How to Work Less and Get More Done with Alex Pang #118

Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee

Dr Rangan Chatterjee

Health & Fitness, Medicine, Alternative Health, Mental Health

4.8 • 10.9K Ratings

🗓️ 23 June 2020

⏱️ 90 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Why is it that we equate long hours with greater effort? Could a four-day working week be the change we need for public health as well as the economy? My guest on today’s conversation is Alex Pang, an author and former Silicon Valley tech consultant who noticed that, when he went on sabbatical from work, he suddenly got a lot more done. This led him to research and write about resting more and working less. We begin the podcast by talking about active rest or, as Alex also terms it, ‘deep play’. How taking regular breaks from intense work to do something you love is a means to enhanced creativity and productivity. We talk about how the technologies we thought would give us a better work-life balance have instead robbed us of boundaries and ground our work down into a fine powder that settles on all areas of our life. It works both ways – we check social media or do our online banking while we’re at work, just as we check our work emails when we’re at home. The solution, says Alex, is to work shorter, more focused hours and balance that with more ‘serious leisure’ time. There are already progressive companies out there who are shortening the working day or week and reaping the surprising rewards of increased profitability and productivity! At a time when many of us are working in very different ways from normal, Alex’s work seems incredibly prescient. As lockdown slowly lifts and workplaces start to reopen, finding a balance between work, rest and play that promotes productivity and growth alongside employee wellbeing feels like a no-brainer. The same applies to the self-employed and across all industries. Surely this is our window of opportunity to explore what the ‘new normal’ should be? I found this conversation really inspiring and I hope you do too. Show notes available at: https://drchatterjee.com/118 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Maybe our assumptions about the necessity of overwork, the constant pressure of deadlines always at your back.
0:09.9	Maybe our assumptions that we need that in order to do really good work, that that's a natural expression of passion.
0:18.1	Maybe that's actually completely backwards.
0:23.7	Maybe in order to do the kind of work that we really want to do, it's necessary to pay more attention to how we rest. Hi, my name is
0:33.5	Rongan Chatsky. Welcome to Feel Better Live More. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the podcast. I hope you're
0:46.7	having an enjoyable week so far, but has it been a productive one? Well, I guess that really depends on how you define productivity. Do you define it
0:56.4	as the amount of work you got done or do you define it as the amount of time you got to spend with
1:02.3	friends and family or the amount of time you had to do the things that you loved? Well, today's
1:07.9	conversation is one that was recorded way back in February when the world seemed
1:12.6	a very different place to how it does at the moment. But it is a conversation that in many ways
1:19.8	has added relevance and poignancy in the context of the global pandemic. And at a time when many
1:27.0	of us in society are imagining what in our daily
1:31.3	lives might be different, what can we change. My guest is Alex Pang, an author and former Silicon
1:39.9	Valley tech consultant who noticed that when he went on a sabbatical from work, he suddenly got a lot
1:45.8	more done and this led him to research and write about resting more and working less. So why is it
1:53.0	that we equate long hours with greater effort? And could a four-day working week be the change we
1:58.8	need both for public health as well as the economy.
2:02.9	This is a really interesting conversation that touches on a variety of different themes.
2:08.9	We begin the podcast by talking about active rest, or as Alex says, deep play, how taking
2:14.2	regular breaks from intense work to do something you love is a means to enhance
2:19.6	creativity and productivity. We talk about how the technologies we thought would give us a better
2:25.4	work-life balance have instead robbed us of boundaries and ground our work down into a fine
	...

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