By now you've heard that you need 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become a master of your craft. The story you don't hear is that it also takes 12,500 hours of deliberate rest.

When you rest, you let what you've learned sink in. The ties connecting concepts get stronger, and weak connections get cleared away.

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang is author of the book Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less. He's also a visiting scholar at Stanford University, and founder of The Restful Company, where he helps companies use deliberate rest to be more creative and productive.

I picked up Rest to help with research for my upcoming book. You should pick it up, too. It's fascinating. It's packed with research and stories about why rest is critical to creative productivity. I had to have Alex on the show to learn more, and have him break it down for us.

In this conversation, learn:

• Why should you be deliberate about using rest to make your work better?
• What's the hypnogogic state, and how did the surrealist painter Salvador Dalí use it to get more creative ideas?
• Why did Ernest Hemingway always stop writing when he knew what was going to happen next.
• When's the best time to take a nap for optimal creative output? How long should the nap be?

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Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/alex-soojung-kim-pang/