Spending time alone is the best way to get real rest–even for extroverts | Hacker News Reader

Spending time alone is the best way to get real rest–even for extroverts

qz.com

103 pointssubmeta5 comments

All this survey reports are the things people consider to be restful. To that end it doesn't seem more valuable for your personal use than just asking yourself what you find most restful and doing that.

It's not actually a study that demonstrates a connection between what things people conventionally think of as restful – such as being in the natural environment, or reading a book – and whether there is any evidence this is more effectively restful than, say, getting coffee with a friend.

Do these people work more effectively? Sleep more soundly? Do their brain exhibit neurological features of restfulness? Do they get fewer illnesses? No data.

If we actually consult the research [1] we can see this was never the aims of the survey:

"The Rest Test sought to explore people’s subjective experiences of rest" (emphasis added)

What they do measure is whether people consider their 'subjective wellbeing' improved with rest. But what other people think makes them feel better may not be what actually makes you feel better.

So: interesting anthropologically, but not at all what the title suggests.

[1]: http://hubbubresearch.org/rest-test-results/

Try reading outdoors, ideally in a park or the forest, with a book of something non-work and non-linear such as poetry, listening to abstract music without lyrics such as Brian Eno.

30 minutes of this enables me to then code extremely effectively for hours.

These conclusions were gathered from a self-reported study of what people think are 'restful activities'. I would hardly consider the title an accurate conclusion to make. It is entirely possible that extroverts (or anyone in the survey, for that matter) picked activities that are seen as peaceful or calming by society as a whole.

Note sure how reliable/accurate the conclusions in the article are. At the very least the introverts among us can use this bit of (confirmation bias) information to convince ourselves that "we were right all along" and extroverts should be more like us.

Uh, that's kind of the point here: basically they find that so called introverts and extroverts have the same desire for solitary restful activities. Other research has found that there's no basis to the idea that introverts recharge when they're alone and extroverts recharge around people. Indeed, the label tells us more about how comfortable people feel around other people than anything about their needs.

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