The key to a good work ethic
How to keep getting sh*t done
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For a few years in my mid-late 20s I trained to be a competitive powerlifter.
I never won a competition (nor did I have any illusions of ever doing so), but with the help of a good coach I did become stronger than I ever thought possible as someone not naturally athletically gifted.
Training to compete taught me one of the most crucial lessons about achieving long-term, difficult goals: time off is as important, if not more important, than time on.
To perform continuously better during training and eventually hit a PR (personal record) on competition day, lifting heavy stuff in a gym is only a small part of the equation. The stuff outside of the gym, like rest and nutrition are equally if not more important factors.
It's a little counter-intuitive but the growth actually doesn't happen when you're doing the thing. It happens when you're NOT doing the thing.
I think the same is true of design or any other creative practice. In order to sustain long-term, continuous progress and do big ambitious creative projects, the care and feeding outside of your work are extremely important.
I have not historically been good at this.
I've always had a tendency to want to do more, to keep going and push myself in my work. But over the years I've started to recognize that if I want to create better and achieve more in the long-run, incorporating more rest and time off is not only not a waste of time, but actually perfectly in-line with those goals.
Note: this is the final part of a multi-part post series about how I get things done effectively as a designer. You can read the prior posts in the series here:
Let me know what you’ve thought about this series and if you want to hear more about any of the topics!
A good rest ethic
I recently heard a conversation between Tim Ferriss and Kevin Kelly, one of the most prescient technologists of our time and also an extremely prolific creator (he does a piece of art every single day!). In it, Kelly explains, "The key to a good work ethic is a good rest ethic".
When I heard this, a lightbulb went off in my head. This simple statement rings so true and aligns with how I’ve tried to approach work in the last year. It turns rest from a retreat from creation into an active counterpoint.
I used to think of rest as something you did when you ran out of energy for work or productive activity. But in the past year I’ve tried to reframe it as an essential support activity that enables you to create more and better.
When I was training in powerlifting, the most important factor in ensuring I did well in any given training session was how well rested I was. There was a clearly noticeable performance benefit if I actively planned to get a solid 8 hours of sleep the night before, and an obvious performance hit if I had stayed up late playing video games.
Similarly in creative work, things flow much better when I’m well rested and I’ve taken adequate time away from what I’m trying to do. Sometimes when attacking a difficult design problem, the most productive thing to do isn’t to keep trying to force it, but to take a break.
As someone that doesn’t always naturally stop to take breaks, I schedule them into my day. I try to take a short mid-afternoon break on work days and on most days I will cook a meal for me and my partner. For some productivity gurus, cooking is a waste of time to be outsourced and eliminated. But for me, the complete shift in mode and doing a physical task that exercises another part of my creativity provides a perfect reset to end the day.
On a more macro level, I try my hardest not to do client work on weekends so I get a real break from them (I do work on my own projects at a more relaxed pace), and I plan in a fun weekend away or a week off every so often. Extended time off gives your brain time and energy to rewire and form new connections that lead to new insights you can carry into your creative work.
This next week, I’ll be doing just that. I’m at a house on a lake with some friends. I’ll be reading, thinking, writing, enjoying time outdoors, connecting and enjoying time together, and generally not thinking much about getting anything particularly done.
Treating rest as an active pursuit to be planned and executed with the same diligence as work has been a revelation for me. It’s not something you do when you are out of energy, it’s something you do to give you energy to create and achieve over the long-term.
It's a feature, not a bug.
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