Book Review: The Brain at Rest: How the Art and Science of Doing Nothing Can Improve Your Life, by Joseph Jebelli, PhD
Narration provided by Wondervox.
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Bookworm Sez
“The Brain at Rest: How the Art and Science of Doing Nothing Can Improve Your Life” by Joseph Jebelli, PhD
c.2025, Dutton $32.00 288 pages
The wall in front of you hasn’t moved in at least fifteen minutes.
You know because you’ve been staring at it this whole time, your mind lost in thought but not on the task at hand. In other words, you were daydreaming and you just wasted a quarter of an hour – or did you? As you’ll see in “The Brain at Rest” by Joseph Jebelli, PhD, you may’ve been doing exactly the right thing.
Joseph Jebelli remembers that his father was a man driven.
The elder Jebelli worked long hours, up early, desk-bound all day and apparently hating it, until one evening he came home, spent. Jebelli’s his mother took her husband to a doctor, where he received a diagnosis of severe depression.
Jebelli was ten years old. His father never worked again.
Despite all that, Jebelli was likewise driven to overachieve but as time passed, his life became a shambles and he knew he needed to step back. He started by retreating slowly and gently away from too much work, which took awhile. Eventually, things began to change and he reports now that his well-being has improved considerably.
If that’s not proof enough, studies show that if volunteers are given a ten- or twenty-minute rest before or during a random task, they generally exhibit greatly-enhanced performance. Similar studies indicate that overwork can actually harm a business’s bottom line.
It may take effort to learn to do nothing, but Jebelli has suggestions: stare at a wall for at least twenty minutes a day and let your mind wander during that time. Schedule rest breaks. Go outside, or just outside your office. Find something new to try at least once a week. Understand that isolation and solitude aren’t always bad things, and that not socializing is okay. Hit the “snooze” on your alarm and laze for ten minutes each morning. Play, exercise, reconnect with nature. And embrace what the Danes call niksen, which is the art of doing nothing…
Perhaps, in an idle moment, you’ve noticed that there are a lot of books on the shelves about resistance, rest, and rejuvenation. There’s a reason for that, and author Joseph Jebelli PhD brings it all clearly home in “The Brain at Rest.”
Starting with a personal story that may chill overextended readers, Jebelli shows what a too-packed schedule can do to the human body and mind. By using advice and his own experiences, he shows that disconnecting is hard but worthwhile, which is news that can be encouraging, particular if you’re someone who’s driven, competitive, and totally Type-A.
Don’t worry that retreat is counterproductive or that doing nothing might be boring; instead, look for the solid source-list to take to your next meeting. Do know that some of the advice you’ll find in this book is repetitive, but that’s okay. You may need to see ideas more than once, if you’re overstressed, overworked, overscheduled, overthinking and over it.
In that case, you’ll be encouraged by “The Brain at Rest.” What’s here may ultimately help you move mountains.
