The Brain at Rest – by Dr. Joseph Jebelli

The author, a neuroscientist, having watched his parents’ health go from good to bad to worse on account of overwork, makes the case for rest.

Not just as a “necessarily evil” in the sense of “if you don’t schedule time for rest, your body will schedule it for you” (i.e. break down and thus force the issue), but also, because it is during periods of rest when our brain’s “default mode network” (DMN) takes the wheel, and without the DMN, there are a lot of important cognitive functions that will barely happen, if at all.

This is the reason why, for example, people perform better on cognitive tasks after a short rest, than people who had more time to solve the cognitive tasks, but not rest. In essence, rest is time that pays for itself in productivity.

How much rest? Dr. Jebelli presents evidence for there being measurable benefits from 5 minutes; more benefits from 20 minutes, more from an hour, more from 4 hours, 8 hours, 24 hours, 48 hours. And so on. In other words: the benefits are dose-dependent.

That said, it’s not just about productivity. Yes, getting adequate rest will ultimately result in better work, but there’s also a whole chapter devoted to avoiding what the Japanese call karoshi—death from overwork.

The style of the book is mostly explanatory, and in part instructional. It’s mostly very soft science, with hard science merely being pointed to in citations, so it’s very easy to understand. As for the instructional parts, Dr. Jebelli advises on how best to rest (not prescribing hobbies, so much as: there are different kinds of rest, and it’s important to get a good coverage of the different kinds), and how to enjoy the greatest benefits.

Bottom line: if you sometimes feel like you need a break, but at the same time feel like you “can’t, because…”, then this book will empower you to find a way (he advises about that, too).

Click here to check out The Brain at Rest, and rest your brain!