Work is something that every living thing dedicates its life to. It might be that work should be less about economic gain and more like a “mission” to affirm the meaning of one’s existence. The significance of working and the significance of resting, this time, we discussed these topics as scientifically as possible.
We’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to share your comments!
Profile
Yati Obara
Editor-in-Chief, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1989. CEO of Motherhand and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Holds an M.Eng. and is an AMI-certified teacher. Focused on Montessori developmental theory and AI. Mother of two.
Hiro Obara
Publisher, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1990. Works as a software developer and a weekend farmer. Father of two.
Good work comes from good rest.
Yati
This six to twelve article is titled “Good at Work, Good at Rest.” That’s something you always talk about. Can you explain briefly what it means?
Hiro
Resting is important. If you’re not good at resting, you can’t work for long, and you can’t work efficiently. In other words, “knowing where to ease off” is part of becoming good at work, and mastering something means knowing where you can let go of effort.
Yati
Can you give an example?
Hiro
Say there’s a kid who’s bad at throwing a ball. If you watch closely, they’re tense the whole time. That keeps the arm from whipping properly. To throw far, you relax, then use force only at the very end. Basically, you stay loose.
Yati
By relaxing, you can harness centrifugal force.
Hiro
Right. Figuring out how to produce results while staying relaxed is what you should really be thinking about when it comes to work.
Yati
I always thought Europeans were the ones thinking about “work-life balance.” In one study of over 35,000 people across 30 European countries, higher work-life balance was associated with higher work engagement, a positive, sustained psychological state combining vitality, dedication, and absorption in work. People who were “relaxed” in the sense of valuing time outside work were also good at their jobs.
Hiro
Interesting. But if you can’t do this, time is finite, and what you can accomplish in life is limited. What you choose to do matters.
Yati
The study also found that work-life balance varies by country, explained by welfare regimes, the characteristics of welfare policies and social security systems. Different countries, different patterns. In Japan, as kids, we dream of “taking it easy,” wanting to be YouTubers, for instance. But as adults, we feel like we “have to push hard.”
Hiro
Right. Homework culture is part of the problem. It instills the wrong mindset.
Yati
True.
Hiro
Homework is really terrible. You’re forced to do something unnecessary even after going home, and you get scolded if you don’t. Not a single kid actually wants to do homework.
Yati
Nobody does. We were thrilled when the teacher said, “No homework today.”
Hiro
That’s the opposite of good work. Being forced to do something you don’t want, getting yelled at if you don’t, that’s awful. It leads straight to overtime culture in adulthood. “I’ll take work home.” What we should be training is finishing within the allotted time. There’s a perfect game for this.
Yati
There is. [laughs]
Hiro
It’s called Pikmin. [laughs]
Yati
I played it as an elementary schooler, and I still love it.
Hiro
I really want everyone to play Pikmin. It’s work training dressed up as a game.
Yati
[laughs] Get good at Pikmin, and you get faster at real-world work.
Hiro
It’s pretty intense training. Here’s something most people don’t know: there’s a famous company called McKinsey, often called the world’s hardest firm to get into. It’s a “consulting firm” where only the elite of the elite are hired. A single day of consulting can cost 2 to 3 million yen, the equivalent of about 15,000 to 20,000 dollars. An unbelievable business world.
Yati
That’s about 2,000 dollars an hour. Wow.
Hiro
Basically, they consult for major corporations everyone knows. New hires there spend three years being drilled on one thing.
Yati
What?
Hiro
Preparation. The Japanese call it “dandori,” meaning advance preparation and planning. They’re trained rigorously in dandori. Preparation means that to produce results within the time allowed, you have to get many things ready in advance.
Yati
Exactly.
Hiro
Preparing materials, for example. Before making a proposal, you need to have read a lot of documents. Reading documents means working backward, identifying what you need to read, preparing in advance, and then performing at a high level and finishing on time during the actual consulting work.
Yati
Mm-hmm.
Hiro
There’s a contract, so you deliver results within that contract period. Otherwise, no one hires you again. At McKinsey, even young employees in their twenties earn tens of millions of yen a year, the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars. And the first thing they learn? Preparation.
Yati
Pikmin.
Hiro
Exactly. That’s what makes Pikmin amazing. A 7 or 8 year old can learn what McKinsey’s brightest spend three years mastering, practically for free, for the cost of about a 30-dollar game, and play as much as they want.
Yati
And you can fail as many times as you like. No one yells at you. You don’t get fired.
Hiro
So if kids master Pikmin, they’ve unconsciously learned the essence of work. They absorb it without realizing. They naturally understand that work means preparing properly and moving forward step by step.
Yati
They can learn the essence of work through a game, starting in childhood.
Hiro
And cooking is the same. If you cook regularly, you know: cooking is preparation. If “dinner is at 7,” you get everything ready by then. One dish, two dishes, whatever you’re making, it all has to be done by that time. It takes a lot of mental effort, so cooking is really good for the brain. Elderly people who cook, maybe because they use their hands, maybe because of the mental planning, have lower rates of dementia.
Yati
Some medical institutions use cooking for rehabilitation, and a lot has been studied about cooking’s effects. But most nutrition research focuses on “what to eat.” Studies that focus on the “cooking” process itself and show it contributes to brain function recovery are rare. Researchers at a Japanese university studied this, led by Dr. Kawashima, who’s famous for designing Nintendo’s Brain Age games. They measured the brains of people while cooking, and found the prefrontal cortex, the part responsible for planning and decision-making, was activated when participants planned menus. Further, tasks like “planning the menu,” “cutting,” “stir-frying on a gas stove,” and “plating” activated the brain more than simply moving the hands. In another study, retired elderly men who attended weekly cooking classes and cooked at home five days a week for three months showed improved prefrontal cortex function.
Hiro
There’s a funny phenomenon: men who reach retirement age and never cooked before start cooking and get really into it. Soba noodles, for instance, a Japanese buckwheat noodle.
Yati
If only they’d done it during their working years.
Hiro
Right. It would have helped their work, too. They might have climbed higher. Well, that’s unsolicited advice. [laughs]
Yati
[laughs]
Hiro
The point is, the essence of work is preparation. Coming back to our title, “Good at Work, Good at Rest,” what is preparation, really? It’s about how to create free time. If you’re constantly focused on stir-frying or cutting, you can’t do anything else. Good preparation means reducing time when you’re tied up with one thing and running tasks in parallel. Make soup while you prep the salad. Chill the salad in the fridge so it’s not lukewarm when served. Don’t boil noodles first or they’ll get soggy. Time them to finish right before eating.
Yati
Start the rice first.
Hiro
Exactly. Rice takes time to cook and steam. Know how long water takes to boil. Prepare dashi, the Japanese soup stock, the day before. That’s preparation.
Yati
Preparation.
Hiro
Work is really a chain of preparations. Flip it around, and it’s also about how you spend your rest. Becoming good at resting means being able to use time freely. Your time actually increases.
Yati
You get better at preparation, gain more free time, get better at using that free time, get better at preparation again, a virtuous cycle.
Hiro
So the most important thing isn’t just what you do, it’s also what you don’t do. “Does this really need to be done?” Reviewing that is crucial. But it’s hard to do in elementary school. If a kid says, “I don’t see the point of this, so I’m not doing it,” they get scolded. “This class isn’t relevant to me, so I’ll study on my own. I’ll go read in the library. Excuse me.”
Yati
In college, that’s allowed, even encouraged. If you already know the material, study something else.
Hiro
Right, in college it’s fine. It’s totally self-directed. If you’ve got it, you don’t have to show up. So for elementary students, the ideal environment is probably something like a university.
Yati
When you keep asking, “Does this really need to be done?” you start wondering about exams and credentials, too. Are they really necessary?
Hiro
It’s paradoxical, counterintuitive, but what everyone’s really looking for isn’t rest; it’s work.
Yati
What do you mean?
Hiro
People think they want endless vacation, but what they really want is work they can be absorbed in.
Yati
That kind of work is enjoyable.
Hiro
Exactly. Doing nothing is actually quite hard. Boredom is hard. The brain craves stimulation. You want to do something. If you fill that void with noise, social media, gossip, your head becomes noisy. Thinking gets scattered. So you resist, cut out the noise, rest properly, and then you’ll want to work. Focus on work, get tired, rest properly. That cycle works for adults and children alike.
Yati
It’d be great if kids could do that from an early age.
Hiro
Related to ages 6 to 12: in infancy, synapses in the brain spread and multiply rapidly. During six to twelve, pruning is happening, and thinking can become scattered. Daily life may suffer.
Yati
In Montessori terms, the precise sense of order in three to six, keeping things in exactly the same place, neat and tidy, gets internalized by six to twelve. Externally, children realize, “I don’t have to be quite so particular.”
Hiro
Right. People say things get “rougher,” but it’s more that children become more “thinking-oriented.” Imagination flourishes, and they can set direction through thought.
Yati
Because order is internalized, this is when they get better at setting priorities and preparing.
Hiro
Yeah. Cooking, cleaning, doing your own things for yourself. Plus doing things for the family, for the community, for the team. Those are fundamental human needs, so it’s good to create an environment that allows for them.
Yati
In regular school, those inner workings aren’t assumed, so kids might be too tired to do them. At this stage, it’s less “practicing” daily life and more “living” it. Maria Montessori said that at three to six, children experience sensory differences among types of fabric, but at six to twelve, they choose their own clothes based on fabric type and learn different ways to care for them.
Hiro
I got sidetracked, so let me get back to the main point. As something other educators don’t say, I want to emphasize the importance of rest. Not “it’s okay to rest sometimes,” but “learning never ends.” The premise is fundamentally different. Finishing an elementary curriculum doesn’t mean learning is complete. Learning has no end. And if learning has no end, swimming forever without coming up for air is exhausting. So you have to learn in bursts, with breaks. Otherwise, you just stop learning entirely. You give up.
Yati
I see. To put this into practice, I think we need a clear definition of “rest.” Is consuming noisy information on social media “not resting,” while reading a book or visiting a museum “resting”? What about playing games to unwind? What about playing Pikmin? Cooking? Are those all rest?
Hiro
I’d define rest as “minimizing noise entering the brain.” You could also call it “intentional living.”
Yati
Huh? Intentional living takes effort, doesn’t it? When you’re tired, it seems impossible. That’s rest? Though I do feel fulfilled when I set the table properly for tea time.
Hiro
Right. Letting go, feeling lighter, being filled. It means consuming information carefully, too.
Yati
Careful information consumption. [laughs] Like reading books. But if you’re exhausted, you can’t. Your eyes just slide off the page.
Hiro
If you’re that tired, your brain is exhausted, so you just have to sleep. But rest essentially means “not being careless.”
Yati
That’s the opposite of normal thinking. “I’m tired today, so let’s do a lazy meal.”
Hiro
But then you use the time you saved scrolling on your phone. If you cut out phone time and other careless activities, real idle time appears and you can truly rest. For example, brewing a single cup of tea very carefully. Actually doing something you might think is a waste of time. That’s rest. Like the Zen expression “kissako,” which simply means “Have some tea.”
Yati
I’m starting to get it. Folding clothes properly. Cleaning into the corners. Lately I’ve been avoiding social media and doing those things, and I feel a strong urge to work.
Hiro
Another way to put it: rest means “using parts of your brain you don’t usually use.” Consciously engaging brain areas that aren’t your usual ones. That’s rest. Meanwhile, the parts you use for work get a break. People don’t realize it, but the brain is active even during sleep.
Yati
That’s a great definition. If you’re on a computer all day, exercise becomes good rest. And what you said earlier, people want “work” more than “rest,” could be rephrased: they want “real rest, where the brain is engaged,” not “fake rest, where the brain barely works.”
