The Inhale-Exhale Technique

Meet Joe and Moe.

Joe is a chronic tryhard and workaholic. He stays up late every day and wakes up a bit too early for his own good. He has multiple projects he’s working on, but none of them are related to his wellbeing - he’s stressed, sleep-deprived, anxious, hasn’t exercised, or eaten right for quite a while. He manages to convince himself that his work is more important than his present state of being. Also, it’s not like he has forgotten he has to take care of himself. He’ll just do it when he has less work. This hasn’t happened in months.

Moe is a chill dude, a bit too chill for his own good. He hasn’t got a lot done for the past weeks, because he’ll get there eventually, he likes going at his own pace. After all, creativity can’t be controlled (actually, it can), so he’s waiting for motivation to strike. Moe sleeps quite a lot, maybe double the time Joe gets to sleep, mainly because there’s no rush to waking up. His expectations for himself grow lower and lower, as he keeps on finding excuses for his lack of ambition.

As you can guess, both of these represent one side of the not-doing-so-well-in-life spectrum. Joe will eventually grow too tired and burnt out to keep on with his work, and if it happens to be a creative type of work, he may even quit entirely because it’s just not working anymore. Moe will keep on spiraling into laziness and will postpone any big or small plan he has for himself, and will only act on what’s urgent and right in front of him. Both will end up unfulfilled at some point, sooner or later.

And as you can imagine, each and every one of us can be either Joe or Moe. Maybe you’re currently in the Joe-stage, maybe you’re a Moe and you’ve been sleeping in quite a lot lately. The sad truth is that neither of these phases is particularly healthy, and people who tend to favor one side over the other often need to overcompensate at times, at the cost of their productivity, time, happiness. For example, Joe will become so tired one day, that he’ll get ill, will have to take time off work, he’ll need to rest for a longer period of time than he has in the past months, and this may end up costing him his inertia and determination to continue with his work. Moe, on the other hand, won’t bother with deadlines, no matter if it is from work, university, family-related stuff until it is too late. When he misses out on something, he’ll have to pull all-nighters, work 10x harder than he is used to, study a whole semester's worth of material right before a test, and he’ll probably still get crappy results due to how rushed and last-minute it all was.

I believe we don’t need to be a Joe or a Moe to succeed in life and feel fulfilled. The truth is somewhere in the middle, in the pre-planned periods of work and rest, and in the conscious self-observation that will allow you to take a step back and readjust your strategy, whenever you end up going too deep into either extremity. We’ll call this golden middle ground … Boe (nah, just kidding, enough with the names for this article).

Passive and Active rest

This is a term I found out about in the gym. Anatomically speaking, your muscles tend to come in antagonistic pairs - meaning there are pairs of muscles that have opposite functionality. The bicep of your arm flexes your elbow, the tricep extends it. Your chest muscles move your arms in front of you, your back muscles pull them back. So one technique to have an effective workout week is to implement Active rest, as compared to Passive rest. Passive rest is quite literally, not using your muscles actively. Any time you spend outside of the gym when you don’t do any strenuous activities is considered Passive rest. Active rest is a bit different. If you choose to exercise both your biceps and triceps on the same day and take turns exercising each, you implement Active rest. When your bicep is resting, your triceps are resting, and vice versa.

Of course, Passive rest also has a role in muscle-building. You need proper sleep to recharge, and for your muscles to recover. However, using Active rest in your workout days will surely boost your performance.

Now, why am I geeking out about fitness so much? First, it’s a great topic. Second, physical activities tend to have much more in common with mental activities than we would expect. Just like the balancing act of Active rest, the work-leisure balance is also important and can boost your efficiency. If Joe took Moe’s advice or vise versa, and they managed to implement a bit of the other’s lifestyle to their own, it would help them keep moving forward and would minimize the chance of them burning out or losing all motivation. It’s a yin-yang type of dynamic balance, as illustrated by this gif, in which the wheel keeps turning due to the active readjustment of the work-rest ratio. When it comes to creative work, I like to call this same strategy the Inhale-Exhale Technique.

Why inhale-exhale?

This is another gym reference, this time in the context of a single exercise. Let’s say you’re lifting weights at the bench press. You’re lying down, hands on the bar, and the whole exercise is in 2 parts - pushing the bar up and letting it fall down almost to the level of your chest. One thing that you find out is very important when you start training, especially in weight-lifting, is breathing. When you’re actively pushing or pulling, in other words using your muscles, you should be exhaling deeply. When you are releasing the weight, or relaxing, you should be inhaling, in preparation for the next exhale and muscle strain.

This resembles a creative process even more, due to the connection between input and output, and the importance of resting enough in order to produce quality work.

If I spend all my time doing illustrations, drawing, sketching, I would get better for sure. But if I don’t get proper rest and don’t look at others’ art in the meantime, I’d probably lose my stimulus. The brain is a very imaginative fella, so when you’re building your visual library of art references, for example, poses, anatomy, etc, you need to continuously look for new content, or you’ll risk running out of ideas. No genius was born in a vacuum, and we are all influenced by others in some capacity or another, so the consumption of content is crucial.

However, there’s a limit to that as well. There’s this popular trope of the “businessman” that never starts their business because all they do is read business books, watch videos on the best practices and so on. Yes, in theory, they should be much more prepared, but like with everything in life, it doesn’t matter how prepared you are if you never put your feet in the water.

The point of it all

The point of the whole grandiose metaphor is that moving ahead in your career/craft/project requires both the occasional short sprints and the occasional getaways, naps and other forms of rest. Both are productive, I assure you, and even sleeping is productive since this is when your body actually regenerates. Warning note for everybody running on low sleep right now, me included, you can surely get away with a bad night’s sleep, all-nighters aren’t good for you but one wouldn’t kill you. The problems arise when this becomes habitual and you can’t remember the last night you had some good sleep.

So now I give the microphone to you - are you a Joe or a Moe? If you find yourself unmotivated to do anything, is it because you keep doing things all the time or is it because you haven’t gone into action for a while? If you’re feeling constantly tired, are you doing the basic things to get energised again (sleeping well, exercising, eating right, reducing coffee, all that)?

What’s the formula that works for you and what will you do to get balanced right now?

If you enjoyed this article and even found it inspiring (that’s a big deal!) here are some other things I’ve written, like this blog post on how to start your creative hobby the right way, and this one on how to stay true to yourself.