I have already explained in another blog post that the majority of people make decisions subconsciously due to laziness and excessive self-confidence, and only a few people make decisions in a logical and rational way, that is, by making a conscious effort. Again, I stated that the subconscious mind can specialize in subjects on which conscious work has been done for more than 10,000 hours, and subconscious decisions can only be right in these matters. Unfortunately most people make a big mistake and fall into trap of making decisions with their subconscious mind on every subject.

After having enough information about the decision-making process, it is another subject of curiosity how the consciousness and subconscious mind play a role in issues such as productivity and efficiency of a successful business life. The most interesting and groundbreaking resource on this subject is the book “Rest” by Alex Soojung and Kim Pang.

In this new age we are living, the old era in which long hours of uninterrupted hard work is seen as a source of pride, and the leave rights are not used, is about to end. Now,  companies are encouraging their employees to shorter and more flexible work schedules. This is good, but why?

When your computer starts to malfunction or work slowly in the office, then you request help from the IT department, the first answer you get is to turn the computer off and on. Sometimes when we are working, when our energy is low, and we are distracted, if we sleep for five minutes and wake up, we feel tremendously refreshed, this is like turning our brain off and on like a biological computer. But does our brain really shut down like a computer when we sleep?

When scientists made FMRI scans and PET measurements to determine the active areas in the human brain, contrary to popular belief, they discovered that the human brain was not inactive at rest. In other words, as the neurons in one region of the brain were active while working consciously, again during resting, being asleep or awake, the unconscious mind continued to work on autopilot, and neurons in another region of the brain were activated. Even more interestingly, those who had enough rest and whose neurons were active in the resting state had much better intelligence, morality, emotional judgment, logic and empathy.

The body being on autopilot while awake is also described as the mind wandering by thinking independently of the task, and the body acting with muscle memory. It is also discovered that people are in the wandering mind state for almost half of their awake time. In this process, the mind wandering in the subconscious state is busy with combining past memories, searching for logic, thinking about the future, seeking answers to unanswered questions and generating creative ideas.

According to Alex Soojung and Kim Pang, when the most creative people in history could not come to a conclusion despite working on a certain problem for weeks, they stopped thinking, and they found their famous solutions in a resting or sleeping state, that is, while the subconscious mind was active. When they examined the lives of many scientists including Charles Darwin who worked as a natural scientist in the Royal Navy and the famous German physicist Heisenberg, many lawyers, writers such as J.R.R. Tolkien, architects such as Oscar Neimeyer, Louis Kahn, painters such as Salvador Dali, and students at universities such as Oxford and Cambridge, they all come to a common conclusion that all of them regularly worked for only 4-6 hours in total, take a break for 1 or 1,5 hours while working, to take long walks in nature, spend time with their friends, take naps and drink tea. For example, Architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who needed to make creative works, would get up at 4:00 am in the morning when human brain is at the maximum level of creativity, work for 3 hours and then go back to sleep at 7:00 am.

Bacchanale by Salvador Dali, resembling the beginning of Golden Age.

Working consciously is actually very difficult for many people. Because most people have problems in focusing and concentrating. In addition, conscious work is often not fun and pleasant results cannot be achieved immediately.

When he mentioned the rule that, a person who wants to specialize in a subject should work at least 10.000 hours, in his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell ignored the issue that, because it is difficult to concentrate, if conscious work is not kept short, it will often fail before the goal has been reached. It is necessary to take advantage of the processes in which the conscious work, rest and sleep is combined and subconscious mind continues to work at rest and sleep.

In this context, the authors of the book “Rest” Alex Soojung and Kim Pang state that people can achieve a worldwide success only by having 12.500 hours of rest and 30.000 hours of sleep as well as having 10.000 hours of conscious work. Because, in fact, people’s brains continue to work subconsciously even in resting and sleeping states. During resting and sleeping, they process the experiences obtained from conscious work and develop solutions to existing problems. A peaceful and calm environment is needed for the mind wandering in the subconscious mind to be productive while resting or sleeping. Factors such as high stress, delusion and bad noises in the work environment negatively affect the functioning of the subconscious mind.

The regular activities to spend time in nature, especially the “walking meditation” activity, which are very popular with my peers who practice yoga and meditation in my own environment, have a similar logic.