{"id":11299,"date":"2025-07-20T20:28:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T20:28:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/11299\/"},"modified":"2025-07-20T20:28:18","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T20:28:18","slug":"the-brain-at-rest-book-review-can-not-working-help-us-do-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/11299\/","title":{"rendered":"The Brain at Rest book review: Can not working help us do more?"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re my boss and you catch me in the middle of the working day, sitting at my desk, staring at the wall blankly, not having moved a mouse \u2014 let alone an extra-ocular muscle \u2014 for up to 20 minutes straight, don\u2019t mind me. I\u2019m practising niksen \u2014 and Dr Joseph Jebelli recommended it for the benefit of my mental health<\/a> and overall productivity<\/a> levels. Yes, this treatment is necessary to ease my \u201covergeneralised guilt disorder\u201d \u2014 that\u2019s OGD for short \u2014 and yes I will be getting a badge printed, but please for the love of God don\u2019t give up your seat on the Tube for me.<\/p>\n

Cynicism aside, it\u2019s hard not to agree with the central premise of this book: we are overworked, overstimulated and generally find it hard to switch off. A myriad health conditions follow, from the credible, like heart disease, to the incredible, like blindness in one eye. This is not a new observation but neither is it an issue we have solved, so you can\u2019t fault the man for trying to address it.<\/p>\n

This he does in 190 pages of science, diary entries and practical tips which will slide neatly onto your self-help shelf \u2014 though I suspect it will become more common as a \u201cgift\u201d from the pleading partner to their overworked spouse.<\/p>\n

Jebelli\u2019s pro-rest thesis is annotated via a litany of scientific surveys \u2014 some more convincing than others<\/p>\n

If so, it may activate the overworker\u2019s contrarian tendencies. Jebelli\u2019s pro-rest thesis is heavily annotated via a litany of scientific surveys \u2014 some more convincing than others. That nine per cent of the world overworks feels quite meaningless without context. In sweatshops? Or in South Korean banks? <\/p>\n

Elsewhere, it is equally vague. \u201cIn a complete capsize of progress, millennials have it the worst, with 59 per cent overworking\u201d versus 31 per cent of baby boomers. \u201cNowadays you have to go the extra mile,\u201d says one of his interviewees, a German doctor named Jens Foell. Surely it\u2019s very hard to make assumptions like that about the whole world? Or does he mean Brits and other Europeans and Americans?<\/p>\n

Rest in all its confusing forms<\/p>\n

There is also the problem of definitions. \u201cOverwork is literally killing you,\u201d he writes. Hormones produced by overworking \u201cattack your neurons and damage your brain\u2019s fine circuitry\u201d. Without a solid definition of overwork, and by contrast, rest, this isn\u2019t overwhelmingly convincing.<\/p>\n

Rest swells to become an amorphous concept involving the active kind (sex \u2014 which by the way \u201cimproves memory and thinking ability\u201d); the more banal sort, like staring at a fly; and then actions like birdwatching and stroking bark. Some of those activities have induced guilt in me, it\u2019s true. Binge watching TV does not count as true rest according to Jebelli, who has a PhD in neuroscience.<\/p>\n

\"Dr<\/p>\n

Give it a rest: Dr Joseph Jebelli prescribes switching off your brain<\/p>\n

Getty Images<\/p>\n

I stumbled over some of Jebelli\u2019s prescriptions. We should rest because Mary Shelley conjured up Frankenstein during a dream! Rest because JK Rowling spawned the Harry Potter universe on a train! Rest because Leonardo Da Vinci stared at his paintings for hours before perfecting them! It all sounds more like encouragement to engage in a particular type of rest with a firm underlying telos, rather than all this so-called respite.<\/p>\n

Despite my gripes, it\u2019s undeniable that many of us would benefit from switching off our phones, spending time without listening to anything at all, hanging out, staring at the wall. Some of the practical tips genuinely are good ideas \u2014 walk in the forest, stroke tree bark, etc. <\/p>\n

I was surprised to read that Jebelli thinks the best thing you can do for your long-term productivity is sometimes to pretend to work<\/p>\n

One definition of rest I certainly couldn\u2019t get behind \u2014 and not because I\u2019m a massive dweeb \u2014 was the advice for workers whose bosses are not receptive to the idea of scheduling in timed \u201cmind wandering\u201d sessions. \u201cIf your boss is difficult\u2009\u2026\u2009you could always fake it.\u201d <\/p>\n

The best self-improvement books<\/p>\n

I was surprised to read that Jebelli thinks the best thing you can do for your long-term productivity is sometimes to pretend to work<\/a>. That strikes me as not especially helpful \u2014 nor restful. I suspect it would trigger my OGD.<\/p>\n

Lucy Kenningham is Acting Comment Editor at The London Standard<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you\u2019re my boss and you catch me in the middle of the working day, sitting at my…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11300,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[7340,457,7341,96,1906,4875,56,54,55,1908],"class_list":{"0":"post-11299","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-book-review","9":"tag-books","10":"tag-brain","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-mental-health","13":"tag-productivity","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-unitedkingdom","17":"tag-work"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}