Subscribe to our free newsletter and receive concise and in-depth articles exploring topics similar to those we cover on this YouTube channel.

Sign up at Academyof Ideas.com slash newsletter or find a link in the pinned comment below.

The greatest geniuses sometimes accomplish more when they work less.

Today many subscribe to hustle culture and believe that to be

successful in business a career or a creative endeavor, it is necessary to work long hours,

burn the midnight oil, and sacrifice leisure, rest, and sleep. But many who follow this lifestyle

of relentless work become chronically stressed out and mentally and physically exhausted.

In this video, we offer a healthier and more sustainable approach to success that does not require sacrificing rest and leisure.

For as we will explore, rest is a companion of productive work, not its antithesis.

And when we learn how to harness the power of rest,

it is possible to work less hours each day and yet still be more productive than our workaholic

peers. In his book Rest, Why You Get More Done When You Work Less, Alex Sujung Kim Pang writes,

Many of us are interested in how to work better, but we don't think very much about how to rest

better, but this is a mistake.

We underestimate how much good serious rest can do us, and we also underestimate how much we

can do if we take rest seriously.

In 1890, the great American psychologist William James noticed that his fellow

countrymen were becoming accustomed to working long hours. Instead of having a positive

effect on economic output and individual well-being, James predicted that this way of life would not

only increase the frequency and severity of our mental breakdowns, but also

lead to less productivity, or as he wrote in his essay, the Gospel of Relaxation.

If working long hours in living excitedly and hurriedly would only enable us to do more, there

...