The Art of Rest Flashcards
What does rest get confused with?
Sleep
Lecturer defines rest as: temporary, restorative- makes you feel better after
The rest test: how many people wanted more rest?
2/3 of people in research said that they wanted more rest. Therefore many people feel that the modern world doesn’t give us enough time to rest.
What does resting help with?
Resting helps us to cope with everyday stress and boost memory and concentration. Fatigue can cause the opposite.
Evidence that people will work for most of their lunch break
What were Kim et al.’s (2017) results about rest breaks
They found that even 2 minute breaks such as making a cup of tea would improve peoples levels of concentration.
At the end of the day, they gave people mood questionnaires and found people who took micro breaks were more productive and concentrate more.
Another study on breaks at work
Another study found that people delay a break and don’t make a cup of tea because they have work to do.
Breaks have the biggest effects on the most demanding days.
Impact of breaks on cognitive skills
Dewar et al (2012)
Dewar et al (2014)
- People were asked to memorise a list of words and then asked to recall as many of these words 10 minutes later.
- In the 10 minutes they were even given a break or something to do
- They found that people who had the break could recall more words
- Also, did a study in people with amnesia (can’t remember new words). Usually they can remember 14% but having a 10 minute break meant it went up to 49%.
What were found for tests of insight?
Jumbled words that makes a saying.
If people had a break, they did significantly better in this task of insight
What is there more status on these days?
Being busy. People are often showing how busy are.
This is compared to in the 19th century where gentlemen of leisure where people would talk about how much free time they would have and show this of.
Studies of time use show that people don’t have any less spare time now than they did in the 1930s but people don’t feel like that.
Sally Fisher showed people Facebook updates: what were the 2 versions and results?
Busy:
* Wednesday at 13:30, Quick 10 min for lunch
* Friday at 17:00, Still working
Not busy:
* Wednesday at 13:30, Having a long lunch
* Friday at 17:00, Done with work
Result- People thought that busy sally was a harder worker
Sally Fishers comparison of answers by US and Italy
In America people said the hard working version was more successful where as in Italy, people would say the less hard working was more successful- therefore there are different values
Planning fallacy:
definition and example
We take on too much and think we can do things more quickly than we can
Eg. Oxford English dictionary- they underestimated how long it would take. It was more than 70 years late, they finished in 1928 and by that time it was too late
Estimating how long it will take to finish tasks…
There is a tendency to believe in the future there will be more time and we will be more organised.
This means we take on too much and fail to factor all the things that might go wrong, such as becoming ill or laptop breaks.
* Studies have been done on getting people to estimate how long it will take people to finish their pHD. Also estimate how long their friends will take. People are better at estimating how long other people will take.
* implications- asked people if they will choose the easy or hard essay- people often leave the difficult one for the future when they have more time but then they don’t actually do it
* studies on whether people forgave themselves for procrastinating.
Working complexity: worked in the hub
Put out a call for £1 million grants for groups of 5 people that had to come together. They did it on rest and got 40 people together from all different fields.
Rest test was created:
In All in the Mind- BBC R4
* 2/3 said they wanted more rest
* 18,000 participants came from a total of 193 countries but were predominantly from the UK (79%)
* The sample were predominantly women (71%)
* The age range was 18 - 100 years (mean: 48, SD: 15)
Worked in the hub
Limitation and results
Limitation: self-selecting sample therefore people might have said this because they wanted to do research on rest
Results:
People were asked about how much rest did they get yesterday. The average was 3 hours
- more men than women believe they get less rest than the average person, but when asked how much rest they got the day before (in hours), men got an average of 10 mins more rest than women the previous day.
- the least rested group were, on average, more likely to be younger, working traditional full-time hours or in shift-work that included nights. They were more likely to have higher incomes or to be carers.
- the most rested group were, on average, more likely to be older, with, lower incomes, unemployed, retired or working split shifts and slightly more likely to be men rather than women
When asked how much rest they think they got compared to the average person…
27% said they thought they got less
44% said they thought they got the same
28% said they thought they got more
Peoples’ well-being scores were twice as high if they think they got more rest
