I think key to getting really good rest is to unplug. I know most people tend to sit on their phones or computer for a few hours. Some science suggest that isn't good rest because your nervous system is still being stimulated. [1]
I find I get the best rest when I unplug for a bit. Take a long walk, just for the sake of walking. Or lay down for 30 minutes and do nothing for a while.
>Or lay down for 30 minutes and do nothing for a while.
But you mind is never at rest. Its always thinking, ruminating. 'doing nothing' is impossible and absurd, you mind is always 'doing something' .
A lot of people just mindlessly browse online or work too much because they don't want to deal with their own mind.
Sure you can just chill and sit on the couch doing nothing, but thats relaxing only when you have the mental peace to do so.
I don't think people mean what is implied by the article as 'rest'. Its not a time issue. How can you possibly be 'alone' if you are stressed out about job, health, money, relationships or whatever. Sitting on a wooden pier with an umbrella is not being 'alone' , its precisely the opposite .
Turning off the continuous thought-churn and "stopping" the conscious mind is a large part of what meditation is for, at least to begin with. The reason they ask you to catch your thoughts and refocus them to a single point - the air travelling through your nose as you breathe, for example - is to teach you how to do exactly that. It takes time and practice but most people can do it.
>Turning off the continuous thought-churn and "stopping" the conscious mind is a large part of what meditation is for
I never really understood the 'stopping' part, how is that even possible? At best you can simply refocus it to something you find peaceful, if that is the case how is meditation any different from say watching a movie that you love or playing drums.
It's not really about turning off your thoughts, so much as "stepping back" and observing your thoughts.
How interesting that that thought wandered by just after this other one. It's "smile", that one feels pretty good.
This next one is "boredom"... Fascinating! What is that about? Why do I feel it? What happens if I use "smile" on it?
What about this monologue? Can I step back and observe those thoughts?
The Zen master says he's thinking about nothing while meditating. That doesn't mean no thought, it means observing the thing that Null pointers point to.
(Personal experience and I'm not at all an expert)
See stopping as a metaphor. You are not "not thinking" ever but you can ignore some thoughts. And we do that all the time - usually thoughts we don't like. With meditation you'll learn to do that a bit better. A thought pops up in your head and instead of following it and expanding on it, you simply let it slide. Another one pops up and you do the same. When I meditate for 15mins at most 4-5 mins of it would be close to "peace" - that's all I can manage. When I'm doing it regularly, (it could very well be placebo) I find myself to be less agitated and not following every thought that comes to my head through out the day. I learn to say "not now" and focus on what I'm working on instead.
It's not so much stopping thoughts, as it is to be able to guide your focus at will, as you said. In the end your mind isn't so much blank as hyper-aware of itself without the normal push-pull of thoughts that you described in your earlier comment. Best way I can describe it is as a place where your higher mind is at rest and your instinctive/subconscious mind is fully active.
The mystical philosophies around meditation describe it with all sorts of features and properties, but I'll skip getting into that here. I'll just mention martial arts in particular. They practice relentlessly so that the actions are instinctive, then they use meditation so that higher-brain noise doesn't get in the way of that hyper-awareness and instinctive action.
>I never really understood the 'stopping' part, how is that even possible? At best you can simply refocus it to something you find peaceful, if that is the case how is meditation any different from say watching a movie that you love or playing drums.
With meditation, if you get good at it, you can get lost in a kind of haze that's way less focused than playing drums or watching a movie. Sort of like sleeping while awake.
So that's a lot like "stopping". Sure, neurons will fire, etc, so you're not stopping anything completely, but they also do that when you are sleeping, or when you're completely wasted on weed.
> if that is the case how is meditation any different from say watching a movie that you love or playing drums.
The main difference, I've found, is temporal. By focusing on the breath, you stay grounded in the present moment. Watching a movie will trigger memories or thoughts about the future, which, to me, seem to tax the mind a lot more than simple, objective thoughts about the present moment.
Playing the drums could be like this, but you have to get lost in it and be improvising or sight reading something you've never played before. If you're worried about making mistakes, remembering the music or anything along those lines, you're not as in the moment as you could be. Most people don't play that way.
I occasionally catch moments in which no outside noises are present and I'm not thinking of anything at all. Very rare, but possible (also immediately spoiled by making note of it).
I recently read something (can't remember where) about how a lot of people have trouble sleeping because lying down to go to sleep is the first chance their mind gets to do something without outside stimulation. I think most people who don't have the mental peace to do nothing would get it if they did nothing more often. That isn't an option for everyone though.
"How often I've been wide awake at night because I couldn't stop thinking about my side projects."
Try writing stuff down quickly on paper - just scribble the ideas. I do this with my teaching (I don't work in IT). It seems to 'earth' the thoughts and then I can relax.
When it gets bad, I usually solve the problem by listening to some suitable podcast. Preferably politics and not with headphones. I turn the volume so low that I really need to lay still and concentrate to hear what they are talking about.
This is why walking works. Dont bring your phone. It just keeps that minimum of distraction to not freak you out and that makes it easier to actually face what's on your mind, to some extent.
>But you mind is never at rest. Its always thinking, ruminating. 'doing nothing' is impossible and absurd, you mind is always 'doing something'
You'd be surprised.
For those that this doesn't come naturally (or have stress, are anxious etc), they can try some meditation techniques.
Meditation is not about some mystical mumbo jumbo, it's about being mindful and taking control of your thoughts, so think it more of like training of your "thought-muscles" to shut up and enjoy the silence, than "becoming one with the universe".
You seem to have misread the comment you responded to. The author cited external stimulation as a key factor, and you've somehow ended up redefining "alone" to mean "mentally still."
This unfortunately ruined reading for me for a long time. I associated reading with sleep, and it became a pavlovian response: a few pages in, any time of day under any circumstances, I'd start to nod off.
This is easy to fix. Just spend at least as much time reading on a treadmill or other exercise device as you do before bed and you will learn to discriminate very quickly.
I suppose that depends on the quality of the material you're reading. I like the outdoors, but unless I'm somewhere that is both beautiful and novel, a good book makes my synapses buzz a lot more.
That said I recently went for over two months without reading in the evenings - when I resumed reading (a friend literally pushed a book on me and said it needed to be read within a fortnight) I became notably calmer and less stressed.
To have colleagues note that none of the workload had changed yet I was significantly more with it was startling, and the only change I could identify was the book.
I think my strategy backfires if the book is really good. Personally my night reading is very casual, usually a light non fiction book that doesn't provoke much deep thought.
1. While I'm inside a chapter, I'll keep reading until the end of the chapter.
2. When I'm at the end of a chapter, I will stop if (and only if) I feel that I cannot invest the time to start the next chapter right now.
So short chapters are bad because I will just keep going ("oh come on, only two more pages") and long chapters are bad because I will not even start them. The sweet spot for me was two years ago when I read www.hpmor.com.
There's nothing like cracking a book open to read a few pages before bed, then noticing that all of a sudden the sun is coming in through the window and it's time to go to work...
For me it's reading things like astrophysics and cosmology. I find it peaceful to ponder that I'm a small part of a very large construct. Though I have a lot of interest in the field, the perspective really just puts my mind at ease. (Has to be dead-tree though - even a kindle has too much reminders of my work)
> Or lay down for 30 minutes and do nothing for a while.
It was figured out a few thousand years ago and became known as meditation. When needed I found it a good tool, but unfortunately it haven't become a habit yet.
> I think key to getting really good rest is to unplug. I know most people tend to sit on their phones or computer for a few hours. Some science suggest that isn't good rest because your nervous system is still being stimulated.
Why is this (being stimulated) is a problem? Sleep already ensures that one gets a good rest.
This is an obnoxious comparison. Gaps in the sidewalk, open drains, etc. are annoying, but they don't threaten lives in the same way that e.g. barrel bombs do.
I don't like writing long posts on HN but there are a ton of reasons why it is very dangerous to walk around Indian cities at night due to risk of being hit by vehicles.
> People said that when they were on their own mostly they were focused on how they were feeling, so on their body or their emotions
I've always been pretty introverted, and also a night person. I used to roll into work around 10:30 or so, after a long chill morning.
When I got married and had kids, that schedule wasn't feasible any more. For a couple of years, I would set my alarm as late as I could get by with and then rush rush rush in the mornings to get my daughter ready and at day care and myself ready for work. That way, I could still be as much of a night person as I used to be.
It was a disaster. I felt tense and unbalanced all day. Lots of fights with my wife. By the time the evening rolled around and the kid was in bed, I had a little free time, but I was too spent to do anything useful with it.
At some point, due to commute changes, I ended up getting up at 6:00 to avoid the worst of rush hour. That was even worse. There's nothing quite like getting up early to stare at brake lights ahead of you for 45 minutes every morning to make you lose the will to live.
When my commute fortunately got much better—a five minute drive—I decided to try keeping my 6am wake up time.
Holy crap, it was amazing.
I had a solid two hours before the wife or kids woke up. The house was silent and all mine. I could have a quiet cup of coffee, read a bit, work on projects.
What I figured out is that, while I like being around people, my personality or sense of self kind of deflates during it. I don't have enough courage or force of will to be me in the presence of other people. Their own circles of identity sort of press into mine, and I'm not confident enough to easily push back all day.
That solitary time in the morning is exactly what I need to reinflate my bubble. To sort of gather around myself a sense of who I am, and what it is about myself that I like and feel good about. When I have that time in the morning, I can go out into the day feeling a little more secure and insulated. Without it, I feel exposed.
It's so worth becoming a morning person to get that feeling.
(Alas, now my kids have to be at school earlier, so they are getting up shortly after me and I don't have much quiet time anymore. I'm tempted to try getting up even earlier, but getting up at five is really hard.)
I have similar feelings except my alone time is some times tinged with guilt. That I am not spending it with my daughter (though I do spend lot of time with her )
I feel that too, a lot. But I try to remember that what my kids need is a relaxed, rejuvenated Dad. An hour of me time and an hour of quality time with them is worth more to both of us than two hours of distracted tense time with Dad.
As a kid, I seem to recall never having enough alone time. So your daughter may appreciate that you're not hanging out with her every waking minute (but it depends on the particular kid of course).
> I'm a night owl who always wished I could become a morning person to reap the benefits for side projects, etc.
If you're staying up late at night and getting work on projects done then, then switching that to the morning isn't going to make much of a difference. The total time is the same.
I wouldn't read too much into all of those gushing blog posts about people who get up at the ass crack of dawn to write the next Great American novel while also preparing a wholesome organic breakfast, running twenty miles, and volunteering at their local soup kitchen.
People are incentivized to present their idealized self and blogs are no different, and there's some strange vicarious joy we get from reading about people who are (theoretically) way more disciplined or productive than us.
In my experience, there's nothing magical about the early morning hours. I could, and have, also had lots of productive time late at night.
I switched to mornings because it worked for my particular schedule and the other constraints in my life. Find what works for you.
> Any tips for making it less painful?
The main tip I know for getting up early is: consistently go to bed early. What you choose to do the night before determines how your morning is going to go.
Personally, I'm not very disciplined. So if I was getting up early to do something I don't enjoy, like exercise or work on something difficult, it would be a non-starter.
So, instead, I tell myself that I can get up to have some coffee, surf reddit, watch some dumb videos. Whatever. Something totally easy and selfish.
That's enough to get me out of bed. Then, once I'm on my computer with coffee in hand, I eventually start doing something useful.
In addition to above the following trick was important to sleep much earlier than I used to.
The idea is to lay on the back with arms along the body as relaxed as possible. Then one rolls eyes and relax jaw to the point when mouse opens slightly. The reason behind this is that when one sleeps, eyes roll and mouse opens. So if one do that when awake, that gives brain a signal to sleep.
I find that being home with anyone else in he house, even if they aren't interacting with me in any way, there's still a little part of my brain switched on to deal with it if they do say something. It's completely different when I know there's no way anyone can talk to me. I can focus so much better on whatever else I'm doing.
I have the opposite problem. I can totally switch off the part dealing with someone speaking to me, but then have to make them repeat when they do speak to me, because I didn't listen to it. (Interestingly, in many cases, my mind catches up and decodes what was said the first time before they finish saying it again)
I'm sure many of you felt it. you're walking along a trail deep in a forest. And, your conscious mind has faded a bit. Maybe you're humming to yourself, or talking to yourself, or just zoning out. And, then you see a figure way ahead of you, coming nearer. And, something changes - some 'identity' snaps back into the front of your consciousness, and you start to feel the tension. The 'you' who is not you takes control, and it's a bit of an uncomfortable feeling.
It's something that we have to do daily, almost all day long, and it's very, very tiring.
During "on" time, you are customer-facing. You're performing a service - normally what you would consider doing your job. But you're physically visible to customers, or they're directly waiting for your responses, like on a phone call. You're so visible in this fish bowl that you're like an actor or news anchor, and must be mindful of every action. Some jobs, like retail checkers or bartenders, are "on" for most of their work shift. In a way, it's like P time.
Other jobs are "off" jobs, where you're never seen by customers. This is time spent "in the workshop", building demos, displays, and developing presentation. It's like NP time, and any communications are asynchronous. You don't see customers, sometimes don't see coworkers or boss, and might even get to be alone.
Many jobs have a mix of "on" time and "off" time - where you may take a client call, then work independently to make what the client wants.
It seems like we're def. in the 'era of the introvert'...more an more people are writing about being introverted, describing their experiences, to much approval. Decades ago, it seemed like extroverts were in control, but now that has flipped, and factors such the information/knowledge-based economy and intellectualism culture may be to blame.
If introverts were really "in control" I predict we'd see many fewer open plan offices!
Counter-thesis: factors in modern society such as hyper-collaborative working practices have caused people who'd once have just been a bit quiet to think a lot more about what the introvert-extrovert axis means.
What's with the "collaborative" open offices? Now that we're passed peak Agile, is collaborative the next fad?
It can't be cost. Primo office space is $30-$40/sqft/year. A 100 sqft personal office would cost $4000/year.
I recently interviewed quite a few places. Big fancy modern offices. Common spaces. Foosball tables. And all the devs shoved into a corner, working shoulder to shoulder, desks facing each other. Like slaves on a war galley.
I'm an extreme extrovert. Open offices suck. If you want me to be productive, give me some me space and me time for head's down uninterrupted concentration.
While I'm ranting...
"Agile" (whatever that is) and "collaborative" (ditto) are mutually exclusive. Cite: The Tyranny of Structurelessness essay.
I really want to know where these whackadoodle ideas come from. Then maybe we can do something to mitigate it.
I've assumed management self actualization blather is management's way of asserting their self-importance while screwing labor. Know your place you worthless keyboard monkey.
More charitably, a bestie just went back to school (after 20 years) to wrap up her masters degree. She said the cultural change was jarring. Kids these days all work in groups, collaboration, special snowflakes, etc. Because that's how the "real world" operates.
Is the "collaboration" fantasy an education meme which has infected know-nothing corporate management echelons?
University these days is gross in certain places, especially in anything related to IT - Computer Science, Engineering, Electric Engineering, etc.
There's a stupidly heavy emphasis on group work, with the superficial justification that "it's how the real world works", discounting that, in the real world, if you're in a team but don't actually do the work, you're going to get screwed.
It seems to me, though, that teachers are mostly pushed to do that because it's being done everywhere else, and because IT students have a reputation for being antisocial, so they need to be pushed to work together, in real life, if possible.
Wow. My experience was completely different. You mention "these days", so maybe things have changed now, but nothing in my CS degree prepared me for "agile" or "collaborative" or "Scrum" or anything. They weren't even taught at the Uni! All those things didn't come from academia but from real-world practitioners... (who, in my opinion, got a bit overzealous about their practices and thought they applied everywhere, all the time).
If I had followed standard practices from University at my day job, I'd be a "cowboy coder".
No. Nobody thinks that open offices are better for work.
They just think that the cost in productivity is less then the cost of the extra real estate required.
Your estimates of cost are totally incorrect.
When it comes to a difference of 200k vs 300k per fully loaded employee, most managers are going to doubt they are going to get 50% more work out of each employee.
I'm more inclined to think that we just have divergent activities more than we are in a new era. Introverts are authoring and consuming online content, so while there are more options for what to do with time on your own, there is also a bit of an echo chamber because of that. But unplug, and go out and start doing activities with groups of people, and that type of activity is as strong as it ever was.
Control has nothing to do with it. We're just increasing variety.
Besides reading for me it's math. Just discovering a parallel universe without startup stuff, without fancy programming languages, without thinking of scale, focus, VCs. Just math and me.
I live in a city where driving is a must. I hate the commute but also use it as a time to rest. Don't be a rush, radio off and focus on driving. Don't swerve in and out of traffic...just stay in one lane, preferably towards the right where it's slower and follow the car in front. It brings distraction to a minimal, and I'm in my own enclosed world. I'm focus enough on driving but also allows for the brain to wander, or just do nothing.
I don't know how the whole "self-driving cars" thing will pan out, but it's the part of it that excites me the most... enforced rest time! I'm sure it won't last long and just become another place to do work - but at the beginning, while it's novel, it might be a nice place to be.
I'm not so sure. Driving (okay, maybe not big-city start-stop driving) is somewhat relaxing because there's a kind of flow state involved with your mind focussed on the road ahead. Once the self-driving cars come along, we'll all be working on the commute.
Driving, showering, on the train when it's not busy. Places you are forced to disconnect and be in silence. A little less so with trains, but where I am from they are mostly silent places where you can read a book happily.
I often feel I get myself back by being alone for a while. That when I'm working or socialising I become part of it - my thoughts are very much aligned with it.
When I spend a day or two alone I really get back to thinking about what and who I feel matters, and why.
It is on those days that I really do know who I am, who I want to be, and how I am getting there.
As ridiculous as it may sound to some, if I don't schedule time for rest, it doesn't happen. Otherwise there's a demand on my time and resources during every waking hour.
I personally don't find that being around others is very restful. At work or social gatherings, I'm not always involved in the conversation but there is a chance I could be so I end up listening. And other times, I could be completely alone and my mind wanders. My mind like yours is always thinking. I don't find that very restful.
I think for me, reading an article/comic book or watching an interesting video is restful.
I was thinking yoga or meditation are probably really good methods of rest.
A couple years ago I took a job where I work alone 95% of the time, so even though I'm introverted, I now find that socializing a bit is very restful. Prior to that, though, I generally felt I was not getting enough rest.
Off topic, but I worry a lot of "unplugged cleanses" are also solitary affairs. Something that isn't rest, but is busy and social and sober and not electronic is probably also important.
Playing semi-organized soccer, frisbee, etc. on a Sunday afternoon is the solution for millions if not billions of people. It's a way of life for whole communities and has been for generations.
18,000 people? That makes me thing they threw this up amazons Mechanical Turk, which makes me think that the data might be off. Although the theory seems sound.
"Altogether, 18,000 people from 134 countries made time to take part in what was quite a lengthy survey devised by Hubbub - an international group of academics, artists, poets, and mental health experts - showing perhaps what a pressing issue rest is in the modern world."
This is a poor conclusion. For one, 18,000 people isn't sufficient to draw any conclusions on a global level. It's a tiny sample of a relatively huge population.
Furthermore, I think the ~795 million people is much more so a pressing issue.
If we disregard the developing world, 18,000 people is not an adequately large sample to draw any such conclusions either. I'm glad that they are using the word "might" in the article and "may" in title, but I still regard the journalistic value of this piece as being really low.
"A full analysis of the data will be published within the next year. It's already clear that it holds lessons for doctors. Callard points out that when doctors prescribe rest, not every patient will interpret the word in the same way."
It doesn't hold factual lessons for anyone, it's too speculative. I'm hoping that people will be getting more rest either way.
Is there a journalist watch-dog for when poorly designed studies such as this one is covered by the media in a manner such as this that can be alerted? Especially since BBC themselves were involved in the study.
(Random) sampling error does not very according to the size of the total population; only according to the size of the sample. A sample of 18,000 from a population of 6 billion will have the same random errors as a sample of 18,000 from a population of 100 million. And 18,000 is a BIG sample.
(This breaks down a bit when the sample size and the total population size get very close, and does not include sources of sampling error other than random variation - e.g. biased sampling, which I would be more worried about in a global study like this.)
That was part of my point, I was not sufficiently convinced that the sampling was conducted over a satisfying number of different living situations. Rest is simply not a luxury that a lot of people can even concern themselves with as they have no concept of leisure time (or at least not an opportunity to enjoy it).
That does not invalidate the statement that being alone may be the key to rest, but it should point out that drawing the conclusions that the article alludes to about the scale of the issue is shoddy.
> [...] showing perhaps what a pressing issue rest is in the modern world.
Even if the concept of "modern" world precludes areas suffering from famine, I am not convinced that it should be considered a pressing issue.
I find I get the best rest when I unplug for a bit. Take a long walk, just for the sake of walking. Or lay down for 30 minutes and do nothing for a while.
[1] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mental-downtime/