however, is this.
There are many things I think that I should do.
Even more that I could do.
But there are very few things that I actually need to do to build the life and career I want. And trying to take on all those things I should and could do has rarely have moved me in that direction.
One of those things we do need, somewhat counterintuitively, is rest. Whether that’s a break within the day, or on a longer scale, rest, rather than being emblematic of laziness, is a valuable amplifier for our creative work (and overall well-being).
So in this guide, I’ll break down some ways that have helped me incorporate three types of rest into my own life over the past couple years: sleep, active rest, and passive rest. Then I’ll go over what I’ve found to be the “optimal” workday for balancing creative work and rest.
Let’s get started with the bedrock of rest: sleep.
SLEEP
We all know sleep is important. This is not breaking news. Yet it often still gets short shrift when it comes to our priorities. We’ll work longer hours to catch up on projects, putting off sleep, and then wake up feeling lethargic and less focused the next day. Then continue the cycle, falling further and further behind. This is like paying off a credit card’s interest with another credit card. Instead of fixing the underlying debt, it actively compounds it.
Suffice to say, we generally concentrate better, are more efficient, can work longer, produce higher quality work, feel better etc. when we’re well slept.
It’s worth considering that sleep is exceptionally dangerous from an evolutionary perspective; it leaves us vulnerable to the elements and predators, and also takes valuable time away from finding water and food. Many people treat it as a begrudging necessity that limits their output, and thus strive to sleep less. But basically all animals sleep. And they wouldn’t do so if sleep wasn’t immensely valuable and critical to surviving and thriving.
Of course, for those with small children eager to open Christmas gifts tomorrow (I’m writing this on Christmas Eve), sleep will probably be at a premium. So the ability to function reasonably well when fatigued is useful (and necessary). This, however is the default state for many people, and it is assumed that this is normal. Accepting it as such fails to recognize that we can often make modest adjustments to our behavior, environment, or decisions to get more sleep.
In lieu of productivity hacks or some secret organization system or anything else, I suspect that just getting an extra 30 – 60 minutes of sleep would probably yield the largest increase in productivity for at least 50%+ of people reading this (myself included). Naps can be a potentially useful recovery tool here, too, if they don’t throw off your main sleep schedule. Whatever ways you can find to regularly get some extra sleep (if you need it) will have massive positive spillover effects to pretty much all aspects of your life.
If you’re looking for a variety of sleep strategies beyond the typical regurgitated “no screens before bedtime” advice, check out The Sleep Fix by Diane Macedo.
ACTIVE REST and RECOVERY
Active recovery is a term from the exercise world, wherein you might do some sort of resistance (weight) training one day, then a lighter cardio or mobility workout the next day that allows your muscles to recover while still getting the benefits associated with moving around.
In his book Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less, author Alex Soojung-Kim Pang outlines four aspects of tasks that help us engage in active mental rest and recovery:
- Relaxation: doing something enjoyable / not mentally taxing
- Control: being able to choose what you’re doing as you’re resting
- Mastery experiences: having something other than work that you do well
- Mental detachment from work: disconnecting from your current task
For a self-employed person, mental detachment tends to be the most challenging. If you work from home, work is always just a button click away. And for authors, this problem is compounded further. Because many forms of entertainment also offer sneaky opportunities to engage in more work.
When reading, we might choose books for research and study, rather than enjoyment.
When watching movies or TV, instead of relaxing, we might break down the plot structure or character interaction.
So these activities can be restful. Or they can just be a form of disguised work. Naturally, if you enjoy the work, then I think they can be both restful and productive. The dangerous thinking here is when we believe we must make our rest time productive. And thus feel obligated to only consume things that will be helpful to our career.
Examples of other forms of active recovery: meditating, walking, working out, playing an instrument or engaging in another hobby, socializing with friends, interacting with your kids and so forth.
Another example of active recovery that’s longer in scope is Bill Gates’ famous week-long reading sabbatical, wherein he takes a week off to read tons of books.
In the context of your author career, you could take time off between writing books to read, take courses, do admin, marketing, and so forth. Of course, these potentially don’t tick the “mental detachment” box. Or they might allow you to disconnect enough from the writing process to return to the writing refreshed.
But you don’t need to only do “helpful” things when you rest.
In fact, some of our best ideas come when we’re not doing anything “useful” at all.
Which is where passive rest comes in.
PASSIVE REST
Passive rest is the proverbial, “sip margaritas on the beach and do nothing” type of break that many people dream about, but has, in modern times, become maligned by essentially every self-help guru and productivity expert.
You don’t actually want that, they all say. It will be boring.
And while it’s true that in too great a volume this is not what ambitious people want, I think this type of rhetoric often dismisses the utility of just doing nothing of value for a few hours (or even days) and being cool with it.
So I’d argue that passive rest has become massively underrated, especially for driven entrepreneurial / self-employed / creative types. I’d define passive rest as something that doesn’t have any goal other than the activity itself. E.g., when you watch TV you’re generally not trying to “better” yourself or have some sort of goal like watch 15 episodes or whatever.
You’re just doing the thing for the sake of doing it.
We’re all familiar with great ideas hitting us in the shower. These particular moments aren’t ones where we’re actively trying to improve in any way. We’re just existing outside the noise.
And it’s when we completely disconnect from any sort of goal or ambition that our subconscious can surface some of our best ideas.
This is why something like scrolling social media or reading news tends to make for a poor form of passive rest. It just raises our internal noise level to a fever pitch thanks to the ensuing stress / anger / other negative emotions, thus crowding out room for inspiration and actual thought. Instead of increasing our mental bandwidth, social media tends to reduce it.
A couple examples of passive rest that I personally enjoy.
I’ll put on a song I like and just listen to it.
Nothing else. I’m not writing, working out, cleaning, organizing.
Just listening to the song.
Sometimes ideas come. Other times they don’t. One time an idea came to me for market research that I hadn’t thought of before. I wasn’t trying to come up with ideas; the space allowed it to materialize.
And then just watching whatever I want on TV without judgement.
Last Christmas Eve, the 1 PM slate of football games on NFL Redzone was terrible. A bunch of sub-.500 teams and intriguing matchups. I watched it for an hour.
This Christmas Eve, after I’m done updating this essay, I’m going to go watch Carry-On. I doubt this will yield any profound insights into the nature of human condition. I’m not gonna break down its plot structure as a study session. There is no goal at all in watching this movie, other than to watch it. And I will enjoy it. (update: it was ludicrous and I did indeed enjoy it)
Why do these things?
Something comedian Bill Burr once said really resonated with me (paraphrasing): I just want to be able to watch a movie in the middle of the day without someone telling me I can’t.
And what’s the point of working for myself if I can’t watch an entertaining action movie or some shitty football games on Christmas Eve (or any other day) if I feel like it?
No ideas came to me while watching these games, by the way. I doubt any will come to me while watching the movie. (note: none did)
But that isn’t the point.
Sometimes the point is just to relax and zone out.
Let’s end with some practical applications of these ideas.
HOW LONG SHOULD I WORK and REST?
We’ve discussed some principles of effective rest.
But how long should you work and rest?
There’s that pesky word “should” again.
The truth is, the balance will depend on the person. Further, it’ll depend on your energy levels that day. And, naturally, it’s highly dependent on the rest of your schedule.
I’ll offer some suggestions, since I have the luxury of a pretty open schedule. This has offered me the opportunity to experiment with a lot of different approaches.
THE OPTIMAL WORKDAY
The word optimal is used somewhat tongue-in-cheek here because there is no optimal workday. Silicon Valley CEOs worship at the altar of grind ’til you die 14 hour workdays. Lifestyle internet gurus turn their noses up at anyone working more than a couple hours a day.
But only one person in the world can answer “how much is the ideal amount to work each day?”
And that person is you.
This depends on how you want to spend your days. It’s also contingent on your own personal work strengths. Some people can sprint for a short period of time, then need time to disconnect and recharge. Others are steady and consistent, like a pack horse carrying its cargo over hilly mountain passes, rain, wind, or snow be damned.
What I’ve found in general: many creatives work best doing 2 – 5 hours of focused, solid work a day. That may not seem like a lot, but 5 hours of actual work is probably more than 99% of people regularly accomplish. We’re not talking about 2 hours of writing interspersed with 3 hours of checking Facebook and going down video essay rabbit holes on YouTube.
You are writing for that 5 hours. ~95% – 98% of that time is spent actually working on the project; the only downtime during your work hours is to get a snack, something to drink, or go to the bathroom. For most projects, you are not going to work 5 hours in a straight shot (more on optimal work times in the next section). But any breaks you take are deliberate. This doesn’t mean planned (in the next section I also discuss my thoughts on scheduling out your entire day in advance). It just means you make a conscious decision to take a break rather than getting sucked into a 45 minute sidequest by the Pavlovian ping of a new email hitting your inbox.
This is simple. You just mentally say I am going to now check email. You can even try saying them out loud. This may sound trite or silly, but it helps bring your conscious focus to the decision. In the example below, Charles Darwin spent an hour each morning answering letters. This is email’s 19th century analogue. He didn’t avoid writing letters; he was merely deliberate about when he chose to do so.
If you’re trying this distraction-free approach for the first time, note that 2 – 5 hours of focused work is intense. This intensity means it’s sufficient to accomplish whatever creative goals you might have, however. Probably smash them to pieces, in fact. This is good news for those of us who aren’t the rise and grind type. And it’s especially promising for those with day jobs, since it means there are enough remaining hours in the day for time-strapped folks to build their author careers.
There are plenty of historical examples of highly successful people working this amount, by the way.
Here’s Leonard Woolf, husband of Virginia Woolf, outlining her 3 and a half hour a day writing habit (emphasis added):
“Every morning, therefore, at about 9:30 after breakfast each of us, as if moved by a law of unquestioned nature, went off and “worked” until lunch at one. It is surprising how much one can produce in a year, whether of buns or books or pots, or pictures, if one works hard and professionally for three and a half hours every day for 330 days. That was why, despite her disabilities, Virginia was able to produce so very much.”
Leonard Woolf
Here’s another example, found in one of my favorite passages from Rest where Pang chronicles how Darwin worked around 4 – 5 hours a day (emphasis added):
“After his morning walk and breakfast, Darwin was in his study by eight and worked a steady hour and a half. At nine thirty he would read the morning mail and write letters. At ten thirty, Darwin returned to more serious work, sometimes moving to his aviary, greenhouse, or one of several other buildings where he conducted his experiments. By noon, he would declare, “I’ve done a good day’s work,” and set out on a long walk on the Sandwalk, a path he had laid out not long after buying Down House…When he returned after an hour or more, Darwin had lunch and answered more letters. At three he would retire for a nap; an hour later he would arise, take another walk around the Sandwalk, then return to his study until five thirty, when he would join his wife, Emma, and their family for dinner. On this schedule he wrote nineteen books, including technical volumes on climbing plants, barnacles, and other subjects; the controversial Descent of Man; and The Origin of Species, probably the single most famous book in the history of science, and a book that still affects the way we think about nature and ourselves.”
Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less (p.52)
A certain amount of work volume, of course, is required to produce anything. Volume also helps you put in the reps to get good, build skill, and identify what works (and what doesn’t). Be flexible here; your work volume will hinge on your personality, schedule, and other factors. Proponents of the 2 – 5 hour approach sometimes overextend their argument, claiming work beyond this is ineffective or subject to poor focus. This is clearly untrue; there are those who can work for longer. And there are those who prefer a 2 – 5 hour approach (such as myself), but find themselves working 8 or 10 hours on some days when everything is firing on all cylinders.
But I think that there is far too much focus on work volume in general. Even 24 hours a day spent on useless tasks will yield no progress. Ultimately, leverage—investing your work hours into projects that actually matter—has far more impact. It’s also worth noting that leverage comes from both focusing on a few projects and also being able to focus (i.e., do quality work). So too much work, too little sleep? They make Jack a dull boy (and a worse author, to boot).
OPTIMAL WORK TIMES
As for optimal work times: anecdotally, 90 – 120 minutes seems to be the concentration breaking point for a single sitting. Most movies have a runtime around 2 hours for this reason. This is something I’ve found when teaching classes and backed up from talking with my dad, who was a college professor for years.
That being said, there are plenty of exceptions where this might be too long or, alternatively, not long enough.
I can focus well for long periods of time, so sometimes I’ll work on something for 4 or 5 hours at a time if I get in a good groove. This is usually, but not always, when I’m in a flow state. But it depends on the day; others are fragmented, where my work sessions are 20 minutes, then 10 minutes, then an hour.
Each day and project has its own rhythm; the better I’ve gotten at identifying that, the more efficient my workdays have become.
This essay was written in that fashion initially, starting around noon and finally wrapping at 6:30 PM. Then, upon revision in 2024, it was similar; I started at 3:30, then worked out, adding little fragments and ideas. Then, finally, I sat down and finished it by around 9:30 PM.
By the way, keeping records is the best way to identify your work habits. Having written that timeline out the previous year, it’s remarkably how closely it aligns in 2024. Fragmentation in small chunks, then a long session once I gather my ideas, tends to be how I write (but not always).
Whereas with spreadsheets, I might sit down and intend to work on that for an hour, then invest three or four.
Don’t be overly rigid with your work sessions. Some people get obsessed with timeboxing out their whole day, wherein they plan to work on their book at 2 PM, followed by a workout at 3 PM, then craft study at 4 PM and so forth. I don’t schedule anything (other than calls / appointments) because I vastly prefer to work within the rhythm of the day / my own work habits. More important than the volume of your work (whether the total during the day, or a specific session) is identifying your times of peak energy and creativity. This is especially critical as a creative professional, where your peak creativity might yield a chapter that’s orders of magnitude better. That’s a 10x, 100x, or even 1000x payoff.
This is not an argument to put things off until you feel like doing them. Many things need to just get done, regardless of whether you’re feeling it or not. That’s just a fact of business life.
But you want to safeguard those times of peak energy and creativity, investing them toward your most valuable tasks. Which, on most days, will be writing. Note that times of peak energy and focus tend to be more consistent, provided you have a consistent sleep schedule.
Creativity, by contrast, can be an elusive beast, where lightning bolt realizations can strike in the middle of the night, even as you’re bone tired and tucking into bed. Learn to listen to these, and you’ll identify what’s bullshit / fake news (e.g., “inspiration” to go and browse TikTok right before bedtime for 2 hours, thus destining yourself to wake up dead tired the next day for no reason) or an actual electric current of pure creative energy that you can pour into Microsoft Word at 2 AM (e.g., where the price of being tired the next day is actually worth the cost).
OPTIMAL REST TIMES
Finally, on optimal rest times: as with work times, this depends on the day. I don’t like taking 5 minute breaks most of the time; they don’t allow me to truly disengage from a project and gather my thoughts. As a side note on all these productivity gurus talking about 5 minute breaks, and how they do all sorts of other things during this timeframe: that is not that long. If you go to the bathroom and get a snack, that will probably take you longer.
So I personally tend to like long breaks. If I had to guess, they’re often 1.5 – 2 hours. But they could be 30 minutes…or 6 hours.
I’m not pretending that the latter is optimal for productivity. I also don’t really give a shit.
I usually take Sundays off. That’s a good day because people don’t tend to email me on Sundays. But sometimes I work (e.g., this one). Taking one day off a week, though, is good for disconnecting.
These, along with the “optimal” work times and work length sections, are all just offering some ideas to start with.
Basically: experiment, and don’t feel beholden to what others tell you is “optimal.” What’s optimal for them isn’t optimal for you, and further, they’re probably just making up some schedule that they’re pretending to themselves that they follow, but don’t. Or they’re just actively lying because it gets more clicks on social media or sells more of their self-help book.
Finally, let’s wrap up with what kind of rest you should be doing the most.
WHAT TYPE of REST SHOULD YOU BE DOING MOST?
In Rest, Pang writes that “the best, most restorative kinds of rest are active.” While I found the book interesting and worth reading, I disagree with this conclusion.
Instead, I’ve found that the best kind of rest is the one you need most at the current moment. And thus, the type of rest you’re doing the most will change at different stages of your life.
In other words: it’s situation dependent. And your ability to discern what type of rest you need at a given moment (while blocking out all the external noise about what you should be doing) is an essential skill.
After all, a hammer is a useful tool, but if you need a screwdriver, it’s ill-suited for that job. The main pitfall of most books and courses is they see a world filled only with nails, and they’re selling their proverbial hammer as the universal solution. This leads to people applying the wrong solution and winding up frustrated, or feeling like failures.
But if we’re flexible, and have a well-stocked mental toolbox, then we can carefully select the right tool for the situation at hand.
When I’m done working out, for example, sometimes I attempt to engage in “active rest” where I try to do something “useful” and “productive.”
I say attempt because this is usually a complete waste of time. So usually I like to browse the internet and do absolutely nothing of “value” whatsoever.
But if I accept that this is what I want to do and it’s the best course of action, it actually has tremendous value 30 minutes or 60 minutes later, when I’m recovered and ready to do something more mentally taxing. Rather than still being exhausted or lethargic, because I pushed my body and mind when they were already low on energy. And I also don’t feel guilty about not being able to push myself more.
There are exceptions, however: revising this essay being one of them. This isn’t even active rest; it’s just straight up actual work. And I managed to do it mid-workout and also immediately post-workout. How?
Well, I used this simple 17 point checklist in combination with my bio-monitors to determine…
Just kidding. I knew I could do it because my focus was still on point and it didn’t feel like I was drooling on my keyboard. It’s that simple.
Figuring this out is very much a n = 1 situation: what works for someone else, or even the majority of other people, will not necessarily work for you. This is a process of trial and error; I’ve tried different types of rest to see how I respond. Treating advice simply as something to test, rather than gospel, grants me the mental latitude to ignore advice that conflicts with my actual experience. And this allows me to do things that go against the grain of productivity “best practices” (whatever those supposedly are) guilt-free.
Here’s another example where I found active rest less helpful than anticipated.
I meditated for an hour a day for 60 days in a row in 2023. Which was interesting and makes for a good story or newsletter, I suppose. It yielded some insights (one of the most important, perhaps, being just how difficult it was to carve out even an hour every day to do something without fail). It was useful and I certainly don’t regret it.
But the biggest takeaway after those 60 days, by far?
I would have been better off, from both an energy and mental clarity perspective, just sleeping for an extra hour (given that I occasionally nodded off for a quick nap mid-meditation).
Finally, a change I made in late 2024: while doing menial but necessary tasks like cooking or cleaning, I used to listen to business or marketing-related content.
Two problems: if I could listen to this type of content while I was doing the laundry (e.g., multitasking), it usually meant that it had no actionable value. Anything where it was useful, I had to pause the video and actually watch it (while doing nothing else) to learn the concept, take notes, and actually pay attention.
Then, even if it wasn’t actionable, I couldn’t disconnect from my business. So my subconscious didn’t have the opportunity to start working on any ideas.
In other words, it was neither useful nor restful.
So I replaced the business content with history podcasts (Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History; start with the Wrath of the Khans series on the Mongols, he’s a fantastic storyteller and it’s great). And I found myself not only getting more rest, but actually the history gave me a different, valuable perspective (I rarely read any history books). For one, it gave me a deeper appreciation for how incredible it is I can type words into a machine and then instantly share them with people, without threat of reprisal, death, or other consequence. Whereas modern negatives like bad reviews can seem like mortal stab wounds, the truth is they’re nothing more than gnats on the scale of truly bad things that can happen.
To be clear: I did not expect this halo effect of additional positive outcomes. My only criteria, really, was just doing something I didn’t normally do.
So active rest will undoubtedly be the “go to” for those on a quest for peak performance, greatness, growth, and so forth. It screams efficiency, wherein we can use even our down hours to better ourselves.
And it’s definitely useful.
But sometimes you just need to sleep more.
Or you want to enjoy a song. Eat an ice cream sandwich and take a moment to appreciate that you’re alive. Or think of nothing at all.
Which might be exactly what you need in that moment. And the actual path forward.
Don’t let the cries of all the shoulds and coulds convince you otherwise.
80/20 SUMMARY
- The three main types of rest are sleep, active rest (meditation, walking, socializing, engaging in a hobby), and passive rest (doing “unproductive” things like browsing the internet, watching TV, and so forth)
- Simply getting an extra 30 – 60 minutes of sleep per night would probably yield the largest increase in productivity for at least 50%+ of people reading this. Start here if fatigue is limiting your work quality and output.
- No one type of rest is better than the others; the best rest is the type you need in the moment. Active rest is often espoused as the gold standard of rest but passive rest spent doing “unproductive” things can be extremely valuable.
- The best work-life balance and optimal workday is the one that works for you.
- Aim for 2 – 5 hours if intense, focused work on high leverage tasks (writing, key marketing items) per day. This is sufficient to make excellent progress and smash your goals. Darwin and Virginia Woolf both worked 3.5 – 4 hours a day and produced some of the greatest works of literature in history.
- 90 – 120 minutes is often the threshold for a good work session where focus and quality starts to dip. This will, however, depend on the task, day, and person. Listen to these rhythms and calibrate accordingly; some days will be fragmented into 15 or 20 minute bursts of work, while others will have 3 or 4 hour blocks of concentrated focus.
- Break length depends on the intensity of the task (higher intensity focus tends to demand longer recovery times), your energy, and personal preference. Breaks can be 5 minutes or 5 hours; whatever yields the output quality you’re looking for and matches with the rhythm of the current day and project.
- While a certain amount of work volume is a prerequisite for progress, volume is far less critical than leverage: focusing on the most important tasks and projects, maintaining focus while working (which yields higher quality output), and identifying times of peak energy / creativity (which also yield higher quality output when invested in high leverage activities like writing).
- Harness those creative waves. You can think of this as listening to your muse if that works for you. As someone who isn’t particularly woo-woo, I just treat these creative swells as a predictably unpredictable force, like chaos theory. There are inputs and factors that I don’t understand that coalesce to trigger a sudden burst of creative insight. When those happen, dropping everything (even if it seems impractical) and pouring that white-hot focus into my work can yield massively better output (and a lot more of it). Sometimes this will yield far bigger benefits than the downsides of getting less sleep or rest, or putting off another important task / project. This should be done sparingly and with caution, however, as it’s easy to use this as an excuse to browse TikTok or answer emails for hours past our intended bed time.
ACTION ITEMS
This is more of an idea / concept piece than a step-by-step guide, but here are a few general things to try.
- Take a time and energy audit. Track where your time is going by writing down the start / end time (round to 5 minutes, it makes it easier) of everything you do for a week. Also rate your energy level 1 – 5. Then, at the end of the week, see how much you’re actually working. Assess where your time is going and whether it’s actually being invested into your most important projects. And finally, identify your times of peak focus / energy and make sure you’re working on your highest leverage tasks during those times (instead of spending them on low-impact activities like answering email or browsing YouTube). Also watch for creative waves during the time audit; they may be relatively predictable depending on how you work. For most, however, they’ll probably come in sudden and unexpected swells.
- Experiment with different break lengths during your time audit. There’s no set amount of time; it will depend on the day and your own work habits. This could be five minutes or five hours. Whatever recharges the batteries and works for your process and schedule in that moment. By tracking, you get a feel for how long 5 minutes is versus half an hour or an hour.
- Try something you wouldn’t normally read, listen to, or do. Yes, it’s essential to be hyper-focused on your work and narrow the number of projects / things you’re trying to do. But shaking things up with something you don’t normally read, listen to, or do can bring a whole new perspective to your main thing. And also give you new ideas that you can apply. Idea-generation isn’t the true goal, however; it’s just to disconnect and relax without any sort of agenda.
- Try taking at least one day off per week. This is where you don’t work. Start with dramatically reducing your workload on one day if taking the entire day off sounds daunting.
