http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/03/12/fasting-for-three-days-can-regenerate-entire-immune-system-study/
Fasting for three days can regenerate entire immune system, study finds
Researchers say fasting "flips a regenerative switch" which prompts stem cells to create brand new white blood cells
5 JUNE 2014 • 7:45PMFasting for as little as three days can regenerate the entire immune system, even in the elderly, scientists have found in a breakthrough described as "remarkable".
Although fasting diets have been criticised by nutritionists for being unhealthy, new research suggests starving the body kick-starts stem cells into producing new white blood cells, which fight off infection.
Scientists at the University of Southern California say the discovery could be particularly beneficial for people suffering from damaged immune systems, such as cancer patients on chemotherapy.
It could also help the elderly whose immune system becomes less effective as they age, making it harder for them to fight off even common diseases.
The researchers say fasting "flips a regenerative switch" which prompts stem cells to create brand new white blood cells, essentially regenerating the entire immune system.
"It gives the 'OK' for stem cells to go ahead and begin proliferating and rebuild the entire system," said Prof Valter Longo, Professor of Gerontology and the Biological Sciences at the University of California.
"And the good news is that the body got rid of the parts of the system that might be damaged or old, the inefficient parts, during the fasting.
“Now, if you start with a system heavily damaged by chemotherapy or ageing, fasting cycles can generate, literally, a new immune system."
Prolonged fasting forces the body to use stores of glucose and fat but also breaks down a significant portion of white blood cells.
During each cycle of fasting, this depletion of white blood cells induces changes that trigger stem cell-based regeneration of new immune system cells.
In trials humans were asked to regularly fast for between two and four days over a six-month period.
Scientists found that prolonged fasting also reduced the enzyme PKA, which is linked to ageing and a hormone which increases cancer risk and tumour growth.
"We could not predict that prolonged fasting would have such a remarkable effect in promoting stem cell-based regeneration of the hematopoietic system," added Prof Longo.
"When you starve, the system tries to save energy, and one of the things it can do to save energy is to recycle a lot of the immune cells that are not needed, especially those that may be damaged," Dr Longo said.
"What we started noticing in both our human work and animal work is that the white blood cell count goes down with prolonged fasting. Then when you re-feed, the blood cells come back. So we started thinking, well, where does it come from?"
Fasting for 72 hours also protected cancer patients against the toxic impact of chemotherapy.
"While chemotherapy saves lives, it causes significant collateral damage to the immune system. The results of this study suggest that fasting may mitigate some of the harmful effects of chemotherapy," said co-author Tanya Dorff, assistant professor of clinical medicine at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center and Hospital.
"More clinical studies are needed, and any such dietary intervention should be undertaken only under the guidance of a physician.”
"We are investigating the possibility that these effects are applicable to many different systems and organs, not just the immune system," added Prof Longo.
However, some British experts were sceptical of the research.
Dr Graham Rook, emeritus professor of immunology at University College London, said the study sounded "improbable".
Chris Mason, Professor of Regenerative Medicine at UCL, said: “There is some interesting data here. It sees that fasting reduces the number and size of cells and then re-feeding at 72 hours saw a rebound.
“That could be potentially useful because that is not such a long time that it would be terribly harmful to someone with cancer.
“But I think the most sensible way forward would be to synthesize this effect with drugs. I am not sure fasting is the best idea. People are better eating on a regular basis.”
Dr Longo added: “There is no evidence at all that fasting would be dangerous while there is strong evidence that it is beneficial.
“I have received emails from hundreds of cancer patients who have combined chemo with fasting, many with the assistance of the oncologists.
“Thus far the great majority have reported doing very well and only a few have reported some side effects including fainting and a temporary increase in liver markers. Clearly we need to finish the clinical trials, but it looks very promising.”
Fasting for three days can regenerate entire immune system, study finds
Researchers say fasting "flips a regenerative switch" which prompts stem cells to create brand new white blood cells
5 JUNE 2014 • 7:45PMFasting for as little as three days can regenerate the entire immune system, even in the elderly, scientists have found in a breakthrough described as "remarkable".
Although fasting diets have been criticised by nutritionists for being unhealthy, new research suggests starving the body kick-starts stem cells into producing new white blood cells, which fight off infection.
Scientists at the University of Southern California say the discovery could be particularly beneficial for people suffering from damaged immune systems, such as cancer patients on chemotherapy.
It could also help the elderly whose immune system becomes less effective as they age, making it harder for them to fight off even common diseases.
The researchers say fasting "flips a regenerative switch" which prompts stem cells to create brand new white blood cells, essentially regenerating the entire immune system.
"It gives the 'OK' for stem cells to go ahead and begin proliferating and rebuild the entire system," said Prof Valter Longo, Professor of Gerontology and the Biological Sciences at the University of California.
"And the good news is that the body got rid of the parts of the system that might be damaged or old, the inefficient parts, during the fasting.
“Now, if you start with a system heavily damaged by chemotherapy or ageing, fasting cycles can generate, literally, a new immune system."
Prolonged fasting forces the body to use stores of glucose and fat but also breaks down a significant portion of white blood cells.
During each cycle of fasting, this depletion of white blood cells induces changes that trigger stem cell-based regeneration of new immune system cells.
In trials humans were asked to regularly fast for between two and four days over a six-month period.
Scientists found that prolonged fasting also reduced the enzyme PKA, which is linked to ageing and a hormone which increases cancer risk and tumour growth.
"We could not predict that prolonged fasting would have such a remarkable effect in promoting stem cell-based regeneration of the hematopoietic system," added Prof Longo.
"When you starve, the system tries to save energy, and one of the things it can do to save energy is to recycle a lot of the immune cells that are not needed, especially those that may be damaged," Dr Longo said.
"What we started noticing in both our human work and animal work is that the white blood cell count goes down with prolonged fasting. Then when you re-feed, the blood cells come back. So we started thinking, well, where does it come from?"
Fasting for 72 hours also protected cancer patients against the toxic impact of chemotherapy.
"While chemotherapy saves lives, it causes significant collateral damage to the immune system. The results of this study suggest that fasting may mitigate some of the harmful effects of chemotherapy," said co-author Tanya Dorff, assistant professor of clinical medicine at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center and Hospital.
"More clinical studies are needed, and any such dietary intervention should be undertaken only under the guidance of a physician.”
"We are investigating the possibility that these effects are applicable to many different systems and organs, not just the immune system," added Prof Longo.
However, some British experts were sceptical of the research.
Dr Graham Rook, emeritus professor of immunology at University College London, said the study sounded "improbable".
Chris Mason, Professor of Regenerative Medicine at UCL, said: “There is some interesting data here. It sees that fasting reduces the number and size of cells and then re-feeding at 72 hours saw a rebound.
“That could be potentially useful because that is not such a long time that it would be terribly harmful to someone with cancer.
“But I think the most sensible way forward would be to synthesize this effect with drugs. I am not sure fasting is the best idea. People are better eating on a regular basis.”
Dr Longo added: “There is no evidence at all that fasting would be dangerous while there is strong evidence that it is beneficial.
“I have received emails from hundreds of cancer patients who have combined chemo with fasting, many with the assistance of the oncologists.
“Thus far the great majority have reported doing very well and only a few have reported some side effects including fainting and a temporary increase in liver markers. Clearly we need to finish the clinical trials, but it looks very promising.”
https://blog.bufferapp.com/how-much-sleep-do-we-really-need-to-work-productively
How Much Sleep Do We Really Need to Work Productively?
By Leo WidrichLIFE HACKING - AUGUST 8, 2012104 CommentsEvery one of us, on average, will be sleeping 24 years in our lifetime. That’s a pretty long time if you ask me and makes it even more important to know exactly how the phenomenon of sleep impacts us.
And still, there are so many unanswered questions evolving around sleep and how much we need of it. In fact, Most of what we know about sleep we’ve learned in the past 25 years.
One of the biggest problems I’ve discovered is that sleep is such an over talked topic. We get the general idea that we know all about it: how much we need of it, how it impacts us and why this or that happens when we sleep. Once I took a step back to really think about where our knowledge about sleep comes from, I realized that nearly all of it is based on hear-say or what my mom told me when I was in elementary school.
With this post, I’ve set out to uncover once and for all what the most important research has taught us about sleep. And of course, how you can use this knowledge to create an unbeatable daily routine.
Share stories like this to your social media followers when they’re most likely to click, favorite, and reply! Schedule your first post with Buffer.
Eliminating the 8 hours per night sleep mythEveryone I’ve asked the question “how much sleep do I need” has an answer to the question. A common one – and one that I have given on many occasions – is to respond “Oh yes, I need my 8-9 hours of sleep every night, I know that”.
It turns out, that might not be true after all:
“We’ve all been told you ought to sleep 8 hr., but there was never any evidence.”
Says one of the most acclaimed researchers about sleep Daniel Kripke in an interview. In his most recent study Kripke found that “people who sleep between 6.5 hr. and 7.5 hr. a night, live the longest, are happier and most productive”.
What’s even more interesting here is that sleeping longer than that might actually be worse for your health mentioning that: “Sleeping 8.5 hr. might really be a little worse than sleeping 5 hr.”
Personally, as an 8 hour/night sleeper, this definitely opened my eyes and I have started to experiment by decreasing my sleeping time slightly and see if 7.5 hours makes a difference.
Of course, the general idea about the “one-fits all sleeping amount” is particularly odd, as Jim Horne, one of Europe’s most acclaimed sleep experts mentions in his book: “It’s like saying everybody should have size eight shoes, or be five foot eight inches.”
It seems that finding your optimal sleeping time in between Kripke’s finding is a good way to go. It’s certainly something I’m giving a go now.
The trap of too little sleep: What happens to our brains if we don’t have enough sleep?“Working overtime doesn’t increase your output. It makes you stupid.”
Now this part is one of the most fascinating aspects about sleep I believe. Did it ever happen to you that someone who got only 4 hours of sleep a night looks just as attentive, fresh and up to his game like you, who spent your 7.5 hours in bed?
Well, the answer is – that someone who is severely sleep deprived is in fact as attentive and awake as you are. With one big difference to you. Here is what a recent study found: The sleep deprived person can in fact deliver the exact same results as someone who isn’t sleep deprived in any exercise. That is, given it is a non repeated exercise and they give it their best shot. Odd right? Now onto this though:
The problem lies elsewhere. Whether we are sleep deprived or not, we lose focus at times. And that is precisely where the sleep deprived person lands in a trap. Once we start to lose focus and have received the right amount of sleep, our brain can compensate for that and increase attention (see the image below for the increased yellow bits that shift your focus back.). If we are sleep deprived, our brain can’t refocus.
“The main finding is that the brain of the sleep-deprived individual is working normally sometimes, but intermittently suffers from something akin to power failure,”
says Clifford Saper from Harvard. In the following image you can see what this means. As you lose focus and your attention is drifting, the yellow bits show how people with enough sleep, activate parts in their brain to refocus at the task at hand. Sleep deprived people will have barely any activity in that area (the amygdala reactivity) and will struggle to regain focus:
So really, this can turn into a huge trap. The person bragging that they only slept 4 hours and still do great work, well, they are actually right with what they are saying. The only issue is that, they have no brainpower to steer them back to focus once they lose attention. Even worse so, sleep-deprived people don’t notice their decrease in performance.
Sleep-deprived workers may not know they are impaired. “The periods of apparently normal functioning could give a false sense of competency and security when, in fact, the brain’s inconsistency could have dire consequences,”
Sleeping your way to successNot getting enough sleep is a pain. So now, onto the good stuff of what we can actually do, to optimize our sleeping habits to new heights and sleep our way to success as Arianna Huffington puts it.
When it comes to developing focused techniques that help you work on a better sleeping habit, the web isn’t short of answers. Querying some of the smartest brains I know, here are the top 3 things to do, in order to have better sleep and work more productively:
1.) Start napping every day – here is why and how:There is a confession I have to make, at least at this point. For the past 2 years, since I started working on Buffer, I have been napping every day, for around 20 minutes. One of my favorite writers and New York Times bestselling author Michael Hyatt puts an equal focus on napping for many years and posted his insights in this great post about napping.
– As Michael points out in his post, some of the core benefits of napping is that you can restore alertness of your brain with just a few minutes of falling into light sleep.
– Personally, I know that my productivity takes a dip at 3pm every day. This is exactly where I place my nap, and it has been one of the most powerful ways to bring my productivity back to 100% for a good 1,5 hour session after that.
– In a great video Michael pointed me towards, one of the key benefits of napping daily is to simply feel less tired. Although this may sound stupidly obvious, yet can help a great deal to contribute to your daily happiness. Check out this quick video on this topic.
To get into a napping routine is often very difficult. Here are the top 3 ways I think you can make it work:
“Whilst habits are often seen as activities you have to force yourself to do, rituals are instead activities which you are pulled towards.”
Writes Joel in this great post on developing a sleep ritual. When it comes to creating a sleep ritual, one of the key things is to have the last activity completely disengage you from the tasks of the rest of your day. Here are a few activities you can try to properly disengage:
– One of the things Joel is doing every night before going to bed is a 20 minute walk on a set down and specific route and time. It is a great way to clear your head and be ready for sleep. For a specific way to develop your evening walk, try Coelho’s speed exercise.
– Another part that has worked greatly and Joel has taught me is to read fiction. Different to non-fiction books it is a great way to completely disengage, enter a different world and mindset and then be ready for great sleep.
– The last point I had great success with is to have a clear wake-up time bytying it to an immediate event afterwards. If you just set your alarm for say 7.30, but you always hit the snooze button, try something else. Keep the alarm, but plan the first thing you will do and tie it to a specific time. For me, this is for example, that I have breakfast immediately at 7.40. Or that my support session starts at 7.45. Joel hits the gym exactly 5 minutes after wake-up time. Those things can help a great deal to get over the inertia of getting out of bed.
3.) Making sure you are tired in every dimension:A key part of the book by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwarz about The Power of Full Engagement, is to be aware that for the highest quality of sleep, you need to be drained, both physically and mentally to some extent.
Making sure that you have both at least one mentally challenging exercise as well as a physically challenging one, can make all the difference to falling into a deep sleep that recovers all areas of your body.
Here is also a great article about whether exercise is a requirement for sleep.
Quick last fact: Women need more sleep than menHere is a super interesting last fact. Women need a tad bit more sleep than men:
“The average is 20 minutes more, but some women may need slightly more or less than this.”
Why? This is because women’s brains are wired differently from men’s and are more complex, so their sleep need will be slightly greater, says Horne in hisbook.
Sleep and how we deal with it every day is a fascinating topic I believe. What are your tips that you’ve found to make your more productive when it comes to sleep? Do you think some of the tips above might be helpful to trigger a better daily workflow?
How Much Sleep Do We Really Need to Work Productively?
By Leo WidrichLIFE HACKING - AUGUST 8, 2012104 CommentsEvery one of us, on average, will be sleeping 24 years in our lifetime. That’s a pretty long time if you ask me and makes it even more important to know exactly how the phenomenon of sleep impacts us.
And still, there are so many unanswered questions evolving around sleep and how much we need of it. In fact, Most of what we know about sleep we’ve learned in the past 25 years.
One of the biggest problems I’ve discovered is that sleep is such an over talked topic. We get the general idea that we know all about it: how much we need of it, how it impacts us and why this or that happens when we sleep. Once I took a step back to really think about where our knowledge about sleep comes from, I realized that nearly all of it is based on hear-say or what my mom told me when I was in elementary school.
With this post, I’ve set out to uncover once and for all what the most important research has taught us about sleep. And of course, how you can use this knowledge to create an unbeatable daily routine.
Share stories like this to your social media followers when they’re most likely to click, favorite, and reply! Schedule your first post with Buffer.
Eliminating the 8 hours per night sleep mythEveryone I’ve asked the question “how much sleep do I need” has an answer to the question. A common one – and one that I have given on many occasions – is to respond “Oh yes, I need my 8-9 hours of sleep every night, I know that”.
It turns out, that might not be true after all:
“We’ve all been told you ought to sleep 8 hr., but there was never any evidence.”
Says one of the most acclaimed researchers about sleep Daniel Kripke in an interview. In his most recent study Kripke found that “people who sleep between 6.5 hr. and 7.5 hr. a night, live the longest, are happier and most productive”.
What’s even more interesting here is that sleeping longer than that might actually be worse for your health mentioning that: “Sleeping 8.5 hr. might really be a little worse than sleeping 5 hr.”
Personally, as an 8 hour/night sleeper, this definitely opened my eyes and I have started to experiment by decreasing my sleeping time slightly and see if 7.5 hours makes a difference.
Of course, the general idea about the “one-fits all sleeping amount” is particularly odd, as Jim Horne, one of Europe’s most acclaimed sleep experts mentions in his book: “It’s like saying everybody should have size eight shoes, or be five foot eight inches.”
It seems that finding your optimal sleeping time in between Kripke’s finding is a good way to go. It’s certainly something I’m giving a go now.
The trap of too little sleep: What happens to our brains if we don’t have enough sleep?“Working overtime doesn’t increase your output. It makes you stupid.”
Now this part is one of the most fascinating aspects about sleep I believe. Did it ever happen to you that someone who got only 4 hours of sleep a night looks just as attentive, fresh and up to his game like you, who spent your 7.5 hours in bed?
Well, the answer is – that someone who is severely sleep deprived is in fact as attentive and awake as you are. With one big difference to you. Here is what a recent study found: The sleep deprived person can in fact deliver the exact same results as someone who isn’t sleep deprived in any exercise. That is, given it is a non repeated exercise and they give it their best shot. Odd right? Now onto this though:
The problem lies elsewhere. Whether we are sleep deprived or not, we lose focus at times. And that is precisely where the sleep deprived person lands in a trap. Once we start to lose focus and have received the right amount of sleep, our brain can compensate for that and increase attention (see the image below for the increased yellow bits that shift your focus back.). If we are sleep deprived, our brain can’t refocus.
“The main finding is that the brain of the sleep-deprived individual is working normally sometimes, but intermittently suffers from something akin to power failure,”
says Clifford Saper from Harvard. In the following image you can see what this means. As you lose focus and your attention is drifting, the yellow bits show how people with enough sleep, activate parts in their brain to refocus at the task at hand. Sleep deprived people will have barely any activity in that area (the amygdala reactivity) and will struggle to regain focus:
So really, this can turn into a huge trap. The person bragging that they only slept 4 hours and still do great work, well, they are actually right with what they are saying. The only issue is that, they have no brainpower to steer them back to focus once they lose attention. Even worse so, sleep-deprived people don’t notice their decrease in performance.
Sleep-deprived workers may not know they are impaired. “The periods of apparently normal functioning could give a false sense of competency and security when, in fact, the brain’s inconsistency could have dire consequences,”
Sleeping your way to successNot getting enough sleep is a pain. So now, onto the good stuff of what we can actually do, to optimize our sleeping habits to new heights and sleep our way to success as Arianna Huffington puts it.
When it comes to developing focused techniques that help you work on a better sleeping habit, the web isn’t short of answers. Querying some of the smartest brains I know, here are the top 3 things to do, in order to have better sleep and work more productively:
1.) Start napping every day – here is why and how:There is a confession I have to make, at least at this point. For the past 2 years, since I started working on Buffer, I have been napping every day, for around 20 minutes. One of my favorite writers and New York Times bestselling author Michael Hyatt puts an equal focus on napping for many years and posted his insights in this great post about napping.
– As Michael points out in his post, some of the core benefits of napping is that you can restore alertness of your brain with just a few minutes of falling into light sleep.
– Personally, I know that my productivity takes a dip at 3pm every day. This is exactly where I place my nap, and it has been one of the most powerful ways to bring my productivity back to 100% for a good 1,5 hour session after that.
– In a great video Michael pointed me towards, one of the key benefits of napping daily is to simply feel less tired. Although this may sound stupidly obvious, yet can help a great deal to contribute to your daily happiness. Check out this quick video on this topic.
To get into a napping routine is often very difficult. Here are the top 3 ways I think you can make it work:
- Especially if you work in a big office, or you tend to feel others might consider you slacking off. One of the key things I found here is to make others aware of the fact, that you are napping every day. Try and get encouragement from your co-workers or your boss, so you can set yourself up for developing a successful habit.
- Timing is of course very important. In fact, in the video above, the common sentence of “napping doesn’t work for me” is often down to the fact that people nap too long. Don’t let your naps exceed 30 minutes max, personally, 20 minutes has proven to be the optimal timing for me.
- The last tip I find most crucial is to make napping a consistent habit. Keep both the frequency (daily) and the time of day (3pm seems to be a very popular time as productivity dips) the same and consistent.
“Whilst habits are often seen as activities you have to force yourself to do, rituals are instead activities which you are pulled towards.”
Writes Joel in this great post on developing a sleep ritual. When it comes to creating a sleep ritual, one of the key things is to have the last activity completely disengage you from the tasks of the rest of your day. Here are a few activities you can try to properly disengage:
– One of the things Joel is doing every night before going to bed is a 20 minute walk on a set down and specific route and time. It is a great way to clear your head and be ready for sleep. For a specific way to develop your evening walk, try Coelho’s speed exercise.
– Another part that has worked greatly and Joel has taught me is to read fiction. Different to non-fiction books it is a great way to completely disengage, enter a different world and mindset and then be ready for great sleep.
– The last point I had great success with is to have a clear wake-up time bytying it to an immediate event afterwards. If you just set your alarm for say 7.30, but you always hit the snooze button, try something else. Keep the alarm, but plan the first thing you will do and tie it to a specific time. For me, this is for example, that I have breakfast immediately at 7.40. Or that my support session starts at 7.45. Joel hits the gym exactly 5 minutes after wake-up time. Those things can help a great deal to get over the inertia of getting out of bed.
3.) Making sure you are tired in every dimension:A key part of the book by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwarz about The Power of Full Engagement, is to be aware that for the highest quality of sleep, you need to be drained, both physically and mentally to some extent.
Making sure that you have both at least one mentally challenging exercise as well as a physically challenging one, can make all the difference to falling into a deep sleep that recovers all areas of your body.
Here is also a great article about whether exercise is a requirement for sleep.
Quick last fact: Women need more sleep than menHere is a super interesting last fact. Women need a tad bit more sleep than men:
“The average is 20 minutes more, but some women may need slightly more or less than this.”
Why? This is because women’s brains are wired differently from men’s and are more complex, so their sleep need will be slightly greater, says Horne in hisbook.
Sleep and how we deal with it every day is a fascinating topic I believe. What are your tips that you’ve found to make your more productive when it comes to sleep? Do you think some of the tips above might be helpful to trigger a better daily workflow?
https://blog.bufferapp.com/optimal-work-time-how-long-should-we-work-every-day-the-science-of-mental-strength
The Origin of the 8-Hour Work Day and Why We Should Rethink It
By Leo WidrichPRODUCTIVITY - JUNE 11, 2013110 CommentsOne of the most unchanged elements of our life today is our optimal work timeor how long we should work – generally, every person I’ve spoken to quotes me something close to 8 hours a day.
And data seems to confirm that: The average American works 8.8 hours every day. At least, those are the official statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
And yet, for most of us it is obvious that knowing how long the average person works every day has little to do with how efficient or productive that pattern is. At least, that is what I personally found for my own productivity. So what’s the the right hourly rate?
With success stories from people working 4 hours a week, to 16 hours a day, it’s hard to know if there is an optimal amount. So instead of going with my gut, which often fails me, I thought of looking into actual research on work time and how to optimize it for your happiness and success.
Share stories like this to your social media followers when they’re most likely to click, favorite, and reply! Schedule your first post with Buffer.
Why do we have 8 hour work days in the first place?Let’s start out with what we have right now. The typical work day is around 8 hours. But how did we come up with that? The answer is hidden in the tidings of the Industrial revolution.
In the late 18th century, when companies started to maximize the output of their factories, getting to running them 24/7 was key. Now of course, to make things more efficient, people had to work more. In fact, 10-16 hour days were the norm.
These incredibly long work days weren’t sustainable and soon a brave man called Robert Owen started a campaign to have people work no more than 8 hours per day. His slogan was “Eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest.”
It wasn’t until much later that Ford actually implemented the 8 hour work day and changed the standards:
“One of the first businesses to implement this was the Ford Motor Company, in 1914, which not only cut the standard work day to eight hours, but also doubled their worker’s pay in the process. To the shock of many industries, this resulted in Ford’s productivity off of these same workers, but with fewer hours, actually increasing significantly and Ford’s profit margins doubled within two years. This encouraged other companies to adopt the shorter, eight hour work day as a standard for their employees.”
So there we have it. The reason we work 8 hours a day, isn’t scientific or much thought out. It’s purely the a century old norm for running factories most efficiently.
Manage energy not time: How long we work isn’t important & the Ultradian RhythmWithout wanting to fall into the same trap, it’s time to ask a better question. How many hours we work every day is barely important any more in today’s creative economy.
Instead, the right focus is your energy, according to famous author Tony Schwartz:
“Manage your energy, not your time.”
Schwartz explains that as humans we have 4 different types of energies to manage every day:
For an efficient work day, that truly respects our human nature, the first thing to focus on are ultradian cycles.
The basic understanding is that our human minds can focus on any given task for 90-120 minutes. Afterwards, a 20-30 minute break is required for us to get the renewal to achieve high performance for our next task again. Here is a better representation of the ultradian rhythm:
So instead of thinking about “What can I get done in an 8 hour day”, I’ve started to change my thinking to “What can I get done in a 90 min session”.
Now that we know we got to split everything in 90 min chunks, it’s time to break down those 90 minutes sessions further.
The core of a productive work day: FocusThe one most crucial to understanding our workflows is how well we can focus. In a stunning research project Justin Gardner found that to actually focus on something our brain uses a 2-step process:
1.) “Sensitivity enhancement”: It means you see a scene or setup and take all the information in that is presented. Then you focus in on what needs your attention. Kind of like “a blurry photo that slowly starts to come into focus”, describes Lifehacker.
2.) “Efficient selection”: This is now the actual zooming in on a task happens. This allows us to enter into what Mihály Csíkszentmihályi calls“Flow” state. Now our actual work on a task happens.
The follow figure probably describes it best:
In figure A, as our brain is presented with only 1 task, we are able to separate out distractors (blue) from what’s actually important (yellow).
In figure B, as we are presented with multiple tasks at once, our brain is increasingly easy to distract and combines the actual tasks with distractors.
The key conclusion that Gardner suggests from his study is that we have to both:
The top 4 tips for improving your work dayFor my daily workflow at Buffer, I’ve started to make 4 distinct changes to implement the above research better. Here is what worked the best:
Oh and as a follow-up post to this one, you might also enjoy “The science of how temperature and lighting impacts our productivity” as well as “The 4 elements of physical energy and how to master them”
The Origin of the 8-Hour Work Day and Why We Should Rethink It
By Leo WidrichPRODUCTIVITY - JUNE 11, 2013110 CommentsOne of the most unchanged elements of our life today is our optimal work timeor how long we should work – generally, every person I’ve spoken to quotes me something close to 8 hours a day.
And data seems to confirm that: The average American works 8.8 hours every day. At least, those are the official statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
And yet, for most of us it is obvious that knowing how long the average person works every day has little to do with how efficient or productive that pattern is. At least, that is what I personally found for my own productivity. So what’s the the right hourly rate?
With success stories from people working 4 hours a week, to 16 hours a day, it’s hard to know if there is an optimal amount. So instead of going with my gut, which often fails me, I thought of looking into actual research on work time and how to optimize it for your happiness and success.
Share stories like this to your social media followers when they’re most likely to click, favorite, and reply! Schedule your first post with Buffer.
Why do we have 8 hour work days in the first place?Let’s start out with what we have right now. The typical work day is around 8 hours. But how did we come up with that? The answer is hidden in the tidings of the Industrial revolution.
In the late 18th century, when companies started to maximize the output of their factories, getting to running them 24/7 was key. Now of course, to make things more efficient, people had to work more. In fact, 10-16 hour days were the norm.
These incredibly long work days weren’t sustainable and soon a brave man called Robert Owen started a campaign to have people work no more than 8 hours per day. His slogan was “Eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest.”
It wasn’t until much later that Ford actually implemented the 8 hour work day and changed the standards:
“One of the first businesses to implement this was the Ford Motor Company, in 1914, which not only cut the standard work day to eight hours, but also doubled their worker’s pay in the process. To the shock of many industries, this resulted in Ford’s productivity off of these same workers, but with fewer hours, actually increasing significantly and Ford’s profit margins doubled within two years. This encouraged other companies to adopt the shorter, eight hour work day as a standard for their employees.”
So there we have it. The reason we work 8 hours a day, isn’t scientific or much thought out. It’s purely the a century old norm for running factories most efficiently.
Manage energy not time: How long we work isn’t important & the Ultradian RhythmWithout wanting to fall into the same trap, it’s time to ask a better question. How many hours we work every day is barely important any more in today’s creative economy.
Instead, the right focus is your energy, according to famous author Tony Schwartz:
“Manage your energy, not your time.”
Schwartz explains that as humans we have 4 different types of energies to manage every day:
- Your physical energy – how healthy are you? (We’ve written about that part before)
- Your emotional energy – how happy are you?
- Your mental energy – how well can you focus on something?
- Your spiritual energy – why are you doing all of this? What is your purpose?
For an efficient work day, that truly respects our human nature, the first thing to focus on are ultradian cycles.
The basic understanding is that our human minds can focus on any given task for 90-120 minutes. Afterwards, a 20-30 minute break is required for us to get the renewal to achieve high performance for our next task again. Here is a better representation of the ultradian rhythm:
So instead of thinking about “What can I get done in an 8 hour day”, I’ve started to change my thinking to “What can I get done in a 90 min session”.
Now that we know we got to split everything in 90 min chunks, it’s time to break down those 90 minutes sessions further.
The core of a productive work day: FocusThe one most crucial to understanding our workflows is how well we can focus. In a stunning research project Justin Gardner found that to actually focus on something our brain uses a 2-step process:
1.) “Sensitivity enhancement”: It means you see a scene or setup and take all the information in that is presented. Then you focus in on what needs your attention. Kind of like “a blurry photo that slowly starts to come into focus”, describes Lifehacker.
2.) “Efficient selection”: This is now the actual zooming in on a task happens. This allows us to enter into what Mihály Csíkszentmihályi calls“Flow” state. Now our actual work on a task happens.
The follow figure probably describes it best:
In figure A, as our brain is presented with only 1 task, we are able to separate out distractors (blue) from what’s actually important (yellow).
In figure B, as we are presented with multiple tasks at once, our brain is increasingly easy to distract and combines the actual tasks with distractors.
The key conclusion that Gardner suggests from his study is that we have to both:
- Stop multitasking to avoid being distracted in our work environment.
- Eliminate distractors even when only 1 task is present
The top 4 tips for improving your work dayFor my daily workflow at Buffer, I’ve started to make 4 distinct changes to implement the above research better. Here is what worked the best:
- Manually increase the relevance of a task: Now, a lot of us still might struggle to find the focus, especially if no one set a deadline to it. Overriding your attention system, and adding your own deadline together with a reward has shown some of the most significant improvements for task completion according to researcher Keisuke Fukuda.
- Split your day into 90 min windows: Here is something I’ve started to do. Instead of looking at a 8, 6 or 10 hour work day, split it down and say you’ve got 4, 5 or however many 90 minute windows. That way you will be able to have 4 tasks that you can get done every day much more easily.
- Plan your rest so you actually rest: “The fittest person is not the one who runs the fastest, but the one who has optimized their rest time.” Says Tony Schwartz. A lot of the time, we are so busy planning our work day, that we forget about “how” to rest. Plan beforehand what you will do your rest. Here are some ideas: Nap, read, meditate, get a snack.
- Zero notifications: One of the best ideas I’ve ever had was to follow Joel’s advice on Zero Notifications. Having absolutely no counter on my phone or computer changing from 0 to 1 and always breaking my focus has been a huge help. If you haven’t tried this yet, try to turn off every digital element that could become an alert.
Oh and as a follow-up post to this one, you might also enjoy “The science of how temperature and lighting impacts our productivity” as well as “The 4 elements of physical energy and how to master them”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7111982
Circaseptan (about-7-day) bioperiodicity--spontaneous and reactive--and the search for pacemakers.Levi F, Halberg F.AbstractA built-in (genetically determined) about-7-day (circaseptan) period comes to the fore as a desynchronized feature of human time structure in the urinary excretion of 17-ketosteroids by a clinical healthy man: during several years following an endocrine intervention (the self-administration of testosterone suppositories), a circaseptan rhythm (which during the preceding decade had revealed a period of precisely 7 days) deviated slightly, yet with statistical significance, from the environmental week. A second line of evidence for an intrinsic circaseptan component stems from the demonstration of statistically significant differences in timing of a circaseptan rhythm in springtail oviposition. A third line of evidence documents prominent circaseptan rhythmicity after the application of a single stimulus (devoid in itself of any circaseptan information). Such single stimulus induction, amplification and/or synchronization also documents the clinical and biologic importance of built-in circaseptan rhythms that were previously often misinterpreted as being purely reactive: a circaseptan spectral component is remarkably prominent in mammalian organ transplant rejection, both in the clinic and in the laboratory. In the latter case, in the absence of any weekly cycles in hospital routine, including treatment schedules, circaseptan components characterize the rejection of the rat kidney, pancreas and heart. Much additional information here reviewed reveals the occurrence of periods of about 7 days. Their implications for transplant and other chronoimmunology as well as biology in general, and their clinical applications in drug treatment, include the need to weld circaseptan timing to circadian timing and dosing. A dramatic documentation of this need stems from the circumstance that pretreatment for one week with the same total dose of the same substance (a polysaccharide - Lentinan) accelerates or retards cancerous growth (hence shortens or lengthens survival) as a function of interactive circaseptan and circadian rhythms.
Circaseptan (about-7-day) bioperiodicity--spontaneous and reactive--and the search for pacemakers.Levi F, Halberg F.AbstractA built-in (genetically determined) about-7-day (circaseptan) period comes to the fore as a desynchronized feature of human time structure in the urinary excretion of 17-ketosteroids by a clinical healthy man: during several years following an endocrine intervention (the self-administration of testosterone suppositories), a circaseptan rhythm (which during the preceding decade had revealed a period of precisely 7 days) deviated slightly, yet with statistical significance, from the environmental week. A second line of evidence for an intrinsic circaseptan component stems from the demonstration of statistically significant differences in timing of a circaseptan rhythm in springtail oviposition. A third line of evidence documents prominent circaseptan rhythmicity after the application of a single stimulus (devoid in itself of any circaseptan information). Such single stimulus induction, amplification and/or synchronization also documents the clinical and biologic importance of built-in circaseptan rhythms that were previously often misinterpreted as being purely reactive: a circaseptan spectral component is remarkably prominent in mammalian organ transplant rejection, both in the clinic and in the laboratory. In the latter case, in the absence of any weekly cycles in hospital routine, including treatment schedules, circaseptan components characterize the rejection of the rat kidney, pancreas and heart. Much additional information here reviewed reveals the occurrence of periods of about 7 days. Their implications for transplant and other chronoimmunology as well as biology in general, and their clinical applications in drug treatment, include the need to weld circaseptan timing to circadian timing and dosing. A dramatic documentation of this need stems from the circumstance that pretreatment for one week with the same total dose of the same substance (a polysaccharide - Lentinan) accelerates or retards cancerous growth (hence shortens or lengthens survival) as a function of interactive circaseptan and circadian rhythms.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749379714000993
BackgroundBiological clocks govern numerous aspects of human health, including weekly clocks–called circaseptan rhythms–that typically include early-week spikes for many illnesses.
PurposeTo determine whether contemplations for healthy behaviors also follow circaseptan rhythms.
MethodsWe assessed healthy contemplations by monitoring Google search queries (2005–2012) in the U.S. that included the word healthy and were Google classified as health-related (e.g., healthy diet). A wavelet analysis was used in 2013 to isolate the circaseptan rhythm, with the resulting series compared by estimating ratios of relative query volume (healthy versus all queries) each day (e.g., (Monday–Wednesday)/Wednesday).
ResultsHealthy searches peaked on Monday and Tuesday, thereafter declining until rebounding modestly on Sunday. Monday and Tuesday were statistically indistinguishable (t=1.22,p=0.22), but their combined mean had 30% (99% CI=29, 32) more healthy queries than the combined mean for Wednesday−Sunday. Monday and Tuesday query volume was 3% (99% CI=2, 5) greater than Wednesday, 15% (99% CI=13, 17) greater than Thursday, 49% (99% CI=46, 52) greater than Friday, 80% (99% CI=76, 84) greater than Saturday, and 29% (99% CI=27, 31) greater than Sunday. We explored media-based (priming) motivations for these patterns and they were consistently rejected.
ConclusionsJust as many illnesses have a weekly clock, so do healthy considerations. Discovery of these rhythms opens the door for a new agenda in preventive medicine, including implications for hypothesis development, research strategies to further explore these rhythms, and interventions to exploit daily cycles in healthy considerations.
BackgroundBiological clocks govern numerous aspects of human health, including weekly clocks–called circaseptan rhythms–that typically include early-week spikes for many illnesses.
PurposeTo determine whether contemplations for healthy behaviors also follow circaseptan rhythms.
MethodsWe assessed healthy contemplations by monitoring Google search queries (2005–2012) in the U.S. that included the word healthy and were Google classified as health-related (e.g., healthy diet). A wavelet analysis was used in 2013 to isolate the circaseptan rhythm, with the resulting series compared by estimating ratios of relative query volume (healthy versus all queries) each day (e.g., (Monday–Wednesday)/Wednesday).
ResultsHealthy searches peaked on Monday and Tuesday, thereafter declining until rebounding modestly on Sunday. Monday and Tuesday were statistically indistinguishable (t=1.22,p=0.22), but their combined mean had 30% (99% CI=29, 32) more healthy queries than the combined mean for Wednesday−Sunday. Monday and Tuesday query volume was 3% (99% CI=2, 5) greater than Wednesday, 15% (99% CI=13, 17) greater than Thursday, 49% (99% CI=46, 52) greater than Friday, 80% (99% CI=76, 84) greater than Saturday, and 29% (99% CI=27, 31) greater than Sunday. We explored media-based (priming) motivations for these patterns and they were consistently rejected.
ConclusionsJust as many illnesses have a weekly clock, so do healthy considerations. Discovery of these rhythms opens the door for a new agenda in preventive medicine, including implications for hypothesis development, research strategies to further explore these rhythms, and interventions to exploit daily cycles in healthy considerations.
What does the Bible say about work?"
Answer: The beginning of an essay penned by Bob Black in 1985 entitled “The Abolition of Work” read, “No one should ever work. Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you'd care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working.” In a leisure-loving culture, many would wholeheartedly echo Black’s sentiment. Americans spend approximately 50 percent of their waking hours devoted to work. Is work a curse, or is it something that humans were uniquely designed to do? In stark contrast to the assertions of Bob Black, the significance and beneficial nature of work is a resounding theme in the Bible.
The origin of work is depicted in the book of Genesis. In the opening passage, God is the primary worker, busy with the creation of the world (Genesis 1:1-15). The Bible states that God worked for six days and rested on the seventh day. These passages reveal that God was the first to do work on the earth. Therefore, legitimate work reflects the activity of God. Because God is inherently good, work is also inherently good (Psalm 25:8;Ephesians 4:28). Furthermore, Genesis 1:31 declares that, when God viewed the fruit of His labor, He called it “very good.” God examined and assessed the quality of His work, and when He determined that He had done a good job, He took pleasure in the outcome. By this example, it is apparent that work should be productive. Work should be conducted in a way that produces the highest quality outcome. The reward for work is the honor and satisfaction that comes from a job well done.
Psalm 19 says that God reveals Himself to the world by His work. Through natural revelation, God’s existence is made known to every person on earth. Thus, work reveals something about the one doing the work. It exposes underlying character, motivations, skills, abilities, and personality traits. Jesus echoed this principle inMatthew 7:15-20 when He declared that bad trees produce only bad fruit and good trees only good fruit. Isaiah 43:7 indicates that God created man for His own glory. In 1 Corinthians 10:31 we read that whatever we do should be to His glory. The term glorify means “to give an accurate representation.” Therefore, work done by Christians should give the world an accurate picture of God in righteousness, faithfulness, and excellence.
God created man in His image with characteristics like Him (Genesis 1:26-31). He created man to work with Him in the world. God planted a garden and put Adam in it to cultivate and maintain it (Genesis 2:8, 15). Additionally, Adam and Eve were to subdue and rule over the earth. What does this original work mandate mean? To cultivate means to foster growth and to improve. To maintain means to preserve from failure or decline. To subdue means to exercise control and discipline. Rule over means to administer, take responsibility for, and make decisions. This mandate applies to all vocations. The 15th-century Reformation leaders saw an occupation as a ministry before God. Jobs should be acknowledged as ministries, and workplaces should be considered as mission fields.
The Fall of Man depicted in Genesis 3 generated a change in the nature of work. In response to Adam’s sin, God pronounced several judgments in Genesis 3:17-19, the most severe of which is death. However, labor and the results of labor figure centrally in the rest of the judgments. God cursed the ground. Work became difficult. The word toil is used, implying challenge, difficulty, exhaustion, and struggle. Work itself was still good, but man must expect that it will be accomplished by “the sweat of his brow.” Also, the result will not always be positive. Although man will eat the plants of the field, the field will also produce thorns and thistles. Hard work and effort will not always be rewarded in the way the laborer expects or desires.
It is also noted that man would be eating from the produce of the field, not the garden. A garden is symbolic of an earthly paradise made by God as a safe enclosure. Gardens also symbolize purity and innocence. The earth or field, on the other hand, represents an unbounded, unprotected space and an emphasis on loss of inhibition and worldliness. Therefore, the work environment can be hostile, especially to Christians (Genesis 39:1-23; Exodus 1:8-22; Nehemiah 4).
It is said that man has three basic needs in life: love, purpose and significance. Many times, humans attempt to find purpose and significance in work itself. In Ecclesiastes 2:4-11, Solomon details his search for meaning in a variety of projects and works of all kinds. Even though the work brought some degree of satisfaction in accomplishment, his conclusion was, “Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.”
Other critical biblical principles regarding work are:
• Work is done not only to benefit the worker, but others also (Exodus 23:10-11; Deuteronomy 15:7-11;Ephesians 4:28).
• Work is a gift from God and, for His people, will be blessed (Psalm 104:1-35; 127:1-5; Ecclesiastes 3:12-13,5:18-20; Proverbs 14:23).
• God equips His people for their work (Exodus 31:2-11).
There has been much debate recently about societal responsibilities and obligations toward the unemployed, uninsured, and uneducated in our society. While many of those affected by economic downturns truly desire to work and can’t find employment, there are a number of U.S. citizens who have become generational welfare recipients, preferring to remain on the government dole. It is interesting to note that the biblical welfare system was a system of work (Leviticus 19:10; 23:22). The Bible is harsh in its condemnation of laziness (Proverbs 18:9). Paul makes the Christian work ethic abundantly clear: “If anyone does not provide for his own, and especially those of his own household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Timothy 5:8).
In addition, Paul’s instruction to another church regarding those who preferred not to work was to “keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you received from us.” And he goes on to say, “For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: ‘If a man will not work, he shall not eat.’" Instead, Paul instructs those who had been idle, “Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:12).
Although God’s original design for work was perverted by sin, God will one day restore work without the burdens that sin introduced (Isaiah 65:17-25; Revelation 15:1-4; 22:1-11.) Until the day when the New Heavens and New Earth are set in place, the Christian attitude toward work should mirror that of Jesus: “My food, said Jesus, is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work” (John 4:34). Work is of no value except when God is in it.
Answer: The beginning of an essay penned by Bob Black in 1985 entitled “The Abolition of Work” read, “No one should ever work. Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you'd care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working.” In a leisure-loving culture, many would wholeheartedly echo Black’s sentiment. Americans spend approximately 50 percent of their waking hours devoted to work. Is work a curse, or is it something that humans were uniquely designed to do? In stark contrast to the assertions of Bob Black, the significance and beneficial nature of work is a resounding theme in the Bible.
The origin of work is depicted in the book of Genesis. In the opening passage, God is the primary worker, busy with the creation of the world (Genesis 1:1-15). The Bible states that God worked for six days and rested on the seventh day. These passages reveal that God was the first to do work on the earth. Therefore, legitimate work reflects the activity of God. Because God is inherently good, work is also inherently good (Psalm 25:8;Ephesians 4:28). Furthermore, Genesis 1:31 declares that, when God viewed the fruit of His labor, He called it “very good.” God examined and assessed the quality of His work, and when He determined that He had done a good job, He took pleasure in the outcome. By this example, it is apparent that work should be productive. Work should be conducted in a way that produces the highest quality outcome. The reward for work is the honor and satisfaction that comes from a job well done.
Psalm 19 says that God reveals Himself to the world by His work. Through natural revelation, God’s existence is made known to every person on earth. Thus, work reveals something about the one doing the work. It exposes underlying character, motivations, skills, abilities, and personality traits. Jesus echoed this principle inMatthew 7:15-20 when He declared that bad trees produce only bad fruit and good trees only good fruit. Isaiah 43:7 indicates that God created man for His own glory. In 1 Corinthians 10:31 we read that whatever we do should be to His glory. The term glorify means “to give an accurate representation.” Therefore, work done by Christians should give the world an accurate picture of God in righteousness, faithfulness, and excellence.
God created man in His image with characteristics like Him (Genesis 1:26-31). He created man to work with Him in the world. God planted a garden and put Adam in it to cultivate and maintain it (Genesis 2:8, 15). Additionally, Adam and Eve were to subdue and rule over the earth. What does this original work mandate mean? To cultivate means to foster growth and to improve. To maintain means to preserve from failure or decline. To subdue means to exercise control and discipline. Rule over means to administer, take responsibility for, and make decisions. This mandate applies to all vocations. The 15th-century Reformation leaders saw an occupation as a ministry before God. Jobs should be acknowledged as ministries, and workplaces should be considered as mission fields.
The Fall of Man depicted in Genesis 3 generated a change in the nature of work. In response to Adam’s sin, God pronounced several judgments in Genesis 3:17-19, the most severe of which is death. However, labor and the results of labor figure centrally in the rest of the judgments. God cursed the ground. Work became difficult. The word toil is used, implying challenge, difficulty, exhaustion, and struggle. Work itself was still good, but man must expect that it will be accomplished by “the sweat of his brow.” Also, the result will not always be positive. Although man will eat the plants of the field, the field will also produce thorns and thistles. Hard work and effort will not always be rewarded in the way the laborer expects or desires.
It is also noted that man would be eating from the produce of the field, not the garden. A garden is symbolic of an earthly paradise made by God as a safe enclosure. Gardens also symbolize purity and innocence. The earth or field, on the other hand, represents an unbounded, unprotected space and an emphasis on loss of inhibition and worldliness. Therefore, the work environment can be hostile, especially to Christians (Genesis 39:1-23; Exodus 1:8-22; Nehemiah 4).
It is said that man has three basic needs in life: love, purpose and significance. Many times, humans attempt to find purpose and significance in work itself. In Ecclesiastes 2:4-11, Solomon details his search for meaning in a variety of projects and works of all kinds. Even though the work brought some degree of satisfaction in accomplishment, his conclusion was, “Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.”
Other critical biblical principles regarding work are:
• Work is done not only to benefit the worker, but others also (Exodus 23:10-11; Deuteronomy 15:7-11;Ephesians 4:28).
• Work is a gift from God and, for His people, will be blessed (Psalm 104:1-35; 127:1-5; Ecclesiastes 3:12-13,5:18-20; Proverbs 14:23).
• God equips His people for their work (Exodus 31:2-11).
There has been much debate recently about societal responsibilities and obligations toward the unemployed, uninsured, and uneducated in our society. While many of those affected by economic downturns truly desire to work and can’t find employment, there are a number of U.S. citizens who have become generational welfare recipients, preferring to remain on the government dole. It is interesting to note that the biblical welfare system was a system of work (Leviticus 19:10; 23:22). The Bible is harsh in its condemnation of laziness (Proverbs 18:9). Paul makes the Christian work ethic abundantly clear: “If anyone does not provide for his own, and especially those of his own household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Timothy 5:8).
In addition, Paul’s instruction to another church regarding those who preferred not to work was to “keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you received from us.” And he goes on to say, “For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: ‘If a man will not work, he shall not eat.’" Instead, Paul instructs those who had been idle, “Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:12).
Although God’s original design for work was perverted by sin, God will one day restore work without the burdens that sin introduced (Isaiah 65:17-25; Revelation 15:1-4; 22:1-11.) Until the day when the New Heavens and New Earth are set in place, the Christian attitude toward work should mirror that of Jesus: “My food, said Jesus, is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work” (John 4:34). Work is of no value except when God is in it.
https://becomingchristians.com/2013/07/04/shocking-truths-from-the-bible-top-5-awesome-benefits-of-keeping-the-sabbath-day/
Shocking Truths from the Bible: Top 5 Awesome Benefits of Keeping the Sabbath DayPosted on July 4, 2013 by joshuainfantado“Then He said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath”” (Mark 27-28).
Is Satan behind the change of day? The answer is obvious.Among the Ten Commandments, there is one commandment that is most ignored by people. It is also the only commandment that does not start with “You shall not” thus making it in the positive voice.
This commandment is what most people consider as a burden and will do EVERYTHINGto do away with it but illogically still will keep the other nine. If you have read the title, you guessed it! It’s the fourth commandment:
“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy” (Exodus 20:8).
Saturday is the seventh day of the week!So many people assume that the seventh day of the week is Sunday. As a matter of fact, if you ask someone what day is the seventh day, they will most likely answer Sunday. But are you really sure? This might be a shock to you but SATURDAY is the seventh day of the week and not and will never be Sunday! Check your calendar again to be sure!
Though the majority of this world’s professing Christians does not keep the Sabbath, thepower of the Fourth Commandment cannot be denied. It is created by the Supreme Godwho knows our frame and has given us this commandment for our own benefit. So here is a list of the top 5 awesome benefits of keeping the Sabbath Day or the Fourth Commandment.
5. The Sabbath is the day of rest.“Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work…” (Exodus 20:9-10).
Be at rest during the Sabbath.The term Sabbath itself literally means, “Rest”. Thus, when God finished the re-creation, He restedfrom His work on the seventh day, setting us anexample. God does not need to rest but we, His created being, need physical rest and set a day aside within the week to refrain from work.
God knows that our body is not meant to work 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. Even 8 hours of sleep per day will not be enough to refresh our bodies and reset our biological clock. Experts in the medical field know this that we need rest and this is mandatorily done during the Sabbath. Therefore, we can rest during the Sabbath without that guilt feeling of being lazy.
4. The Sabbath is a time to fellowship with like-minded Christians.“Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Hebrews 10:25).
There is a unique joy that you can experience when having fellowship with like-minded people.I heard someone said, “Christians who keep the Sabbath spends 1/7th of their life on idleness”. This is a remark made out of COMPLETEignorance of what the Sabbath really means.
But was that man right? The fact of the matter is that the Sabbath is not all about rest. You can find in the Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers specific commands that we should have a holy convocation – a meeting – on the Sabbath day. It actually mentioned that aside from the weekly Sabbath, there are other annual Sabbaths – which are reserved for another topic. For the purpose of this discussion, let’s read Leviticus 23:3.
“There are six days when you may work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of rest, a day of sacredassembly…”
Having fellowship with like-minded people can encourage us. Life as Christian is very tough and it is tougher if you do it alone. Thus, God encourages us to assemble together every Sabbath so that we can admonish and edify one another.
3. The Sabbath is a time for family bonding.“… On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates” (Exodus 20:10).
Are you aching to have a quality time with your children? Keep the Sabbath!Everyone is commanded to observe the Sabbath. NO EXEMPTION. Even the animals are given a Sabbath, a rest. Everyone is commanded to refrain from work and business routine. Because of this, everyone is endowed with an unhurried time to spend for family bonding. It is the perfect time to ask your children how they are doing in school or in their personal lives.
Conversely, the children can also reconnect with their family and share their experience throughout the week. Is the gap between you and your children ever increasing? Keep the Sabbath.
2. The Sabbath brings blessing.“If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath and from doing as you please on my holy day… If you call the Sabbath a delight… and not doing as you please… then you will find your joy in the Lord, and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob. The mouth of the Lord has spoken” (Isaiah 58:13-14).
God’s blessing is MORE than enough.Instead of calling it a burden, the Sabbath is truly adelight. When you follow God’s commandment and its intent, you will be blessed because following the commandments comes with a GREAT blessing. When you keep the Sabbath, you are invoking the divine intervention of God in your life. You can always come to Him and claim the promises that He gave us as long as it is according to His will. If we observe the Sabbath, this world will have better families, better citizens, better government, better economic system, better world order because we have decided to revolve our lives around God by keeping His commandments.
1. The Sabbath is the time to know God.“These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie downand when you get up” (Deuteronomy 6:6-7).
The Sabbath is a special time for God. It is your date and appointment to your supreme and loving Father. During the Sabbath, it is when the pastors, ministers, and servants of God meet together and deliver messages about God and His way of life. Aside from daily prayer and fasting, the Sabbath is the perfect day to set more time in hearing messages and learning more about God. It is set aside for religious instructions and admonitions. The Sabbath will lead you back to the creation week and will remind you that God is our creator and He wants to develop a strong and intimate relationship with us.
Know God and you will have a purpose in your life.Here are the top 5 awesome benefits of keeping the Sabbath day and you will only enjoy all these benefits if you are going to really observe the Sabbath just the way God has intended it to be. Though this world is keeping different days, time will come that everyone will observe the Sabbath day and by that time, we will all experience its full benefits… May God speed that day!
Shocking Truths from the Bible: Top 5 Awesome Benefits of Keeping the Sabbath DayPosted on July 4, 2013 by joshuainfantado“Then He said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath”” (Mark 27-28).
Is Satan behind the change of day? The answer is obvious.Among the Ten Commandments, there is one commandment that is most ignored by people. It is also the only commandment that does not start with “You shall not” thus making it in the positive voice.
This commandment is what most people consider as a burden and will do EVERYTHINGto do away with it but illogically still will keep the other nine. If you have read the title, you guessed it! It’s the fourth commandment:
“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy” (Exodus 20:8).
Saturday is the seventh day of the week!So many people assume that the seventh day of the week is Sunday. As a matter of fact, if you ask someone what day is the seventh day, they will most likely answer Sunday. But are you really sure? This might be a shock to you but SATURDAY is the seventh day of the week and not and will never be Sunday! Check your calendar again to be sure!
Though the majority of this world’s professing Christians does not keep the Sabbath, thepower of the Fourth Commandment cannot be denied. It is created by the Supreme Godwho knows our frame and has given us this commandment for our own benefit. So here is a list of the top 5 awesome benefits of keeping the Sabbath Day or the Fourth Commandment.
5. The Sabbath is the day of rest.“Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work…” (Exodus 20:9-10).
Be at rest during the Sabbath.The term Sabbath itself literally means, “Rest”. Thus, when God finished the re-creation, He restedfrom His work on the seventh day, setting us anexample. God does not need to rest but we, His created being, need physical rest and set a day aside within the week to refrain from work.
God knows that our body is not meant to work 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. Even 8 hours of sleep per day will not be enough to refresh our bodies and reset our biological clock. Experts in the medical field know this that we need rest and this is mandatorily done during the Sabbath. Therefore, we can rest during the Sabbath without that guilt feeling of being lazy.
4. The Sabbath is a time to fellowship with like-minded Christians.“Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Hebrews 10:25).
There is a unique joy that you can experience when having fellowship with like-minded people.I heard someone said, “Christians who keep the Sabbath spends 1/7th of their life on idleness”. This is a remark made out of COMPLETEignorance of what the Sabbath really means.
But was that man right? The fact of the matter is that the Sabbath is not all about rest. You can find in the Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers specific commands that we should have a holy convocation – a meeting – on the Sabbath day. It actually mentioned that aside from the weekly Sabbath, there are other annual Sabbaths – which are reserved for another topic. For the purpose of this discussion, let’s read Leviticus 23:3.
“There are six days when you may work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of rest, a day of sacredassembly…”
Having fellowship with like-minded people can encourage us. Life as Christian is very tough and it is tougher if you do it alone. Thus, God encourages us to assemble together every Sabbath so that we can admonish and edify one another.
3. The Sabbath is a time for family bonding.“… On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates” (Exodus 20:10).
Are you aching to have a quality time with your children? Keep the Sabbath!Everyone is commanded to observe the Sabbath. NO EXEMPTION. Even the animals are given a Sabbath, a rest. Everyone is commanded to refrain from work and business routine. Because of this, everyone is endowed with an unhurried time to spend for family bonding. It is the perfect time to ask your children how they are doing in school or in their personal lives.
Conversely, the children can also reconnect with their family and share their experience throughout the week. Is the gap between you and your children ever increasing? Keep the Sabbath.
2. The Sabbath brings blessing.“If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath and from doing as you please on my holy day… If you call the Sabbath a delight… and not doing as you please… then you will find your joy in the Lord, and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob. The mouth of the Lord has spoken” (Isaiah 58:13-14).
God’s blessing is MORE than enough.Instead of calling it a burden, the Sabbath is truly adelight. When you follow God’s commandment and its intent, you will be blessed because following the commandments comes with a GREAT blessing. When you keep the Sabbath, you are invoking the divine intervention of God in your life. You can always come to Him and claim the promises that He gave us as long as it is according to His will. If we observe the Sabbath, this world will have better families, better citizens, better government, better economic system, better world order because we have decided to revolve our lives around God by keeping His commandments.
1. The Sabbath is the time to know God.“These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie downand when you get up” (Deuteronomy 6:6-7).
The Sabbath is a special time for God. It is your date and appointment to your supreme and loving Father. During the Sabbath, it is when the pastors, ministers, and servants of God meet together and deliver messages about God and His way of life. Aside from daily prayer and fasting, the Sabbath is the perfect day to set more time in hearing messages and learning more about God. It is set aside for religious instructions and admonitions. The Sabbath will lead you back to the creation week and will remind you that God is our creator and He wants to develop a strong and intimate relationship with us.
Know God and you will have a purpose in your life.Here are the top 5 awesome benefits of keeping the Sabbath day and you will only enjoy all these benefits if you are going to really observe the Sabbath just the way God has intended it to be. Though this world is keeping different days, time will come that everyone will observe the Sabbath day and by that time, we will all experience its full benefits… May God speed that day!
http://lifestylelaboratory.com/articles/proof-positive/rest.html
NEWSTART Element #7: Rest
A detailed, scientific explanation of Nutrition by Neil Nedley, M.D., taken from his book Proof Positive
I am convinced that if the benefits of rest could be put into a pill, it would be among the hottest selling supplements on the market. Unfortunately, in order to reap the benefits of rest, we must slow down and take the time to rest. Sadly, many of us do not believe that we can really pause long enough to take advantage of this vital remedial and preventative agency. Therefore, many are not even interested in learning about the far-reaching benefits of rest. They reason, why become convinced of the advantages of something that I do not have time for anyway? Because of these biases, I’d like to challenge you to think about rest as if it were a newly discovered vitamin, let’s call it vitamin R. In this hypothetical situation, we can now forget about whether or not we have time to rest. After all, every one of rest’s advantages can be obtained from taking a pill. Let us now look at this amazing “vitamin” and see if you want to include it as part of your daily program.
However, before we go too far with our illustration, I should clarify the fact that rest comes in a number of different forms. In fact, there are really four different types of vitamin R. Just as there are a number of B vitamins, so there are four siblings in the vitamin R family. They are listed in Figure 18: Vitamin R (Rest) Comes in four Kinds.
Vitamin R1 is sleep, or daily rest. Vitamin R2 is the weekly rest: in addition to sleeping each night, we need a weekly day of rest. Vitamin R3 is recreation: we need to take time to get away from work, physical tensions, and mental stresses of life. Vitamin R4 is also essential: this vitamin is meditation—and should be done at least on a daily basis. Let’s look more closely at each of these four types of vitamin R.
Vitamin R1: The Daily Rest
R1, the sleep vitamin, is in short supply with many Americans. Research suggests that the average person does best on seven to eight hours of sleep per day. This figure was associated with the greatest longevity in the Alameda county health study that we examined in the first chapter (“Principles for Optimal Health”).111 Statistics suggest that about two-thirds of American adults sleep between six and nine hours per night.112 Sleep needs vary with our genetics. Dr. James Perl, a Ph.D. psychologist and sleep expert, points out that about 20 percent of the population genetically needs less than six hours per night. He also observes that 10 percent of our populace genetically needs more than nine hours per night.113
Regardless of your specific need, anyone can come up short on vitamin R1. If you do not feel wide awake and energetic throughout your waking hours, you are likely sleeping too little. And if that is your problem, you are not alone. In the U.S., fatigue is one of the 10 most common reasons for visiting a physician.114 In fact, each year 3.3 million Americans visit their doctors for insomnia alone.115 Yes, problems with inadequate sleep are exceedingly common in our nation. The evidence suggests that as many as 60 percent of Americans have some problems relating to their sleep habits.116, 117
It may seem somewhat depressing to talk about how poorly the average American’s sleep needs are satisfied. There is some good news in this department, however. Those who handle stress better appear to require less daily sleep. In other words, if you are emotionally healthy and positive, your body is likely to sleep more efficiently.118 Exercise can also help you to have more energy on a given amount of sleep. Put another way, regular exercise helps to decrease our sleep requirements. In fact, exercise has been demonstrated to decrease fatigue and boost mental and physical vigor.119
Although positive moods and physical exercise can help us in the sleep department, there are things that work against our ability to get refreshing sleep. Television viewing is one reason why we do poorly in the sleep department. The more television you watch, the less time you have to sleep. This is particularly a problem for American youth. Many are not getting enough sleep because of their liberal diet of TV. There are, of course, many other reasons for our national sleep debt. I will not go into our tendency to squeeze too many activities into a finite number of hours per day. I would, however, like to stress one of the most fatal deceptions of the sleep-deprived. Most of those who are shortchanging themselves on vitamin R1 feel like they can get by without optimal amounts of this vitamin. Unfortunately, the medical literature is very clear on the effects of sleep deprivation and irregular sleeping habits (such as shift work).120, 121, 122, 123 Such practices slow reaction time and increase the risk of both fatal and nonfatal accidents. Sleep deprivation can clearly have life-threatening consequences. Probably one of the most notable is falling asleep while driving. One interesting aspect of the current research on falling asleep at the wheel is that accidents and fatalities seem to be the most common in those who have not learned their limits. In one U.S. study, 55 percent of such accidents occurred in individuals 25 years old or less, suggesting that inexperience in respecting fatigue’s cues can be costly.124 The toll of disability and death from fatigued drivers is not confined to the U.S., of course. A recent German study indicates that falling asleep at the wheel is the leading cause of German roadway fatalities, amounting to nearly 25 percent of the total.125
However, the risk of other types of accidents also increases dramatically in those who are sleep-deprived. Accidents at the work place also occur more commonly when we are short on sleep, working unusual hours, or otherwise fatigued. Large-scale disasters like the Chernobyl fiasco, the Exxon Valdez crash, and the Three Mile Island incident all occurred in early pre-dawn hours, when vigilance was at a low point. Dr. Fred Hardinge, an expert looked to by the Federal Aviation Administration on issues relating to fatigue and performance, has pointed out that most of the “friendly fire” problems in the Persian Gulf War were due to fatigue. Some of these short-term sleep deprivation problems—with long-term consequences, nonetheless—may result from what are called “micro sleeps.” In these settings your eyes typically are wide open, yet your attention lapses and you do not realize what is happening.
Although short-term problems with sleep deprivation often grab the headlines, serious problems result from chronically not getting enough sleep. Remember that even six hours of sleep per night is insufficient for many people and sets the stage for problems. Frontal lobe brain damage can occur in sleep-deprived animals. PET scans demonstrate decreased blood flow to the frontal lobe of the brain in chronically sleep-deprived individuals.126 With such chronic sleep shortages, irritability and belligerence rise while attention span drops further. Rapid mood changes and trouble coping with stress can result. Withdrawal from group action and even depression are among the outcomes of chronic sleep deprivation. Delusions and hallucinations can also be consequences of this downward spiral.
Both short-term and long-term sleep deprivation can affect your resistance to disease. Losing even three hours of sleep on a given night can cut in half the effectiveness of your immune system.127 A number of immune alterations occur with sleep deprivation: antibody levels are decreased128 while interleukins-1 and -2 fail to experience the rise that occurs with deeper stages of sleep.129 Growth hormone (GH) requires sleep for optimal release. Absence of GH further impairs immunity as important immune defenders, the cytotoxic T cells (a type of white blood cell), are dependent on this hormone.130 Chronic fatigue also increases the risk of problems that may not be so obvious: heart disease, heart related deaths, and stomach and intestinal problems.131
Even if you are spending nine hours each day in bed, you may not be getting the quality of sleep that you need. Sixty years ago, sleep was regarded as a static process of rest, but sleep quality can radically differ even if it looks like two people spend the same amount of time in bed. How can you increase sleep quality? Figure 19: Ways to Improve Sleep Qualitylays out some of the basics.132
Sleep quality is actually related to the entire NEWSTART program. Although daily rest is an important aspect of health, we tend not to rest as well if we are not following other aspects of a healthy lifestyle. Perhaps nowhere is this seen more clearly than in research relating sleep and aging. Most have not questioned the “fact” that sleep quality deteriorates as a person gets older.133 However, new research from Stanford University Medical School and other centers is calling this assumption into question. What the newer data suggests is that people who stay healthy and follow a good lifestyle are unlikely to develop changes in sleep quality as they age.134, 135
Vitamin R2: The Weekly Rest
In America, it is not uncommon for people to put in a seven-day workweek. Many do this repetitively and do not seem to suffer for it. However, the medial evidence suggests that there may be both long-term and short-term consequences to such a practice. Just as the body has a natural daily clock (circadian rhythm), it also has a weekly clock (circaseptan rhythm). Circa-septan rhythms are just that: body rhythms that run about seven days in length.
Medical research has demonstrated such rhythms in connection with a variety of physiological functions. Some that have been identified included heart rate, suicides, natural hormones in human breast milk, swelling after surgery, and rejection of transplanted organs. To understand the significance of these rhythms, consider the latter two items in the list. A person will tend to have an increase in swelling on the seventh and then the fourteenth day after surgery.136, 137 Similarly, a person with a kidney transplant is more likely to reject the organ seven days and then fourteen days after the surgery.138, 139Research on circaseptan rhythms continues and new relationships are continually being discovered. There are seven day rhythms that have been observed in both human and animal cancers and their response to treatment.140, 141, 142 Fibrinogen, a blood clotting compound that has been demonstrated to increase the risk of heart attack, has now also been observed to have a seven day rhythm.143 Further work has shown that in addition to inflammatory responses operating on a circaseptan rhythm, so do the drugs that we often use to treat them.144
An understanding of circaseptan rhythms has lead me to more fully appreciate the fact that I need to pay attention to weekly rhythms to protect my own health and the health of my patients.
Dr. Baldwin asserted some years ago that the current research indicated that “this seven-day rhythm is a normal built-in feature of our physiology.”145 Recent researchers have been even more adamant than Baldwin. “From the medical point of view so-called circaseptan (about 7 days) reactive periods are of predominant interest. This periodicity can be observed in numerous adaptive and compensating processes. It does not depend on the external week cycle and was already known to the antiquity.”146 What both of these authors are saying is that the importance of the seven-day rhythms should not be underestimated. Furthermore, these rhythms are a part of who we are; they are not a function of the fact that we happen to keep a seven-day week in our culture. Thus, this seven day rhythm “does not depend on the external week cycle.”
From a historical perspective the weekly cycle is also of great interest. We keep a 24-hour day based on the earth revolving on its axis. We keep a monthly cycle based on the periodicity of the moon. The year is based on the earth’s circling the sun. But what is the week based on? Some have conjectured that mankind over the years came to the conclusion that no other weekly cycle harmonized well with our internal rhythms. It is interesting to note that although cultures have experimented with different weekly cycles, all those that Baldwin is aware of have reverted to the seven-day program. He points in particular to France during the time of the French revolution. They then experimented with a ten-day (metric) week, with disastrous results. The mental institutions filled rather quickly to capacity and then some. Baldwin attributes the abolition of that program in part to the logical thinking of the renowned mathematician, Laplace.
However, others have pointed to an even more compelling reason for the existence of the weekly cycle: it is the way that God created us. Indeed, in the first of the scriptural books of Moses, the seven-day weekly cycle is described as part of God’s design in creation. That cycle is described as consisting of six days of work followed by a Sabbath day of rest. Baldwin sees significance in the Sabbath concept in relation to circaseptan rhythms.147 He recognizes this as a “zeitgeber” (“time-giver” in German). Zeitgebers keep our weekly rhythms synchronized by pausing one day in seven for a time of rest. In order for these time-givers to work, however, it must come at the same time each week. In other words, it is not sufficient to get one day in seven off; it is optimal to get a specific day in seven off on a regular basis.
My own experience agrees with this body of medical research. I personally need one day in seven where I set things aside and experience a true rest. That does not mean I sleep the whole day. Instead, I use it as a day for recreation, for reflection, for meditation, and for focusing in on spiritual values. Whether you keep the seventh day of the week as I do (from sundown on Friday evening to sundown on Saturday evening in harmony with the biblical injunction) or a different 24 hour period, there is a benefit to observing one specific day in seven as a day of rest.
One other observation is in order. In scheduling our daily rest of sleep, we often have to prioritize sleep even though we have not finished all of our work for the day. Many have learned by experience that in most circumstances it is best to go to bed on time. In the same way, even if your work for the week is not completed, I would still encourage you to take that specific day in seven off and rest as if your work was completed. In fact, a physician friend of mine once said that such a priority is one of the beauties of God’s Sabbath commandment. Even though he is aware of the importance of the weekly rest, if God did not specify a specific day, he feels he would not be regular in keeping one specific day per week as a “zeitgeber.” I have found the same true in my experience.
Vitamin R3: True Recreation
If you look at how most Americans spend their time, you would think that television is our nation’s number one form of recreation. However, in the sense of the term as I use it, TV programing does not meet my criteria for true recreation. When discussed in the context of rest, I see recreation as living up to its name, specifically: “re-creation.” I believe that after engaging in true recreation, I should be more able to meet life’s challenges, not less able. True recreation is revitalizing and helps me better accomplish the work and responsibilities that I have. What kind of activities then fit the bill as “true recreation?” From my experience and study, outdoor recreation tops the list. Options include a host of activities such as gardening, hiking, doing pleasant yard work, cross country skiing, walking, and dozens of other options. These activities provide a mental break from the routine, as well as offer the advantages of many of the other NEWSTART elements such as exercise, sunshine, and fresh air.
Vitamin R4: Meditation and Prayer
Meditation and prayer provide a form of rest that has been practiced for centuries. Even secular Westerners are becoming more interested in learning about this potent form of release from stress, tension, and anxiety. In my own experience, I have found meditation and prayer to be a vital part of a balanced lifestyle program.
Prayer is the breath of the soul, figuratively speaking. As moral beings and spiritual beings, we need to spend sufficient time in contemplating our trust in divine power. There is a connection between the “R” and “T,” specifically vitamin R4 and “T,” trust in God. It can help us in so many ways, such as in controlling stress, strengthening the immune system, providing protection against heart disease, cancer, etc. The list goes on and on. Yes, trusting in our Maker, Defender, Redeemer, and Friend. But how can we trust Him if we do not really talk to Him through prayer?
In Chapter 12 on the frontal lobe, I point to the example of Dr. Larry Dossey as an illustration of how even honest skeptics are now concluding that prayer has unique benefits.148 Dr. Dossey has collected a host of scientific studies that demonstrate that when people pray to God on behalf of others, health benefits result. These results even include the spontaneous regression—or cure—of cancer. Dossey’s experience illustrates that from the perspective of thinking scientists, the benefits of prayer extend beyond those of mere meditation. It is remarkable that the attitude of prayer makes a difference in whether or not healing ensues. It is the trustful prayer of faith in committing one’s life to God that most likely results in healing—not the aggressive prayer that prays for white blood cells to destroy cancer, or attempts to raise self to levels of unrestrained optimism.149
One of the themes with vitamins R1 and R2 is that these substances must be “ingested” regularly to provide optimal benefits. Just as we need daily rest in each 24 hour period, and weekly rest once in every seven days, so do we need regular periods for recreation on the one hand, and prayer and meditation on the other. Actually, each of the other types of rest affects vitamin R4 as well. As we have seen, lack of sleep or irregular and/or excessively long work hours contribute to some obvious problems: poorer quality and quantity of sleep, increased fatigue, poorer work performance and increased accidents. 150 However, inadequate sleep also affects us spiritually. The frontal lobe appears to be particularly prone to sleep deprivation. Surprisingly, our values even tend to suffer when we are short on sleep.151
This last element of rest—meditation and prayer—also addresses the most potent robbers of rest and relaxation, namely stressors and our maladaptive ways of handling them. As pointed out in Chapter 14, “Stress Without Distress,” the use of meditation and prayer offers powerful help on these levels. There I emphasize that we have a critical need for meditation and prayer on a daily basis. I go on record as defining these elements as forms of “rest and rejuvenation that few appreciate” to their fullest extent. The interested reader is referred to that chapter on stress for a further discussion—and practical application—of this vital vitamin R4.
NEWSTART Element #7: Rest
A detailed, scientific explanation of Nutrition by Neil Nedley, M.D., taken from his book Proof Positive
I am convinced that if the benefits of rest could be put into a pill, it would be among the hottest selling supplements on the market. Unfortunately, in order to reap the benefits of rest, we must slow down and take the time to rest. Sadly, many of us do not believe that we can really pause long enough to take advantage of this vital remedial and preventative agency. Therefore, many are not even interested in learning about the far-reaching benefits of rest. They reason, why become convinced of the advantages of something that I do not have time for anyway? Because of these biases, I’d like to challenge you to think about rest as if it were a newly discovered vitamin, let’s call it vitamin R. In this hypothetical situation, we can now forget about whether or not we have time to rest. After all, every one of rest’s advantages can be obtained from taking a pill. Let us now look at this amazing “vitamin” and see if you want to include it as part of your daily program.
However, before we go too far with our illustration, I should clarify the fact that rest comes in a number of different forms. In fact, there are really four different types of vitamin R. Just as there are a number of B vitamins, so there are four siblings in the vitamin R family. They are listed in Figure 18: Vitamin R (Rest) Comes in four Kinds.
Vitamin R1 is sleep, or daily rest. Vitamin R2 is the weekly rest: in addition to sleeping each night, we need a weekly day of rest. Vitamin R3 is recreation: we need to take time to get away from work, physical tensions, and mental stresses of life. Vitamin R4 is also essential: this vitamin is meditation—and should be done at least on a daily basis. Let’s look more closely at each of these four types of vitamin R.
Vitamin R1: The Daily Rest
R1, the sleep vitamin, is in short supply with many Americans. Research suggests that the average person does best on seven to eight hours of sleep per day. This figure was associated with the greatest longevity in the Alameda county health study that we examined in the first chapter (“Principles for Optimal Health”).111 Statistics suggest that about two-thirds of American adults sleep between six and nine hours per night.112 Sleep needs vary with our genetics. Dr. James Perl, a Ph.D. psychologist and sleep expert, points out that about 20 percent of the population genetically needs less than six hours per night. He also observes that 10 percent of our populace genetically needs more than nine hours per night.113
Regardless of your specific need, anyone can come up short on vitamin R1. If you do not feel wide awake and energetic throughout your waking hours, you are likely sleeping too little. And if that is your problem, you are not alone. In the U.S., fatigue is one of the 10 most common reasons for visiting a physician.114 In fact, each year 3.3 million Americans visit their doctors for insomnia alone.115 Yes, problems with inadequate sleep are exceedingly common in our nation. The evidence suggests that as many as 60 percent of Americans have some problems relating to their sleep habits.116, 117
It may seem somewhat depressing to talk about how poorly the average American’s sleep needs are satisfied. There is some good news in this department, however. Those who handle stress better appear to require less daily sleep. In other words, if you are emotionally healthy and positive, your body is likely to sleep more efficiently.118 Exercise can also help you to have more energy on a given amount of sleep. Put another way, regular exercise helps to decrease our sleep requirements. In fact, exercise has been demonstrated to decrease fatigue and boost mental and physical vigor.119
Although positive moods and physical exercise can help us in the sleep department, there are things that work against our ability to get refreshing sleep. Television viewing is one reason why we do poorly in the sleep department. The more television you watch, the less time you have to sleep. This is particularly a problem for American youth. Many are not getting enough sleep because of their liberal diet of TV. There are, of course, many other reasons for our national sleep debt. I will not go into our tendency to squeeze too many activities into a finite number of hours per day. I would, however, like to stress one of the most fatal deceptions of the sleep-deprived. Most of those who are shortchanging themselves on vitamin R1 feel like they can get by without optimal amounts of this vitamin. Unfortunately, the medical literature is very clear on the effects of sleep deprivation and irregular sleeping habits (such as shift work).120, 121, 122, 123 Such practices slow reaction time and increase the risk of both fatal and nonfatal accidents. Sleep deprivation can clearly have life-threatening consequences. Probably one of the most notable is falling asleep while driving. One interesting aspect of the current research on falling asleep at the wheel is that accidents and fatalities seem to be the most common in those who have not learned their limits. In one U.S. study, 55 percent of such accidents occurred in individuals 25 years old or less, suggesting that inexperience in respecting fatigue’s cues can be costly.124 The toll of disability and death from fatigued drivers is not confined to the U.S., of course. A recent German study indicates that falling asleep at the wheel is the leading cause of German roadway fatalities, amounting to nearly 25 percent of the total.125
However, the risk of other types of accidents also increases dramatically in those who are sleep-deprived. Accidents at the work place also occur more commonly when we are short on sleep, working unusual hours, or otherwise fatigued. Large-scale disasters like the Chernobyl fiasco, the Exxon Valdez crash, and the Three Mile Island incident all occurred in early pre-dawn hours, when vigilance was at a low point. Dr. Fred Hardinge, an expert looked to by the Federal Aviation Administration on issues relating to fatigue and performance, has pointed out that most of the “friendly fire” problems in the Persian Gulf War were due to fatigue. Some of these short-term sleep deprivation problems—with long-term consequences, nonetheless—may result from what are called “micro sleeps.” In these settings your eyes typically are wide open, yet your attention lapses and you do not realize what is happening.
Although short-term problems with sleep deprivation often grab the headlines, serious problems result from chronically not getting enough sleep. Remember that even six hours of sleep per night is insufficient for many people and sets the stage for problems. Frontal lobe brain damage can occur in sleep-deprived animals. PET scans demonstrate decreased blood flow to the frontal lobe of the brain in chronically sleep-deprived individuals.126 With such chronic sleep shortages, irritability and belligerence rise while attention span drops further. Rapid mood changes and trouble coping with stress can result. Withdrawal from group action and even depression are among the outcomes of chronic sleep deprivation. Delusions and hallucinations can also be consequences of this downward spiral.
Both short-term and long-term sleep deprivation can affect your resistance to disease. Losing even three hours of sleep on a given night can cut in half the effectiveness of your immune system.127 A number of immune alterations occur with sleep deprivation: antibody levels are decreased128 while interleukins-1 and -2 fail to experience the rise that occurs with deeper stages of sleep.129 Growth hormone (GH) requires sleep for optimal release. Absence of GH further impairs immunity as important immune defenders, the cytotoxic T cells (a type of white blood cell), are dependent on this hormone.130 Chronic fatigue also increases the risk of problems that may not be so obvious: heart disease, heart related deaths, and stomach and intestinal problems.131
Even if you are spending nine hours each day in bed, you may not be getting the quality of sleep that you need. Sixty years ago, sleep was regarded as a static process of rest, but sleep quality can radically differ even if it looks like two people spend the same amount of time in bed. How can you increase sleep quality? Figure 19: Ways to Improve Sleep Qualitylays out some of the basics.132
Sleep quality is actually related to the entire NEWSTART program. Although daily rest is an important aspect of health, we tend not to rest as well if we are not following other aspects of a healthy lifestyle. Perhaps nowhere is this seen more clearly than in research relating sleep and aging. Most have not questioned the “fact” that sleep quality deteriorates as a person gets older.133 However, new research from Stanford University Medical School and other centers is calling this assumption into question. What the newer data suggests is that people who stay healthy and follow a good lifestyle are unlikely to develop changes in sleep quality as they age.134, 135
Vitamin R2: The Weekly Rest
In America, it is not uncommon for people to put in a seven-day workweek. Many do this repetitively and do not seem to suffer for it. However, the medial evidence suggests that there may be both long-term and short-term consequences to such a practice. Just as the body has a natural daily clock (circadian rhythm), it also has a weekly clock (circaseptan rhythm). Circa-septan rhythms are just that: body rhythms that run about seven days in length.
Medical research has demonstrated such rhythms in connection with a variety of physiological functions. Some that have been identified included heart rate, suicides, natural hormones in human breast milk, swelling after surgery, and rejection of transplanted organs. To understand the significance of these rhythms, consider the latter two items in the list. A person will tend to have an increase in swelling on the seventh and then the fourteenth day after surgery.136, 137 Similarly, a person with a kidney transplant is more likely to reject the organ seven days and then fourteen days after the surgery.138, 139Research on circaseptan rhythms continues and new relationships are continually being discovered. There are seven day rhythms that have been observed in both human and animal cancers and their response to treatment.140, 141, 142 Fibrinogen, a blood clotting compound that has been demonstrated to increase the risk of heart attack, has now also been observed to have a seven day rhythm.143 Further work has shown that in addition to inflammatory responses operating on a circaseptan rhythm, so do the drugs that we often use to treat them.144
An understanding of circaseptan rhythms has lead me to more fully appreciate the fact that I need to pay attention to weekly rhythms to protect my own health and the health of my patients.
Dr. Baldwin asserted some years ago that the current research indicated that “this seven-day rhythm is a normal built-in feature of our physiology.”145 Recent researchers have been even more adamant than Baldwin. “From the medical point of view so-called circaseptan (about 7 days) reactive periods are of predominant interest. This periodicity can be observed in numerous adaptive and compensating processes. It does not depend on the external week cycle and was already known to the antiquity.”146 What both of these authors are saying is that the importance of the seven-day rhythms should not be underestimated. Furthermore, these rhythms are a part of who we are; they are not a function of the fact that we happen to keep a seven-day week in our culture. Thus, this seven day rhythm “does not depend on the external week cycle.”
From a historical perspective the weekly cycle is also of great interest. We keep a 24-hour day based on the earth revolving on its axis. We keep a monthly cycle based on the periodicity of the moon. The year is based on the earth’s circling the sun. But what is the week based on? Some have conjectured that mankind over the years came to the conclusion that no other weekly cycle harmonized well with our internal rhythms. It is interesting to note that although cultures have experimented with different weekly cycles, all those that Baldwin is aware of have reverted to the seven-day program. He points in particular to France during the time of the French revolution. They then experimented with a ten-day (metric) week, with disastrous results. The mental institutions filled rather quickly to capacity and then some. Baldwin attributes the abolition of that program in part to the logical thinking of the renowned mathematician, Laplace.
However, others have pointed to an even more compelling reason for the existence of the weekly cycle: it is the way that God created us. Indeed, in the first of the scriptural books of Moses, the seven-day weekly cycle is described as part of God’s design in creation. That cycle is described as consisting of six days of work followed by a Sabbath day of rest. Baldwin sees significance in the Sabbath concept in relation to circaseptan rhythms.147 He recognizes this as a “zeitgeber” (“time-giver” in German). Zeitgebers keep our weekly rhythms synchronized by pausing one day in seven for a time of rest. In order for these time-givers to work, however, it must come at the same time each week. In other words, it is not sufficient to get one day in seven off; it is optimal to get a specific day in seven off on a regular basis.
My own experience agrees with this body of medical research. I personally need one day in seven where I set things aside and experience a true rest. That does not mean I sleep the whole day. Instead, I use it as a day for recreation, for reflection, for meditation, and for focusing in on spiritual values. Whether you keep the seventh day of the week as I do (from sundown on Friday evening to sundown on Saturday evening in harmony with the biblical injunction) or a different 24 hour period, there is a benefit to observing one specific day in seven as a day of rest.
One other observation is in order. In scheduling our daily rest of sleep, we often have to prioritize sleep even though we have not finished all of our work for the day. Many have learned by experience that in most circumstances it is best to go to bed on time. In the same way, even if your work for the week is not completed, I would still encourage you to take that specific day in seven off and rest as if your work was completed. In fact, a physician friend of mine once said that such a priority is one of the beauties of God’s Sabbath commandment. Even though he is aware of the importance of the weekly rest, if God did not specify a specific day, he feels he would not be regular in keeping one specific day per week as a “zeitgeber.” I have found the same true in my experience.
Vitamin R3: True Recreation
If you look at how most Americans spend their time, you would think that television is our nation’s number one form of recreation. However, in the sense of the term as I use it, TV programing does not meet my criteria for true recreation. When discussed in the context of rest, I see recreation as living up to its name, specifically: “re-creation.” I believe that after engaging in true recreation, I should be more able to meet life’s challenges, not less able. True recreation is revitalizing and helps me better accomplish the work and responsibilities that I have. What kind of activities then fit the bill as “true recreation?” From my experience and study, outdoor recreation tops the list. Options include a host of activities such as gardening, hiking, doing pleasant yard work, cross country skiing, walking, and dozens of other options. These activities provide a mental break from the routine, as well as offer the advantages of many of the other NEWSTART elements such as exercise, sunshine, and fresh air.
Vitamin R4: Meditation and Prayer
Meditation and prayer provide a form of rest that has been practiced for centuries. Even secular Westerners are becoming more interested in learning about this potent form of release from stress, tension, and anxiety. In my own experience, I have found meditation and prayer to be a vital part of a balanced lifestyle program.
Prayer is the breath of the soul, figuratively speaking. As moral beings and spiritual beings, we need to spend sufficient time in contemplating our trust in divine power. There is a connection between the “R” and “T,” specifically vitamin R4 and “T,” trust in God. It can help us in so many ways, such as in controlling stress, strengthening the immune system, providing protection against heart disease, cancer, etc. The list goes on and on. Yes, trusting in our Maker, Defender, Redeemer, and Friend. But how can we trust Him if we do not really talk to Him through prayer?
In Chapter 12 on the frontal lobe, I point to the example of Dr. Larry Dossey as an illustration of how even honest skeptics are now concluding that prayer has unique benefits.148 Dr. Dossey has collected a host of scientific studies that demonstrate that when people pray to God on behalf of others, health benefits result. These results even include the spontaneous regression—or cure—of cancer. Dossey’s experience illustrates that from the perspective of thinking scientists, the benefits of prayer extend beyond those of mere meditation. It is remarkable that the attitude of prayer makes a difference in whether or not healing ensues. It is the trustful prayer of faith in committing one’s life to God that most likely results in healing—not the aggressive prayer that prays for white blood cells to destroy cancer, or attempts to raise self to levels of unrestrained optimism.149
One of the themes with vitamins R1 and R2 is that these substances must be “ingested” regularly to provide optimal benefits. Just as we need daily rest in each 24 hour period, and weekly rest once in every seven days, so do we need regular periods for recreation on the one hand, and prayer and meditation on the other. Actually, each of the other types of rest affects vitamin R4 as well. As we have seen, lack of sleep or irregular and/or excessively long work hours contribute to some obvious problems: poorer quality and quantity of sleep, increased fatigue, poorer work performance and increased accidents. 150 However, inadequate sleep also affects us spiritually. The frontal lobe appears to be particularly prone to sleep deprivation. Surprisingly, our values even tend to suffer when we are short on sleep.151
This last element of rest—meditation and prayer—also addresses the most potent robbers of rest and relaxation, namely stressors and our maladaptive ways of handling them. As pointed out in Chapter 14, “Stress Without Distress,” the use of meditation and prayer offers powerful help on these levels. There I emphasize that we have a critical need for meditation and prayer on a daily basis. I go on record as defining these elements as forms of “rest and rejuvenation that few appreciate” to their fullest extent. The interested reader is referred to that chapter on stress for a further discussion—and practical application—of this vital vitamin R4.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/02/magazine/bring-back-the-sabbath.html?pagewanted=all
Bring Back the SabbathBy Judith Shulevitz
Published: March 2, 2003
Sandor Ferenczi, a disciple of Freud's, once identified a disorder he called Sunday neurosis. Every Sunday (or, in the case of a Jewish patient, every Saturday), the Sunday neurotic developed a headache or a stomachache or an attack of depression. After ruling out purely physiological causes, including the rich food served at Sunday dinners, Ferenczi figured out what was bothering his patients. They were suffering from the Sabbath.
On that weekly holiday observed by all ''present-day civilized humanity'' (Ferenczi was writing in 1919, when Sunday was still sacred, even in Budapest, his very cosmopolitan hometown), not only did drudgery give way to festivity, family gatherings and occasionally worship, but the machinery of self-censorship shut down, too, stilling the eternal inner murmur of self-reproach. The Sunday neurotic, rather than enjoying his respite, became distraught; he feared that impulses repressed only with great effort might be unleashed. He induced pain or mental anguish to pre-empt the feeling of being out of control.
About a decade ago I developed a full-blown weekend disorder of my own. Perhaps because I am Jewish, it came on Friday nights. My mood would darken until, by Saturday afternoon, I'd be unresponsive and morose. My normal routine, which involved brunch with friends and swapping tales of misadventure in the relentless quest for romance and professional success, made me feel impossibly restless. I started spending Saturdays by myself. After a while I got lonely and did something that, as a teenager profoundly put off by her religious education, I could never have imagined wanting to do. I began dropping in on a nearby synagogue.
It was a small building in Brooklyn, self-consciously built nearly a century ago to look European; it had once served as a set in an inadvertently hilarious movie in which Melanie Griffith plays a police officer who goes undercover in a Hasidic community. I sat in the back of this Disneyfied sanctuary and discovered that I had no interest in praying, which I hardly remembered how to do. What I wanted to do was listen to the hymns, which offered the uncanny comfort of songs heard in childhood.
It was only much later, after I joined the synagogue and changed my life in a million other unforeseen ways, that I developed a theory about my condition. If Ferenczi's patients had suffered from the Sabbath, I was suffering from the lack thereof. In the Darwinian world of the New York 20-something, everything -- even socializing, reading or exercising -- felt like work or the pursuit of work by other means. Had I been able to consult Ferenczi, I believe he would have told me that I was experiencing the painful inklings of sanity. For in the 84 years since Ferenczi identified his syndrome, which bears a striking resemblance to what is now called workaholism, it has become the norm, and the Sabbath, the one day in seven dedicated to rest by divine command, has become the holiday Americans are most likely never to take.
It can be startling to realize just how integral the Sabbath once was to American time. When we tell our children stories about the first pilgrims landing on our shores, we talk rather vaguely about their quest for religious freedom. We leave out that this freedom was needed in large part so that the Puritans could obey the Fourth Commandment -- ''Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy'' -- with a zealotry that had deeply alienated their countrymen back home. We all have heard of the Puritan ''blue laws,'' named, supposedly, for the color of paper they were printed on. They required attendance at church but punished anyone who got there with unseemly haste or on too showy a horse. They forbade unnecessary visiting, except in emergencies, and smoking and sports. Unlike Orthodox Jews, who though strict about the Sabbath are nonetheless encouraged to drink and have marital sex on Friday night, the ascetic Puritans frowned on any kind of drinking or sex on Sunday. In at least one documented instance, the ''lewd and unseemly behavior'' of kissing your wife on your doorstep upon returning home from a journey of three years was punished by a spell in the stocks. From sunset Saturday to sunset Sunday, the most pious Sabbatarians (usually clergymen) wouldn't shave, have their rooms swept or beds made or allow food to be prepared or dishes washed. They ate only what had been cooked in advance and devoted all time not spent in church to reading Scripture.
Even after Puritanism lost its hold on American culture, the American Sunday was observed with unusual strictness. In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville observed with some surprise that few Americans were ''permitted to go on a hunt, to dance or even to play an instrument on Sunday.'' As recently as 125 years ago, you would have been hard pressed to find a museum or library open on Sunday. Eighty years ago, football was considered too vulgar to be played on Sunday. Oldsters remember standing in line at the bank on Fridays to get cash for the weekend; youngsters assume they can withdraw at will. Anyone older than 30 can remember living with the expectation that most stores would be closed on Sunday; the expectation now is that they will be open, and we're miffed when they aren't.
''The Lonely Days Were Sundays'' is the title of a book about growing up Jewish in the churchgoing South. The lonely Sunday has been replaced by the overscheduled Sunday -- soccer Sunday, Little League Sunday, yoga-class Sunday, catch-up-around-the-house Sunday. Americans still go to church, of course, but only in between chores, sporting events and shopping expeditions. (You can now find A.T.M. machines inside megachurches; congregants don't have to waste a minute between services and the mall.)
The eclipse of the Sabbath is just one small part of the larger erosion of social time, with its former generally agreed-upon rhythms of labor and repose. ''After hours'' has become a strictly personal concept, since the 24-hour convenience store, gas station, pharmacy, supermarket, movie theater, diner, factory and bar all allow us to work, shop, dine and be entertained at any time of day or night. We greet each shift of an activity from weekday to evening or weekend as proof of American cultural superiority; we knock over the barriers between us and the perpetual motion machine that is the marketplace with the glee you might expect of insomniacs who had been chained for too long to their beds.
The lingering traces of Sabbatarianism seem comically vestigial, like the fetal tail: the New York blue law that won't let you buy beer till after noon on Sunday; Broadway stages that go dark on Sunday nights; work rules requiring us to show up at our offices Monday through Friday, even though many of us do our best work at night or on weekends (and, as you know if you've seen the movie ''Office Space,'' putting in face time at the office is often a cover for doing less).
Customs exist because they answer a need; when they disappear, that need must be met in some other way. There is ample evidence that our relationship to work is out of whack. Economists, psychologists and sociologists have charted our ballooning work hours; the increase in time devoted to competitive shopping; the commercialization of leisure that turns fun into work and requires military-scale budgeting and logistics and emotionally draining interactions with service personnel. Personally, I think the alarm about these matters is often overblown. Most people, with the possible exception of parents of 13-year-olds, have the wherewithal to avoid the mall if they want to, and anyone who seeks to relax in a theme park or on a packaged tour deserves what he gets. So I won't weary you with cautionary tales about what our work-addicted culture can do to you, psychologically and physiologically, because, for one thing, it's completely within your power to hold it at bay, and for another, you don't want to anyway. Ours is a society that pegs status to overachievement; we can't help admiring workaholics. Let me argue, instead, on behalf of an institution that has kept workaholism in reasonable check for thousands of years.
Most people mistakenly believe that all you have to do to stop working is not work. The inventors of the Sabbath understood that it was a much more complicated undertaking. You cannot downshift casually and easily, the way you might slip into bed at the end of a long day. As the Cat in the Hat says, ''It is fun to have fun but you have to know how.'' This is why the Puritan and Jewish Sabbaths were so exactingly intentional, requiring extensive advance preparation -- at the very least a scrubbed house, a full larder and a bath. The rules did not exist to torture the faithful. They were meant to communicate the insight that interrupting the ceaseless round of striving requires a surprisingly strenuous act of will, one that has to be bolstered by habit as well as by social sanction.
Take the Puritan Sunday. It would be excruciating to us, and yet the restrictions were not pointless. They made of the day something rare and otherworldly, a realization of the Puritan vision of a city on the hill. ''Sweet to the Pilgrims and to their descendants was the hush of their calm Saturday night and their still, tranquil Sabbath,'' wrote the 19th-century historian Alice Morse Earle, who shared with more famous authors, like Harriet Beecher Stowe and Nathaniel Hawthorne, a qualified nostalgia for the preindustrial Sabbath. ''No work, no play, no idle strolling was known; no sign of human life or motion was seen except the necessary care of the patient cattle and other dumb beasts, the orderly and quiet going to and from the meeting, and at the nooning, a visit to the churchyard to stand by the side of the silent dead.'' Anyone who has experienced the eerie serenity of the ultra-Orthodox sections of Jerusalem or Brooklyn on Saturdays would be in a position to conjure a Puritan Sunday.
Americans, of course, no longer cherish obedience as a virtue. We have become individualists, even libertarians. We will no longer put up with being told how to dispose of our free time. But our unwillingness to suffer constraint shouldn't blind us to the possibility that Sabbath discipline may have real benefits. For one thing, it reflects a paradoxical insight: only a Sabbath that you have to work for will appear worth keeping, just as, in psychoanalysis, a patient will value only those sessions for which he pays. Anything gotten for nothing will be treated as such. After all, as in therapy, the good that comes from the Sabbath is mostly intangible. We don't produce anything when we don't work.
So counterintuitive is the idea of organized nonproductivity, given the force and universality of the human urge to make things, that you can't believe anyone ever managed to lift his head from his workbench or plow long enough to think of it. To the first-century Stoic philosopher Seneca, the Sabbath was absurd, a way for Rome's backward Jewish subjects to waste ''almost a seventh of their life in inactivity.'' But when (or if), perhaps a millennium earlier, the Jews took over an old Mesopotamian day of taboo and transformed it into one of holy rest, they brought into the world not just the Sabbath but something just as precious, and surprisingly closely linked. They invented the idea of social equality.
The Israelite Sabbath institutionalized an astonishing, hitherto undreamed-of notion: that every single creature has the right to rest, not just the rich and the privileged. Covered under the Fourth Commandment are women, slaves, strangers and, improbably, animals. The verse in Deuteronomy that elaborates on this aspect of the Sabbath repeats, twice, that slaves were not to work, as if to drive home what must have been very hard to understand in the ancient world. The Jews were meant to perceive the Sabbath not only as a way to honor God but also as the central vehicle of their liberation theology, a weekly reminder of their escape from their servitude in Egypt.
In other words, we have the Sabbath to thank for labor legislation and for our belief that it is wrong for employers to drive their employees until they drop from exhaustion. So what do we do, today, with this remarkable heritage, which in the last century expanded to a generous two days, rather than just one? Much more than our ancestors could ever have imagined, and much, much less. We relax on the run and, in rare bursts of free time, we recreate. We choose from a dizzying array of leisure options and pursue them with an exemplary degree of professionalism and perfectionism. We rush our children from activity to activity, their days a blur of tight connections.
And yet there are important ways in which even our impressive recreational creativity fails to reproduce the benefits of the Sabbath. Few elective activities will ever rise to a status higher than work in our minds, and therefore cannot be relied upon to counterbalance our neurotic drive to achieve. Most of us will jettison plans to go skiing if a deadline looms near. We will assign a high priority to a non-work-related hobby only if we have committed to it in some public manner, as we do when we join a volleyball team or a choir. (Oddly, one of the few times a parent can truly relax is when lingering on the sidelines of a child's baseball or soccer game; there is nothing like being forced to be somewhere and do very little for an hour and a half to declench the muscles of the mind.)
And not even our group leisure activities can do for us what Sabbath rituals could once be counted on to do. Religious rituals do not exist simply to promote togetherness. They're theater. They are designed to convey to us a certain story about who we are without our even quite noticing that they are doing so. (One defining feature of religious rituals, in fact, is that we often perform them for years before we come to understand what they mean; this is why ministers and rabbis are famously unsympathetic when congregants complain that worship services or holiday rites feel meaningless.) The story told by the Sabbath is that of creation: we rest because God rested on the seventh day. What leads from God to humankind is the notion of imitatio Dei: the imitation of God. In other words, we rest in order to honor the divine in us, to remind ourselves that there is more to us than just what we do during the week.
Talk of God may disturb the secular, so they might prefer to frame the Sabbath in the more neutral context of aesthetics. The Sabbath provides two things essential to anyone who wishes to lift himself out of the banality of mercantile culture: time to contemplate and distance from everyday demands. The Sabbath is to the week what the line break is to poetic language. It is the silence that forces you to return to what came before to find its meaning.
After joining that synagogue in Brooklyn,
I began to incorporate into my life the most elemental rudiments of a traditional Jewish Sabbath: lighting the candles and eating at home on Friday night; going to religious services on Saturday morning; sleeping or reading or going to a museum in the afternoon. Orthodox Jews will scoff when they read of my subminimal level of observance; my secular friends think I've become a fanatic. Sticking to these few rituals, however, is the hardest and least unconscious thing I've ever done. I fail to keep the Sabbath more than I succeed, probably because I started trying to do it not as a result of some redemptive revelation, such as might occur to a character in a Russian novel, but experimentally, out of curiosity, and in a social vacuum -- by myself, rather than in a group or family setting. I didn't know how else to attain the self-possession that eluded me, the sense of owing nothing to anybody except perhaps God. The conventional weekend felt claustrophobic. Silent, solitary contemplation was not sustainable. The ceremonies performed by my ancestors for the past two millenniums had at least the virtue of having been previously tested and found to be effective.
Do I think everyone else should observe a Sabbath? I believe it would be good for them, and even better for me, since the more widespread the ritual, the more likely I am to observe it. It is much easier to keep the Sabbath, for instance, when your family does, too, though getting children to agree to do anything their friends don't do may prove insurmountable. (The greatest benefit of this may be that it makes a habit of unstructured family intimacy, without which parents must resort to so-called quality time, which tends to leave everyone feeling self-conscious.)
For hundreds of years it was firmly believed that only a Sabbath enforced through social legislation would keep society from sliding into a kind of unwitting slavery, protecting the vulnerable from the powerful and quashing the punitive obsessive-compulsive who lurks within us all. One of the bitterest public policy debates in 19th-century America, in fact, was over whether offering postal service and opening public institutions on Sundays would harm our national character and lead directly to barbarism.
If the Sabbath you choose to observe isn't a religious one, you should nonetheless be religiously disciplined in your approach to it, observing it every week, not just when it's convenient. I confess, though, that I have a hard time imagining a Sabbath divorced from religion: who would make the effort to honor the godly part of himself if he didn't believe in a deity, no matter how ecumenical? It's just as difficult to envision the Sabbath surviving the current speeding-up of everything without some generally enforced slowdown. The great religions lasted as long as they did because they were able to make their rituals part of everyone's life.
But social legislation mandating Sunday (or Saturday) closings is no longer viable. Besides, it seems arrogant to tell someone what keeping the Sabbath would do for him, because it's impossible to know how a ritual will affect a person until he has performed it. ''Holy days, rituals, liturgies -- all are like musical notations which, in themselves, cannot convey the nuances and textures of live performance,'' the historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi has written.
Whenever I dream of living in a society with a greater respect for its Sabbatarian past -- a fantasy I entertain only with anxiety, since Sabbatarians have a long history of going too far -- I think of something two rabbis said. Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague, best known for his tales of the golem, pointed out that the story of Creation was written in such a way that each day, each new creation, is seen as a step toward a completion that occurred on the Sabbath. What was Creation's climactic culmination? The act of stopping. Why should God have considered it so important to stop? Rabbi Elijah of Vilna put it this way: God stopped to show us that what we create becomes meaningful to us only once we stop creating it and start to think about why we did so. The implication is clear. We could let the world wind us up and set us to marching, like mechanical dolls that go and go until they fall over, because they don't have a mechanism that allows them to pause. But that would make us less than human. We have to remember to stop because we have to stop to remember.
Bring Back the SabbathBy Judith Shulevitz
Published: March 2, 2003
Sandor Ferenczi, a disciple of Freud's, once identified a disorder he called Sunday neurosis. Every Sunday (or, in the case of a Jewish patient, every Saturday), the Sunday neurotic developed a headache or a stomachache or an attack of depression. After ruling out purely physiological causes, including the rich food served at Sunday dinners, Ferenczi figured out what was bothering his patients. They were suffering from the Sabbath.
On that weekly holiday observed by all ''present-day civilized humanity'' (Ferenczi was writing in 1919, when Sunday was still sacred, even in Budapest, his very cosmopolitan hometown), not only did drudgery give way to festivity, family gatherings and occasionally worship, but the machinery of self-censorship shut down, too, stilling the eternal inner murmur of self-reproach. The Sunday neurotic, rather than enjoying his respite, became distraught; he feared that impulses repressed only with great effort might be unleashed. He induced pain or mental anguish to pre-empt the feeling of being out of control.
About a decade ago I developed a full-blown weekend disorder of my own. Perhaps because I am Jewish, it came on Friday nights. My mood would darken until, by Saturday afternoon, I'd be unresponsive and morose. My normal routine, which involved brunch with friends and swapping tales of misadventure in the relentless quest for romance and professional success, made me feel impossibly restless. I started spending Saturdays by myself. After a while I got lonely and did something that, as a teenager profoundly put off by her religious education, I could never have imagined wanting to do. I began dropping in on a nearby synagogue.
It was a small building in Brooklyn, self-consciously built nearly a century ago to look European; it had once served as a set in an inadvertently hilarious movie in which Melanie Griffith plays a police officer who goes undercover in a Hasidic community. I sat in the back of this Disneyfied sanctuary and discovered that I had no interest in praying, which I hardly remembered how to do. What I wanted to do was listen to the hymns, which offered the uncanny comfort of songs heard in childhood.
It was only much later, after I joined the synagogue and changed my life in a million other unforeseen ways, that I developed a theory about my condition. If Ferenczi's patients had suffered from the Sabbath, I was suffering from the lack thereof. In the Darwinian world of the New York 20-something, everything -- even socializing, reading or exercising -- felt like work or the pursuit of work by other means. Had I been able to consult Ferenczi, I believe he would have told me that I was experiencing the painful inklings of sanity. For in the 84 years since Ferenczi identified his syndrome, which bears a striking resemblance to what is now called workaholism, it has become the norm, and the Sabbath, the one day in seven dedicated to rest by divine command, has become the holiday Americans are most likely never to take.
It can be startling to realize just how integral the Sabbath once was to American time. When we tell our children stories about the first pilgrims landing on our shores, we talk rather vaguely about their quest for religious freedom. We leave out that this freedom was needed in large part so that the Puritans could obey the Fourth Commandment -- ''Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy'' -- with a zealotry that had deeply alienated their countrymen back home. We all have heard of the Puritan ''blue laws,'' named, supposedly, for the color of paper they were printed on. They required attendance at church but punished anyone who got there with unseemly haste or on too showy a horse. They forbade unnecessary visiting, except in emergencies, and smoking and sports. Unlike Orthodox Jews, who though strict about the Sabbath are nonetheless encouraged to drink and have marital sex on Friday night, the ascetic Puritans frowned on any kind of drinking or sex on Sunday. In at least one documented instance, the ''lewd and unseemly behavior'' of kissing your wife on your doorstep upon returning home from a journey of three years was punished by a spell in the stocks. From sunset Saturday to sunset Sunday, the most pious Sabbatarians (usually clergymen) wouldn't shave, have their rooms swept or beds made or allow food to be prepared or dishes washed. They ate only what had been cooked in advance and devoted all time not spent in church to reading Scripture.
Even after Puritanism lost its hold on American culture, the American Sunday was observed with unusual strictness. In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville observed with some surprise that few Americans were ''permitted to go on a hunt, to dance or even to play an instrument on Sunday.'' As recently as 125 years ago, you would have been hard pressed to find a museum or library open on Sunday. Eighty years ago, football was considered too vulgar to be played on Sunday. Oldsters remember standing in line at the bank on Fridays to get cash for the weekend; youngsters assume they can withdraw at will. Anyone older than 30 can remember living with the expectation that most stores would be closed on Sunday; the expectation now is that they will be open, and we're miffed when they aren't.
''The Lonely Days Were Sundays'' is the title of a book about growing up Jewish in the churchgoing South. The lonely Sunday has been replaced by the overscheduled Sunday -- soccer Sunday, Little League Sunday, yoga-class Sunday, catch-up-around-the-house Sunday. Americans still go to church, of course, but only in between chores, sporting events and shopping expeditions. (You can now find A.T.M. machines inside megachurches; congregants don't have to waste a minute between services and the mall.)
The eclipse of the Sabbath is just one small part of the larger erosion of social time, with its former generally agreed-upon rhythms of labor and repose. ''After hours'' has become a strictly personal concept, since the 24-hour convenience store, gas station, pharmacy, supermarket, movie theater, diner, factory and bar all allow us to work, shop, dine and be entertained at any time of day or night. We greet each shift of an activity from weekday to evening or weekend as proof of American cultural superiority; we knock over the barriers between us and the perpetual motion machine that is the marketplace with the glee you might expect of insomniacs who had been chained for too long to their beds.
The lingering traces of Sabbatarianism seem comically vestigial, like the fetal tail: the New York blue law that won't let you buy beer till after noon on Sunday; Broadway stages that go dark on Sunday nights; work rules requiring us to show up at our offices Monday through Friday, even though many of us do our best work at night or on weekends (and, as you know if you've seen the movie ''Office Space,'' putting in face time at the office is often a cover for doing less).
Customs exist because they answer a need; when they disappear, that need must be met in some other way. There is ample evidence that our relationship to work is out of whack. Economists, psychologists and sociologists have charted our ballooning work hours; the increase in time devoted to competitive shopping; the commercialization of leisure that turns fun into work and requires military-scale budgeting and logistics and emotionally draining interactions with service personnel. Personally, I think the alarm about these matters is often overblown. Most people, with the possible exception of parents of 13-year-olds, have the wherewithal to avoid the mall if they want to, and anyone who seeks to relax in a theme park or on a packaged tour deserves what he gets. So I won't weary you with cautionary tales about what our work-addicted culture can do to you, psychologically and physiologically, because, for one thing, it's completely within your power to hold it at bay, and for another, you don't want to anyway. Ours is a society that pegs status to overachievement; we can't help admiring workaholics. Let me argue, instead, on behalf of an institution that has kept workaholism in reasonable check for thousands of years.
Most people mistakenly believe that all you have to do to stop working is not work. The inventors of the Sabbath understood that it was a much more complicated undertaking. You cannot downshift casually and easily, the way you might slip into bed at the end of a long day. As the Cat in the Hat says, ''It is fun to have fun but you have to know how.'' This is why the Puritan and Jewish Sabbaths were so exactingly intentional, requiring extensive advance preparation -- at the very least a scrubbed house, a full larder and a bath. The rules did not exist to torture the faithful. They were meant to communicate the insight that interrupting the ceaseless round of striving requires a surprisingly strenuous act of will, one that has to be bolstered by habit as well as by social sanction.
Take the Puritan Sunday. It would be excruciating to us, and yet the restrictions were not pointless. They made of the day something rare and otherworldly, a realization of the Puritan vision of a city on the hill. ''Sweet to the Pilgrims and to their descendants was the hush of their calm Saturday night and their still, tranquil Sabbath,'' wrote the 19th-century historian Alice Morse Earle, who shared with more famous authors, like Harriet Beecher Stowe and Nathaniel Hawthorne, a qualified nostalgia for the preindustrial Sabbath. ''No work, no play, no idle strolling was known; no sign of human life or motion was seen except the necessary care of the patient cattle and other dumb beasts, the orderly and quiet going to and from the meeting, and at the nooning, a visit to the churchyard to stand by the side of the silent dead.'' Anyone who has experienced the eerie serenity of the ultra-Orthodox sections of Jerusalem or Brooklyn on Saturdays would be in a position to conjure a Puritan Sunday.
Americans, of course, no longer cherish obedience as a virtue. We have become individualists, even libertarians. We will no longer put up with being told how to dispose of our free time. But our unwillingness to suffer constraint shouldn't blind us to the possibility that Sabbath discipline may have real benefits. For one thing, it reflects a paradoxical insight: only a Sabbath that you have to work for will appear worth keeping, just as, in psychoanalysis, a patient will value only those sessions for which he pays. Anything gotten for nothing will be treated as such. After all, as in therapy, the good that comes from the Sabbath is mostly intangible. We don't produce anything when we don't work.
So counterintuitive is the idea of organized nonproductivity, given the force and universality of the human urge to make things, that you can't believe anyone ever managed to lift his head from his workbench or plow long enough to think of it. To the first-century Stoic philosopher Seneca, the Sabbath was absurd, a way for Rome's backward Jewish subjects to waste ''almost a seventh of their life in inactivity.'' But when (or if), perhaps a millennium earlier, the Jews took over an old Mesopotamian day of taboo and transformed it into one of holy rest, they brought into the world not just the Sabbath but something just as precious, and surprisingly closely linked. They invented the idea of social equality.
The Israelite Sabbath institutionalized an astonishing, hitherto undreamed-of notion: that every single creature has the right to rest, not just the rich and the privileged. Covered under the Fourth Commandment are women, slaves, strangers and, improbably, animals. The verse in Deuteronomy that elaborates on this aspect of the Sabbath repeats, twice, that slaves were not to work, as if to drive home what must have been very hard to understand in the ancient world. The Jews were meant to perceive the Sabbath not only as a way to honor God but also as the central vehicle of their liberation theology, a weekly reminder of their escape from their servitude in Egypt.
In other words, we have the Sabbath to thank for labor legislation and for our belief that it is wrong for employers to drive their employees until they drop from exhaustion. So what do we do, today, with this remarkable heritage, which in the last century expanded to a generous two days, rather than just one? Much more than our ancestors could ever have imagined, and much, much less. We relax on the run and, in rare bursts of free time, we recreate. We choose from a dizzying array of leisure options and pursue them with an exemplary degree of professionalism and perfectionism. We rush our children from activity to activity, their days a blur of tight connections.
And yet there are important ways in which even our impressive recreational creativity fails to reproduce the benefits of the Sabbath. Few elective activities will ever rise to a status higher than work in our minds, and therefore cannot be relied upon to counterbalance our neurotic drive to achieve. Most of us will jettison plans to go skiing if a deadline looms near. We will assign a high priority to a non-work-related hobby only if we have committed to it in some public manner, as we do when we join a volleyball team or a choir. (Oddly, one of the few times a parent can truly relax is when lingering on the sidelines of a child's baseball or soccer game; there is nothing like being forced to be somewhere and do very little for an hour and a half to declench the muscles of the mind.)
And not even our group leisure activities can do for us what Sabbath rituals could once be counted on to do. Religious rituals do not exist simply to promote togetherness. They're theater. They are designed to convey to us a certain story about who we are without our even quite noticing that they are doing so. (One defining feature of religious rituals, in fact, is that we often perform them for years before we come to understand what they mean; this is why ministers and rabbis are famously unsympathetic when congregants complain that worship services or holiday rites feel meaningless.) The story told by the Sabbath is that of creation: we rest because God rested on the seventh day. What leads from God to humankind is the notion of imitatio Dei: the imitation of God. In other words, we rest in order to honor the divine in us, to remind ourselves that there is more to us than just what we do during the week.
Talk of God may disturb the secular, so they might prefer to frame the Sabbath in the more neutral context of aesthetics. The Sabbath provides two things essential to anyone who wishes to lift himself out of the banality of mercantile culture: time to contemplate and distance from everyday demands. The Sabbath is to the week what the line break is to poetic language. It is the silence that forces you to return to what came before to find its meaning.
After joining that synagogue in Brooklyn,
I began to incorporate into my life the most elemental rudiments of a traditional Jewish Sabbath: lighting the candles and eating at home on Friday night; going to religious services on Saturday morning; sleeping or reading or going to a museum in the afternoon. Orthodox Jews will scoff when they read of my subminimal level of observance; my secular friends think I've become a fanatic. Sticking to these few rituals, however, is the hardest and least unconscious thing I've ever done. I fail to keep the Sabbath more than I succeed, probably because I started trying to do it not as a result of some redemptive revelation, such as might occur to a character in a Russian novel, but experimentally, out of curiosity, and in a social vacuum -- by myself, rather than in a group or family setting. I didn't know how else to attain the self-possession that eluded me, the sense of owing nothing to anybody except perhaps God. The conventional weekend felt claustrophobic. Silent, solitary contemplation was not sustainable. The ceremonies performed by my ancestors for the past two millenniums had at least the virtue of having been previously tested and found to be effective.
Do I think everyone else should observe a Sabbath? I believe it would be good for them, and even better for me, since the more widespread the ritual, the more likely I am to observe it. It is much easier to keep the Sabbath, for instance, when your family does, too, though getting children to agree to do anything their friends don't do may prove insurmountable. (The greatest benefit of this may be that it makes a habit of unstructured family intimacy, without which parents must resort to so-called quality time, which tends to leave everyone feeling self-conscious.)
For hundreds of years it was firmly believed that only a Sabbath enforced through social legislation would keep society from sliding into a kind of unwitting slavery, protecting the vulnerable from the powerful and quashing the punitive obsessive-compulsive who lurks within us all. One of the bitterest public policy debates in 19th-century America, in fact, was over whether offering postal service and opening public institutions on Sundays would harm our national character and lead directly to barbarism.
If the Sabbath you choose to observe isn't a religious one, you should nonetheless be religiously disciplined in your approach to it, observing it every week, not just when it's convenient. I confess, though, that I have a hard time imagining a Sabbath divorced from religion: who would make the effort to honor the godly part of himself if he didn't believe in a deity, no matter how ecumenical? It's just as difficult to envision the Sabbath surviving the current speeding-up of everything without some generally enforced slowdown. The great religions lasted as long as they did because they were able to make their rituals part of everyone's life.
But social legislation mandating Sunday (or Saturday) closings is no longer viable. Besides, it seems arrogant to tell someone what keeping the Sabbath would do for him, because it's impossible to know how a ritual will affect a person until he has performed it. ''Holy days, rituals, liturgies -- all are like musical notations which, in themselves, cannot convey the nuances and textures of live performance,'' the historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi has written.
Whenever I dream of living in a society with a greater respect for its Sabbatarian past -- a fantasy I entertain only with anxiety, since Sabbatarians have a long history of going too far -- I think of something two rabbis said. Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague, best known for his tales of the golem, pointed out that the story of Creation was written in such a way that each day, each new creation, is seen as a step toward a completion that occurred on the Sabbath. What was Creation's climactic culmination? The act of stopping. Why should God have considered it so important to stop? Rabbi Elijah of Vilna put it this way: God stopped to show us that what we create becomes meaningful to us only once we stop creating it and start to think about why we did so. The implication is clear. We could let the world wind us up and set us to marching, like mechanical dolls that go and go until they fall over, because they don't have a mechanism that allows them to pause. But that would make us less than human. We have to remember to stop because we have to stop to remember.
http://blog.crew.co/why-you-shouldnt-work-set-hours/
The surprising reason we have a 40-hour work week (and why we should re-think it)POSTED BY MIKAEL CHOSAVE TO …
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TwitterFacebookEmail‘As long as you get your eight hours in.’
I used to hear this phrase a lot.
The thinking is that as long as you put in a set amount of time working (usually at least eight hours or more) you will do well at your job and be successful.
We learned that eight hours of work a day is what we’re supposed to do almost as soon as we step foot into a classroom. School days are eight hours long and classes are usually structured by slots of time rather than what is accomplished in that time.
When you get a job, usually part or all of your pay is based on hours worked.
Since starting Crew I’ve made huge strides in how I approach my day to be more productive, but sometimes, I still catch myself looking at the clock, calculating how much time I should be working rather than focusing on what I’m getting done in that time.
On days where I put in less than eight or ten hours of work, I feel a bit guilty, like I’m not pushing hard enough. But, this is the wrong way to think.
At Crew we don’t work set hours.
Two of my co-founders prefer to work late into the night while I enjoy starting work early in the day.
Because we have different energy levels at different times, it would be counterproductive for my co-founders to work at 9AM (just like it would be inefficient for me to be working at 2AM).
Granted, there are times when scheduling a time to meet during the day to discuss important matters is needed (and there are many days when we all work through the night), but the importance is our work schedules are rarely managed by a set number of hours; rather, they are guided by our energy levels.
Most importantly, we’ve seen the results of working without a set schedule in the quality of our work, our productivity, and our health.
But, working set hours is typically the norm for full-time professionals, so I wondered where this 40-hour work schedule came from and if there’s any scientific backing as to why we’ve been working this way for almost a century.
For more tips and hacks for living a healthy, productive, and creative life,click here to join the 7,034 people who receive our weekly newsletter.
How the 40-hour work week came to beDuring the Industrial Revolution, factories needed to be running around the clock so employees during this era frequently worked between 10-16 hour days.
In the 1920s however, it was Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company, that established the 5-day, 40-hour work week.
Henry Ford next to a 1921 Model-T
Surprisingly, Ford didn’t do it for scientific reasons (or solely for thehealth of his employees). Rather, one of the main reasons he came up with the idea to reduce the working hours of his staff was so employees would have enough free time to go out and realize they needed to buy stuff.
In an interview published in World’s Work magazine in 1926, Ford explains why he switched his workers from a 6-day, 48-hour workweek to a 5-day, 40-hour workweek but still paid employees the same wages:
Leisure is an indispensable ingredient in a growing consumer market because working people need to have enough free time to find uses for consumer products, including automobiles.?’?Henry Ford
So the 8-hour work day, 5-day workweek wasn’t chosen as the way to work for scientific reasons; instead, it was partly driven by the goal of increasing consumption.
Night owls vs. early birdsYour body keeps track of time in a section in your brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (or SCN).
This part of the brain is located behind your eye, where the optic nerve fibers cross, which allows your brain to use cues from light in your environment to help you keep track of time:
Source: Wikipedia
Light and genetics are the two main factors that help your body tell time, establishing a natural a cycle of energy levels (a circadian rhythm) throughout your day.
Here’s a few of the main events that happen in your body as part of a typical 24-hour biological clock:
Source: Wikipedia
The length of your 24-hour cycle may be longer or shorter due to genetics.
If your cycle is a bit longer, you would be considered a night owl but if yours is a bit shorter, you’re most likely an early riser, says Katherine Sharkey, MD, PhD, associate director of the Sleep for Science Research Lab.
Researchers have even pinpointed that the length of a particular gene called Period 3 or ‘clock gene,’ could be largely responsible for your sleep-wake cycle.
Night owls outlast early birdsA typical workday for most of us usually starts at 7AM and ends around 5PM. This lifestyle design really only works well for one type of person. The early riser.
If you prefer working nights (like 44% of women and 37% of men do), then you’re often stuck slugging away at a time when your energy levels are low and your work ultimately suffers.
Because night owls wake up later, they sometimes get a reputation for being lazy because they’re asleep while the rest of the world is hustling.
But, recent research from the University of Brussels suggests that night owls may beat out early birds in the length of time they can stay awake and alert without becoming mentally fatigued.
Researchers conducted a study with ‘extreme’ early or late risers. Early risers awoke between 5AM-6AM while late risers awoke at noon.
The participants spent two nights in a sleep lab where the researchers measured their brain activity, looking at alertness and ability to concentrate.
After ten hours of being awake, the early risers showed reduced activityin areas of the brain associated with attention span and completed tasks more slowly than late risers.
‘It’s the late risers who have the advantage, and can outperform the early birds,’ said Philippe Peigneux, one of the publishers of the study.
Forcing someone to work early (or late) doesn’t necessarily lead to better results.
A night owl can be just as productive (if not more) than an early riser, they’re simply more productive at a different time.
The importance of taking a breatherBecause our bodies were designed to work in rhythms, not for endless hours on end, breaks are often just as important as the work we do.
Research discussed in the landmark book Creativity and the Mindshowed that regular breaks significantly enhance problem-solving skills, partly by making it easier for you to go through your memories to find clues.
Focusing only on your work for four or five hours straight limits your chances to make new, insightful neural connections, which won’t help you when you need to be creative.
A few companies have embraced this need to remove work to improve production and creativity.
In his TED talk, graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister explains the importance of time off and why he shuts down his design studio for a year. Sagmeister says this removal of work allows him and his colleagues to gain new perspectives and refresh, ultimately producing better work.
Quirky, a web company is working on an experiment to shut down operations for four weeks every year. Here’s an excerpt from an email Quirky CEO, Ben Kaufman sent to Quirky staff (full email here):
We are going to shut down the entire machine for 4 weeks next year. Instead of running for 52, it will run for 48.
This is a full, mandatory shutdown of all internal activities. Lights out. Deep breath’
Our thesis is centered around the fact that this will lead to better work, more beautiful products, and an emotionally balanced team.
Take a breather not just for creativity (but for your health)Giving yourself a break not only can benefit your creative juices but also your health.
Dan Buettner, a writer for National Geographic recently assembled a team of researchers to look at three communities around the world that have the longest, healthiest lives on the planet.
In his TED talk, How to live to be 100+, Buettner showcases one of these communities, the Seventh-Day Adventists in California.
The members of the Seventh-Day Adventists must take one day off a week from work completely, no matter how busy they may be.
Buettner points out this opportunity to reconnect with people and the world around them relieves stress and is likely part of the equation for why the Seventh-Day Adventists have five times the number of people who live to be over a hundred than the rest of the country.
4 steps to work-life blissI’ve experimented a lot with different techniques to improve the way I work. A couple weeks ago, I tried to not look at a clock for a day and instead, just rely on my energy levels to tell me what I should do (I found it nearly impossible and failed within the first couple hours).
Through trial and failure however, I’ve found a system that has worked wonders for me.
I will continue to try more things to constantly improve the way I work and report my findings, but here’s what I’ve figured out so far that has produced the best work of my career.
1. Write a realistic to-do listMake a to-do list for the day that has 3-4 major tasks that you want to get done.
Because your days will naturally fill up with other things, David Heinemeier Hansson of 37signals, recommends,
‘Plan for 4-5 hours of real work per day.’
Laying out your daily tasks knowing this, helps you create a to-do list that you can consistently complete, rather than one that has too many items and leaves you feeling bad, like you’re constantly falling behind.
2. Create cycles with your workYou probably have lots of different types of tasks to worry about.
To accomplish more of the important things while maintaing balance in your energy levels so you don’t burnout, try breaking your day up like this:
One night a week, we have a planned time where we spend time not talking about any work (no checking of iThings allowed).
Try removing work completely for a day.
When you return to work the next day, you’ll probably feel inspired and driven, helping to keep distractions at bay.
4. Find a true metric to measure your tasksIt’s easy to count hours but not so easy to figure out another way to measure the work you do that encompasses the true goal of what you’re producing.
For example, it’s easy to measure how many hours you wrote today but what is the goal of your writing?
Is it to simply get your thoughts down? Then maybe you should be measuring how many days in a row you are writing.
Is it to grow your audience so people purchase what you’re selling? Then maybe you should track the sales that result from each blog post you write rather than the number of posts you write.
Track your progress using one of these metrics and your mindset may shift from ‘I worked x hours to do this thing’ to ‘I did this thing and it produced x results.’
This system is hard to maintain because a lot of things in the world are designed to steal your attention and I’ve found myself falling into the busy trap once in a while.
But, if you give it a shot (even just for a day or a few hours), you may uncover one of the most productive ways you’ve ever worked, like I did.
If you work at a company that requires you to be there for a set number of hours I’m not saying you should quit or that it’s a bad gig.
The important thing to remember is it’s not about the amount of hours you work, but what you do in those hours that counts.
The surprising reason we have a 40-hour work week (and why we should re-think it)POSTED BY MIKAEL CHOSAVE TO …
PocketInstapaperReadabilityPinboard
SHARE VIA …
TwitterFacebookEmail‘As long as you get your eight hours in.’
I used to hear this phrase a lot.
The thinking is that as long as you put in a set amount of time working (usually at least eight hours or more) you will do well at your job and be successful.
We learned that eight hours of work a day is what we’re supposed to do almost as soon as we step foot into a classroom. School days are eight hours long and classes are usually structured by slots of time rather than what is accomplished in that time.
When you get a job, usually part or all of your pay is based on hours worked.
Since starting Crew I’ve made huge strides in how I approach my day to be more productive, but sometimes, I still catch myself looking at the clock, calculating how much time I should be working rather than focusing on what I’m getting done in that time.
On days where I put in less than eight or ten hours of work, I feel a bit guilty, like I’m not pushing hard enough. But, this is the wrong way to think.
At Crew we don’t work set hours.
Two of my co-founders prefer to work late into the night while I enjoy starting work early in the day.
Because we have different energy levels at different times, it would be counterproductive for my co-founders to work at 9AM (just like it would be inefficient for me to be working at 2AM).
Granted, there are times when scheduling a time to meet during the day to discuss important matters is needed (and there are many days when we all work through the night), but the importance is our work schedules are rarely managed by a set number of hours; rather, they are guided by our energy levels.
Most importantly, we’ve seen the results of working without a set schedule in the quality of our work, our productivity, and our health.
But, working set hours is typically the norm for full-time professionals, so I wondered where this 40-hour work schedule came from and if there’s any scientific backing as to why we’ve been working this way for almost a century.
For more tips and hacks for living a healthy, productive, and creative life,click here to join the 7,034 people who receive our weekly newsletter.
How the 40-hour work week came to beDuring the Industrial Revolution, factories needed to be running around the clock so employees during this era frequently worked between 10-16 hour days.
In the 1920s however, it was Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company, that established the 5-day, 40-hour work week.
Henry Ford next to a 1921 Model-T
Surprisingly, Ford didn’t do it for scientific reasons (or solely for thehealth of his employees). Rather, one of the main reasons he came up with the idea to reduce the working hours of his staff was so employees would have enough free time to go out and realize they needed to buy stuff.
In an interview published in World’s Work magazine in 1926, Ford explains why he switched his workers from a 6-day, 48-hour workweek to a 5-day, 40-hour workweek but still paid employees the same wages:
Leisure is an indispensable ingredient in a growing consumer market because working people need to have enough free time to find uses for consumer products, including automobiles.?’?Henry Ford
So the 8-hour work day, 5-day workweek wasn’t chosen as the way to work for scientific reasons; instead, it was partly driven by the goal of increasing consumption.
Night owls vs. early birdsYour body keeps track of time in a section in your brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (or SCN).
This part of the brain is located behind your eye, where the optic nerve fibers cross, which allows your brain to use cues from light in your environment to help you keep track of time:
Source: Wikipedia
Light and genetics are the two main factors that help your body tell time, establishing a natural a cycle of energy levels (a circadian rhythm) throughout your day.
Here’s a few of the main events that happen in your body as part of a typical 24-hour biological clock:
Source: Wikipedia
The length of your 24-hour cycle may be longer or shorter due to genetics.
If your cycle is a bit longer, you would be considered a night owl but if yours is a bit shorter, you’re most likely an early riser, says Katherine Sharkey, MD, PhD, associate director of the Sleep for Science Research Lab.
Researchers have even pinpointed that the length of a particular gene called Period 3 or ‘clock gene,’ could be largely responsible for your sleep-wake cycle.
Night owls outlast early birdsA typical workday for most of us usually starts at 7AM and ends around 5PM. This lifestyle design really only works well for one type of person. The early riser.
If you prefer working nights (like 44% of women and 37% of men do), then you’re often stuck slugging away at a time when your energy levels are low and your work ultimately suffers.
Because night owls wake up later, they sometimes get a reputation for being lazy because they’re asleep while the rest of the world is hustling.
But, recent research from the University of Brussels suggests that night owls may beat out early birds in the length of time they can stay awake and alert without becoming mentally fatigued.
Researchers conducted a study with ‘extreme’ early or late risers. Early risers awoke between 5AM-6AM while late risers awoke at noon.
The participants spent two nights in a sleep lab where the researchers measured their brain activity, looking at alertness and ability to concentrate.
After ten hours of being awake, the early risers showed reduced activityin areas of the brain associated with attention span and completed tasks more slowly than late risers.
‘It’s the late risers who have the advantage, and can outperform the early birds,’ said Philippe Peigneux, one of the publishers of the study.
Forcing someone to work early (or late) doesn’t necessarily lead to better results.
A night owl can be just as productive (if not more) than an early riser, they’re simply more productive at a different time.
The importance of taking a breatherBecause our bodies were designed to work in rhythms, not for endless hours on end, breaks are often just as important as the work we do.
Research discussed in the landmark book Creativity and the Mindshowed that regular breaks significantly enhance problem-solving skills, partly by making it easier for you to go through your memories to find clues.
Focusing only on your work for four or five hours straight limits your chances to make new, insightful neural connections, which won’t help you when you need to be creative.
A few companies have embraced this need to remove work to improve production and creativity.
In his TED talk, graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister explains the importance of time off and why he shuts down his design studio for a year. Sagmeister says this removal of work allows him and his colleagues to gain new perspectives and refresh, ultimately producing better work.
Quirky, a web company is working on an experiment to shut down operations for four weeks every year. Here’s an excerpt from an email Quirky CEO, Ben Kaufman sent to Quirky staff (full email here):
We are going to shut down the entire machine for 4 weeks next year. Instead of running for 52, it will run for 48.
This is a full, mandatory shutdown of all internal activities. Lights out. Deep breath’
Our thesis is centered around the fact that this will lead to better work, more beautiful products, and an emotionally balanced team.
Take a breather not just for creativity (but for your health)Giving yourself a break not only can benefit your creative juices but also your health.
Dan Buettner, a writer for National Geographic recently assembled a team of researchers to look at three communities around the world that have the longest, healthiest lives on the planet.
In his TED talk, How to live to be 100+, Buettner showcases one of these communities, the Seventh-Day Adventists in California.
The members of the Seventh-Day Adventists must take one day off a week from work completely, no matter how busy they may be.
Buettner points out this opportunity to reconnect with people and the world around them relieves stress and is likely part of the equation for why the Seventh-Day Adventists have five times the number of people who live to be over a hundred than the rest of the country.
4 steps to work-life blissI’ve experimented a lot with different techniques to improve the way I work. A couple weeks ago, I tried to not look at a clock for a day and instead, just rely on my energy levels to tell me what I should do (I found it nearly impossible and failed within the first couple hours).
Through trial and failure however, I’ve found a system that has worked wonders for me.
I will continue to try more things to constantly improve the way I work and report my findings, but here’s what I’ve figured out so far that has produced the best work of my career.
1. Write a realistic to-do listMake a to-do list for the day that has 3-4 major tasks that you want to get done.
Because your days will naturally fill up with other things, David Heinemeier Hansson of 37signals, recommends,
‘Plan for 4-5 hours of real work per day.’
Laying out your daily tasks knowing this, helps you create a to-do list that you can consistently complete, rather than one that has too many items and leaves you feeling bad, like you’re constantly falling behind.
2. Create cycles with your workYou probably have lots of different types of tasks to worry about.
To accomplish more of the important things while maintaing balance in your energy levels so you don’t burnout, try breaking your day up like this:
- A creative task. Starting with your most creative or important task before that urgent email pops up will help you feel accomplished. For me, I usually wake up and work a 90-minute session on my most creative task before I feel my brain and concentration start to fatigue.
- An un-timed break. Your break could be 20-minute run, a nap, lunch,or simply doing nothing for a few minutes. This gives you a chance to refresh and regain mental power before starting your next task. By keeping it un-timed, you’re using your energy levels as a guide to when you should start work again, rather than a rigid set amount of time.
- A mundane task. By bulking your mundane tasks together and doing them all at once, you’ll save time. Check all your emails or try to schedule multiple phone calls in a row. This way, when you switch back to a creative task, you won’t have the cloud of a hundred emails hovering over your head.
- Another un-timed break.
- Repeat. Try going through this cycle 3-4 times in a day.
One night a week, we have a planned time where we spend time not talking about any work (no checking of iThings allowed).
Try removing work completely for a day.
When you return to work the next day, you’ll probably feel inspired and driven, helping to keep distractions at bay.
4. Find a true metric to measure your tasksIt’s easy to count hours but not so easy to figure out another way to measure the work you do that encompasses the true goal of what you’re producing.
For example, it’s easy to measure how many hours you wrote today but what is the goal of your writing?
Is it to simply get your thoughts down? Then maybe you should be measuring how many days in a row you are writing.
Is it to grow your audience so people purchase what you’re selling? Then maybe you should track the sales that result from each blog post you write rather than the number of posts you write.
Track your progress using one of these metrics and your mindset may shift from ‘I worked x hours to do this thing’ to ‘I did this thing and it produced x results.’
This system is hard to maintain because a lot of things in the world are designed to steal your attention and I’ve found myself falling into the busy trap once in a while.
But, if you give it a shot (even just for a day or a few hours), you may uncover one of the most productive ways you’ve ever worked, like I did.
If you work at a company that requires you to be there for a set number of hours I’m not saying you should quit or that it’s a bad gig.
The important thing to remember is it’s not about the amount of hours you work, but what you do in those hours that counts.