What I'm Learning About Rest šøļø Issue 10
Seven lessons on managing the delicate ecosystem of my body as a writer and human.
You would think, perhaps, that a creator who works in the gig economy and therefore appears to have personal control over when and how she works would have figured out rest by now. But my mind and body are very delicate ecosystems, and itās taking a lot of patience to discover and execute a work-rest balance that makes sense. Still, one lesson Iāve learned unequivocally is this:
#1: My productivity is all about how well I pace myself.
Almost everything else is an offshoot of this lesson.
A couple of years ago, when my primary challenge was building a consistent productivity schedule, the most useful thing I discovered was the Tim Ferriss podcast episode that featured Neil Gaiman. In it, Gaiman revealed that his productivity habit each day is to situate himself for a couple of hours in his gazebo, with only two options for what to do until his dedicated time is up: he could either write or do nothing. Eventually, doing nothing would become so boring that he would much rather just write instead1.
I decided to adopt a similar strategy, a dedicated two hours each day where my only options are either to write or to do nothing. I soon came upon a new challenge: it was basically impossible for me to maintain my concentration throughout that time. And so, I modified the Gaiman method, combining it with something like the pomodoro technique. Instead of just attempting to write continuously for 2 hours, my 2-hour writing windows would be split up into 25-minute concentrated working sessions, interspersed with 10-minute breaks.
This worked for a while, until I discovered I needed yet another modification. The 25-minute sessions were, after a couple of breaks in between, just a little too long for me to maintain my stamina, and the 10-minute breaks were so long that they allowed me to get too disconnected from whatever flow Iād mustered up during the work session. The system that I currently find optimal is 20-minute work sessions, interspersed with 5-minute breaks. After four 20-minute sessions, I might take a longer break, like maybe half an hour to shower or have a meal, before repeating the process.
#2: Different minds and bodies have very different rest demands.
As much as my modified pomodoro technique works for me, there will be people who cannot stand for their flow to be broken even for 5 minutes.
I first met my boyfriend because we were both part of a writerās room for a web series. Because we wrote together, his productivity method was one of the first things I learned about him. He is capable of fixing his botoss in a chair to write and not getting up for five hours or more. He effortlessly enters a flow state that I never see him in, outside of writing mode. He appears to completely lose track of time, and he becomes so dead to the world that he might not even notice if I was speaking to him or crying right beside him.
Of the two of us, he is the bigger Instagram/TikTok user, the one whose brain is most accustomed to bite-sized bits of ever-refreshing information that arenāt known to do great things for our attention spans. And yet, when it comes to vomiting out screenplays, he has the gift of powering through it for as long as it takes and crashing only at the end. For him, scheduled rest periods donāt seem to help him refresh his concentration; they seem to shatter it.
My attention span rarely allows me to work like this, and so when I see him do it, my jealousy stirs like a green snake under grass. If I could do what he does, I might have finished my novel by now!
However, itās not that my brain is entirely incapable of this level of concentration, which brings me to my next lesson:
#3: An individualās mind and body has different rest demands between different tasks.
Whatever juju my boyfriend uses to get into writing flow, it does not translate into reading. For the latter activity, the fragmentation of his attention is a serious barrier. Contrary to popular opinion, I have almost the same problem with reading. Not only is it hard for me to focus on writing for more than a few minutes at a time, but I can hardly read for longer than 10-minute sprints2, and when I tell you it takes me between 3 days to a week to finish watching a single movie or TV episode, it is not an exaggeration. (My boyfriend is a film head and does not appreciate this about me. But itās okay because he has probably finished about three books in the entire time I have known him.)
At the same time, I find that when Iām engaged in an art or graphic design project, I get into flow, and just like he does when heās creating screenplays, I lose track of time and nearly all sense of placeāand Iām not even a professional artist! (Although, if I have such a proclivity for concentrating on it, maybe I should be?)
There is one exception to my terrible writing concentration habits. When I feel like I am very close to a natural pausing or ending point of a writing project (like the end of a chapter, or the final scene of a short story), or when the hour of a deadline is very quickly approaching, an adrenaline spike propels me into flow mode, and I often end up ignoring my 5-minute break notifications even without realizing. Iām just so focused on reaching the end.
The point of what Iām saying is that itās not entirely reasonable to assume that because youāre bad at concentrating in other ways, youāll be bad at concentration when writing, or that if youāre good at concentrating on writing, that this would translate to other activities. For me, at least, the way I go about taking breaks needs to vary from activity to activity.
Now, on the topic of reaching the ends of thingsā
#4: It is important for me to stop and breathe at natural stopping points.
Technically, the 5-minute breaks I take are meant to make it so that I do not need to take breaks during my 20-minute work sessions. But a problem arises when I reach a natural stopping point (like the end of a scene, or the end of a chapter) long before my 20-minute work session has ended. For the sake of discipline, I always feel the need to go straight into the next scene or chapter, and just find a way to continue working until the 20-minute session is completely over. This is often a bad idea.
I have learned that my mental and corporal writing process needs to follow the patterns of the work I am creating. If there is a break in my manuscript, there needs to be a corresponding break in my writing process. Trying to force myself to switch gears with no time in between often makes it extremely difficult to write things that arenāt complete garbage, if I can even write anything at all. I need that extra time for my mind to adjust to the idea that itās moving on to a different section, and to ruminate on it a little bit before I put pen to paper. This is a form of rest which my brain demands and which, unfortunately, does not always correspond to my strictly timed productivity technique.
#5: I must not give in to the illusion of overabundant energy in any given day.
For me, this is one of the devilās greatest traps, and it all goes back to point #1: that my productivity is all about how well I pace myself.
There are certain days when I feel particularly well-rested and as though I could work practically all day. I may not be sleepy around my usual time, and might therefore decide to work instead of rest. Or I may not feel weary enough to need properly scheduled breaks throughout my working sessions and therefore choose to power through abominably long writing sessions. It all ends in tears.
The truth about my body is that it has a very limited quota of how much energy (creative or otherwise) it can reasonably expend in a given day. If I expend too much, no matter how easy it may feel in the moment, I will pay for it later, brutally. Beyond writing or other cognitively demanding work, I may also overextend myself by, for example, doing too heavy of a workout on a given day, just because I feel like I can keep going. Perhaps this is useful for the process of tearing and rebuilding muscles, but it will inevitably result in a monstrous headache (almost all my discomforts in life tend to manifest in the form of monstrous headaches) or complete mental uselessness and physical lethargy the following day, and maybe even the day after that, which no amounts of caffeine can alleviate.
This is the possibly counterintuitive lesson: I must respect my body and mindās quota, not only when Iām feeling too lazy and undisciplined to reach the quota, but also when I feel so energetic that I am tempted to go far beyond the quota. Unless there is an unavoidable deadline and I can afford to pay the cost the following day, the temptation must be resisted because it is not worth it. This lesson is inextricable from my next one:
#6: The body always demands for its deficits to be paid.
The thing about bodies is that if you donāt willingly give them what they need to be healthy, the bodies themselves will try to take those things by force, and it will not feel good. Whatever rest I do not give my body today, it will do its best to wrest it from me tomorrowābut it does not know the most efficient way to take it.
And so, for example I may find myself unable to fall asleep because my body is used to being awake at so-and-so hours, no matter how viciously tired I am and how much more sleep it needs. This creates a vicious cycle of misery, where Iām trapped in wakefulness with a body so tired and a brain so foggy that it can hardly make sense of any given sentence it reads, much less compose new sentences from scratch. All I can do is wait it out, wasting my time and my life until my body decides at last that itās a reasonable enough hour to sleep, and thus begins the catch-up process slowly.
It is not worth it, those miserable, useless days. The interest for borrowing against myself is so high that I am much better off not over-drafting from my natural capacity at all. Itās also why itās always a good idea for me not to stay up too late, even when doing something casual or relaxing like physically socializing, or FaceTiming, or watching a movie. Because come daylight, at some point, my body will demand for its deficits to be paid.
#7: Self-flagellation leads only to bad things.
If you are not yet familiar with my disability origin story, I invite you to get acquainted with it here. TL;DR: A few years ago, I felt really bad about my apparent lack of discipline and scanty portfolio and decided to punish myself by over-writing. Consequently, I hand-wrote my way into the beginning of severe muscle spasms all over my body but especially my hands, made worse by my natural scoliosis. The spasms across my body and the pains in my back recur and persist to this day.
You would think that I would learn my lesson from that experience, but I still, from time to time, feel that need to punish myself by overworking when I feel particularly frustrated or disappointed with myself. Sometimes, I genuinely feel like I do not deserve rest, and therefore deny it to myself. For all the reasons already articulated and more, this is a terrible idea, with terrible consequences.
I cannot afford to think of rest as a matter of deservingness, but only as a matter of physical, mental, and even spiritual necessity. As hard as it is for me to live accordingly, it is something I absolutely must get better at. It is simply non-negotiable.
Until next time,
The Spider Kid šøļø
If youāre listening to the podcast, this portion of the conversation starts around the 21-minute mark.
The reason my reading log still looks substantial at the end of every year is simply because, no matter how many times my attention breaks, I bring it back to the book with deliberate effort after minutes, or hours, or days. The result of consistently renewed concentration can look very much like the end result of uninterrupted concentration.
Upcoming event! šøļø
By the way, if you are planning to attend the PaGya! Literary Festival this weekend, I will be on a panel on Afrofuturism! Come through for about an hour, if youāre around on Saturday at the Goethe Institut!