Virtual Book Tour: Just Truth by Gen LaGreca

2020 is the 100th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment, giving women the right to vote, a great time to celebrate women’s achievements and independence, and a big reason to admire Gen’s main character, a courageous female journalist. I am switching up today's book tour by posting a guest blog post by the author, Gen LaGreca. Happy Reading! Information about the book, Just Truth, follows the post by Gen LaGreca.

Guest Post: Celebrating Women's Independence  By Gen LaGreca  

The year 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which insured women's right to vote throughout our country. So let’s take a moment to celebrate women’s achievements and independence. 

The heart of a woman’s independence lies in the right to think for herself. This year’s anniversary is a perfect time to reaffirm every woman's right to think, speak, and act according to her own best judgment and to hold true to her convictions, even if that places her outside of the mainstream. 

In a proud tradition that continues to this day, woman have gone against the tide for noble causes and played an active role in fighting injustice throughout our nation's history. For example, women were leaders in the abolitionist movement, enduring vicious denunciations and even physical violence when they spoke out for what they believed. In the period leading up to the Civil War, it was a novel written by one of them—Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe—that became an international bestseller and provided the most powerful arguments against slavery. Legend has it that Abraham Lincoln referred to Harriet Beecher Stowe as “the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.” Whether or not we like the “little woman" tag, and whether or not the anecdote is actually true, no one can deny the tremendous influence of one impassioned woman who dramatically exposed an unspeakable injustice and had a profound influence on righting it. 

Fast-forward to women writers and journalists today. When public polling shows the nation's opinion of the media is at an all-time low, there are notable newswomen who courageously hold to the highest standards and integrity. For example, investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson, whose motto is “Untouchable subjects. Fearless, nonpartisan reporting,” has written two books containing shocking behind-the-scenes exposés of political corruption at the highest levels of government. Lara Logan, a veteran foreign correspondent who proudly declares, “Nobody owns me,” suffered a brutal attack in a war zone that nearly killed her. Her response was: "I may have been a victim that night, but I am not a victim for the rest of my life." 

My new novel, Just the Truth, celebrates the storied tradition of women leaders and journalists in their fight for the truth. The heroine of the novel, newswoman Laura Taninger, risks her career, her reputation, and even her life to uncover a secret plan implicating powerful public officials in a scheme to rig an upcoming presidential election. Laura faces the crushing retaliation of her political foes as they pull out all the stops to silence her, but her resolve is unwavering. She’s an inspiration to all independent women as we celebrate our special year, our glorious past, and our boundless future. 

Let’s keep making ourselves proud! 

About the Book

100 years after women were granted the right to vote and in the era of “fake news,” author Gen LaGreca has written a relevant political thriller, Just the Truth, about a woman with unwavering integrity fighting against the overpowering institutional and economic pressures compromising journalism, as she uncovers suspicious circumstances that just might manipulate an upcoming presidential election. In Just the Truth, the businesses of Laura’s family-run corporation, Taninger Enterprises, are the subject of covert political retribution by public officials who abuse their power and the public trust by targeting political enemies. The Taninger family faces pressure to discourage Laura from investigating the president and his administration. Will the family members be pragmatic, try to avoid controversy, and help to cover up a huge scandal, or will they defend Laura? How can businesspersons and private citizens stand up to intimidation from powerful officials and partisan groups wishing to silence their views.

Question and Answer Session with Gen LaGreca

Can you give us a short introduction to Just the Truth?

Just the Truth is a political thriller set in Washington, DC, in the near future. It's the story of Laura Taninger, a journalist who suspects foul play by President Ken Martin in his bid for reelection. Laura is determined to find the truth, while the president's administration is determined to silence her. The story reveals the many covert ways in which unscrupulous public officials can stifle a free press, and how one journalist risks her career, her reputation—and ultimately her life— to uncover a plot to subvert free elections in America.

Laura Taninger is president of Taninger News, the organization started by her grandfather, newspaper mogul Julius Taninger (“JT”). Find the truth, wherever it hides was JT’s slogan in the mid-20th century. Then, politicians feared his scathing editorials. Now, 70 years later, with JT deceased and his four heirs running the company, have the tables turned? Does today’s press still have the freedom to criticize elected officials, or do those officials have the power to silence their opponents?

The signature program of President Ken Martin’s first term is called SafeVote, which puts control of national elections in the hands of the federal government, rather than letting the states manage the voting in their own jurisdictions. With claims that a federal voting system will better insure fair, unbiased elections, as well as avoid fraud and voter discrimination, SafeVote was passed and is scheduled to launch with the upcoming presidential election in which Martin hopes to win a second term.

When SafeVote pays $400 million to an undisclosed contractor for work it won't reveal, other journalists aren't concerned, but Laura is suspicious. When she starts to investigate, Laura is faced with the crushing retaliation of her political enemies and their media supporters against her, her family, and their companies.

Laura has a source, James Spenser, who's a high-level person within the administration. He has vital information for her, but just as he meets her outside a restaurant to reveal it, he's gunned down before he can speak and the killer gets away.

As Spenser lay dying in Laura's arms, he whispers a curious, final word: “Fox…”

Laura can't let Spenser die in vain. While the police and the media attribute Spenser's death to a random street crime, Laura is convinced it's connected to SafeVote.

As Laura gets closer to uncovering the meaning of Spenser's dying word, the identity of his killer, and the mystery surrounding the new voting system, she realizes that the facts point to shocking revelations about someone unforgettable in her life, a man who was her greatest business competitor and her most passionate lover—until he betrayed her and the ideals they shared. With Election Day looming and the country at a crossroads, and with intense pressure from her family to give up her investigation, Laura is determined to pursue the truth wherever it leads.
As our actual presidential election of 2020 approaches and as questions mount about the integrity of today’s journalism and our election process, Just the Truth couldn't be more timely.

Tell us about your main character, Laura Taninger. Who is she and what makes her special?

Laura Taninger is a journalist who sees her profession as a calling. She runs Taninger News by the motto of her deceased grandfather, the company’s founder: Find the truth, wherever it hides. She's forthright, quietly self-confident, passionate about her work, and true to her ideals. When people try to smear, shame, humiliate, and destroy her, she doesn’t buckle. At twenty-nine, she’s intelligent and beautiful. There’s an honesty and openness in her expression that gives others the sense that they’re seeing the real person without pretensions.

Laura has one great hurt in her life. She loved Reed Miller, the self-made man who built a corporate media empire that includes Miller News Network, her biggest competitor. She and Reed once shared the same ideals about speaking truth to power, but Reed betrayed them and walked out on Laura. Reed is the most enigmatic character in the story, and we don't discover the truth about him, his motives, and his feelings for Laura until the end.

Laura Taninger represents the essence of women's independence. She thinks for herself. She stands up to everybody. Her judgment matters to her above other people's views. She has incredible integrity to the truth and trust in herself to see it. She's the role model of a strong woman, who doesn't cave to the mainstream, to pressures, or to the mob. Laura is an especially important heroine this year, which marks the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution, giving women the right to vote throughout the United States.

What are some of the themes that weave through the story? And how do the characters conflict with each other on these themes?

One theme is: The importance of a responsible and independent press.

Laura's friend is fellow-journalist Sean Browne. Unlike Laura, Sean is an opportunistic journalist who’s obsequious and overly trusting of the people in power in order to advance his career. In return for his softball reporting on the president, he’s offered a prestigious post in the Martin administration. Sean illustrates the danger of losing objectivity when a newscaster has too cozy a relationship with the people he reports on. Because Sean craves recognition and advancement, he fears taking stands that conflict with the mainstream. Yet he’s drawn to Laura. He admires her passion and integrity—and deep down he knows he’s betrayed his own ideals. When Laura challenges him, he rationalizes his way of practicing journalism by saying that idealism is an adolescent carryover from college, which can’t succeed in the adult world.

So the theme interweaving Laura and Sean's friendship is: Do ideals matter? Do truth and moral principles matter? Do they carry weight in our lives, or is everything just pragmatic and expedient? As a journalist, Laura considers it her duty to be a watchdog on the government and to have a healthy skepticism about those in power. But Sean, on the other hand, wants to keep in step with what his peers are reporting and not be an outlier and risk disapproval. Sean cozies up to powerful politicians who can advance his career. So the story raises the question: If journalists have incentives to ignore abuses of power, then who's left to safeguard our freedoms?

A second theme is: Does the end justify the means?

We hear this expression all the time. The villains of the story—the president and his two top aides—claim that the reelection of Ken Martin is so vital to the country that it justifies employing any means necessary to achieve that end.

President Ken Martin is unprincipled, power-hungry, and without a moral compass. He condones lying, smearing, cheating, and using federal agencies to destroy his political enemies. After all, it's for a good cause (his own reelection). He fears an investigative journalist like Laura, who can shine a harsh light of truth on his hidden activities and cause his downfall.

Darcy Egan is the chief advisor to President Martin and the most evil character in the story. She pushes Martin to cross lines of corruption never before crossed in the American presidency. Her own lust for power will stop at nothing to ensure her place in history alongside the president's. She's so drunk on power that she thinks she can manipulate people into believing anything—and thereby create her own “truth.” She says, “The truth is like clay, and we’re the sculptors. We knead it, we work it, we mold it, we massage it to suit our ends." How many actual politicians think this way? I'm afraid to say, quite a few. Darcy, of course, fears Laura's investigation and will stop at nothing to destroy her.

Zack Walker is the chief strategist to President Martin. He's part of the scheme to, shall we say, "adjust" the voting in the president's favor. Zack's job is to destroy Martin’s opponents through smear campaigns, so he constantly lies, engages in character assassination, and plants false stories which his media friends spread through the news cycles. But can Zack be pushed to do even greater evil acts under the notion that the end justify the means? Darcy will test him. She tells him, “Remember, the means are just the mechanics. We mustn’t dwell on them because the end is so important, so great, so right. Just stay fixed on our goal of getting Ken reelected!” Zack's main task is to eviscerate Laura Taninger.

So an important theme in Just the Truth is a moral issue: Can the end ever justify lying, cheating, destroying good people, violating the rights of others, and losing your own character?

A third theme is: The intimidation of private citizens by public officials.

Just the Truth examines the danger of public officials using their power to silence political opponents. This is what Laura and her family experience.

Laura is in business with her father, older sister, and brother. The children each run different companies within the Taninger Enterprises corporate umbrella, with Laura running the news operation. Each company faces retribution from the president's administration to pressure the family to fire Laura. Irene's company loses a lucrative contract, Billie's company is found to be in violation of an environmental regulation and forced to incur substantial costs and a public relations nightmare to correct the situation, and the parent corporation is threatened with a federal lawsuit accusing it of being a monopoly that must be broken up.

Clark Taninger, Laura’s father, has long-ago abandoned the dedication to truth of his father, the company's founder. Clark is pragmatic, conciliatory, and compromising toward those in power in order to avoid confrontations with them. He sees himself as a modern, effective businessman who doesn’t stand on principles, which he views as rigid and outdated, but who instead adjusts to changing times. As Taninger Enterprises’ CEO, Clark orders Laura to end the investigation that's rattling the Martin administration. Laura's brother and older sister side with their father. What will happen if Laura defies his order?

Laura's only ally in the family is her younger sister, Kate, a college student. Kate passionately supports Laura’s investigation into corruption at the highest levels, and she calls out her family for their timidity and cowardice. But even Kate gets embroiled in Laura's controversy when her campus newspaper viciously attacks Laura, claiming that she's racist, bigoted, and elitist for being a critic of the new voting system. The attacks are launched by a partisan campus group that backs the president. When Kate writes an editorial defending Laura, she becomes the target of a squad of activist students, unstopped by an ineffective dean, who try to force Kate to recant or be expelled. Will Kate give in? What will happen if she defies the mob?

Just the Truth shows how the Martin administration is covertly behind all of the attacks on Laura and her family. The novel is a cautionary tale about how the tentacles of government, if left untrimmed, can spread to reach all of us and strangle our freedoms.

The themes in this novel hit on real issues occurring in America today. There are reams of news stories questioning the integrity of today's journalists, the veracity of the news we're getting, the flagrant overstepping of federal agencies to stifle political opposition. There are also reports questioning the accuracy of our elections with calls for the federal government to exert more control over the states’ voting programs. Just the Truth is a shocking, eye-opening tale that everyone should read in order to understand better the times in which we live and the threats we face.

Is there something that compels you to write? And do you find writing helpful in achieving a clarity about yourself or ideas you’ve been concerned with?

Yes! I love fiction’s power to dramatize ideas and to clarify important issues. This has been true throughout history, starting with ancient mythology and continuing to modern times. For example, in the 1850s, it was a novel— Uncle Tom’s Cabin—that galvanized people against slavery. During the American Revolution, when our troops suffered great hardships at Valley Forge, George Washington turned to fiction. He had the highly influential play of his time, “Cato, A Tragedy”—about a Roman hero of republicanism who opposed the growing tyranny of Julius Caesar—performed for his troops to motivate them to fight on. People turn to fiction for inspiration, for a refueling of their spirit. That’s why good novels are treasures.

Once I discovered fiction writing, I knew there was nothing else I wanted to do more than to write novels. The work is what I call a sweet torture.

What has your journey as an author been like? Was there ever a defining moment when you suddenly realized “now I am an author”?

Yes, there was! I once worked as a management consultant. One of the things I did for clients was to write and produce videos for staff training. I found that these videos were becoming more and more imaginative and plot-oriented. Finally, one of my clients, the publisher of a magazine for the foodservice industry, said to me, “Gen, I can’t have romance in this video about restaurant sanitation!” That was when I thought to myself, “Hey, I ought to try writing a novel.” And so I did.

Does Just the Truth contain an underlying message? What do you hope your readers will take away from it?

The broad message of all of my novels is that good people, who have courage and passion, and who want to live to the fullest, can fight for their world and win. I want to entertain people and leave them with hope. Although grim things happen and there are villains in my novels to be sure, my focus is on the heroes and the great potential of people in the exciting adventure of life. I want to inspire and enlighten people.

Just the Truth is an entertaining murder mystery that weaves wider social and moral issues into the story. Without mentioning any actual political parties, persons, agencies, or events, this nonpartisan drama is addressed to everyone concerned with these issues.

The underlying message of Just the Truth is: Independent thinking can't exist when the government gets too big. There's always a new tax, or a regulation, or an investigation that public officials can use to threaten anyone who speaks out against them. It's the job of journalism to maintain objectivity and expose corruption. If journalists are lured into favoring the bad players, as Sean Browne is, then we’re doomed. Journalists must speak truth to power, and Laura Taninger shows us the way.

What are you working on right now? 

I wrote a stage play adaptation of Just the Truth. I hope to have it produced and to start a new trend, a theater of ideas, which entertains the audience with suspenseful, well-crafted plays while shining a spotlight on important issues that we need to be discussing.

Where can readers discover more of your work or interact with you?

genlagreca@hotmail.com  

www.wingedvictorypress.com 

https://www.amazon.com/Gen-LaGreca/e/B001K8TS2M 

www.facebook.com/genlagreca 

www.twitter.com/genlagreca 

Virtual Book Tour: Time Off by John Fitch & Max Frenzel

This week's book feature is Time Off by John Fitch & Max Frenzel. Since a lot of people are working from home or adjusting to a new work climate, this book provides valuable insight into taking breaks and actually resting. The presence of COVID-19 is transforming how we work and think about work. Since the beginning of March, I have even struggled with achieving a good balance between being productive and maintaining good health.  That's why I believe you should read this book, Time Off. 

Book Clubs can enjoy this selection, too.  I would recommend this book for the month of June, when most people are taking summer vacations, the month of July, since July 5th is Workaholics Day, or for the month of September, which involves celebrating Labor Day.

Check out the Question and Answer session with the authors. Also, the authors have a podcast. Let me know what you think about this text. Happy Reading!

About the Book

What do Aristotle, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Lebron James all have in common? Time off in the most creative and

nourishing way!

Amidst a culture that worships “busyness”, millennials John Fitch and Max Frenzel want us to unlearn workaholism by learning “noble leisure” of the past and developing a quality #RestEthic. The AI researcher (Max) and entrepreneur (John) have collaborated to share the history of how we value time and work, show us that a little time off will go a lot further than we may think, and that it doesn’t have to be a vacation or even a full day.

Science supports that time off (whether that be walking on your lunch break or saying no to drinks with friends to work on a passion project) is a critical factor for anyone who wants to achieve a fulfilling life, both personally and professionally. Time Off is intended for knowledge workers, creatives, entrepreneurs, and business leaders who feel overwhelmed, giving them the knowledge and tools to hone the essential skill of taking time off work before it’s too late.

About the Authors

Max Frenzel (Tokyo) and John Fitch (Austin) have both spent time working in software startups where many are worshiping the

mantras that are so pervasive in our current working culture. Max got his Ph.D. in Quantum Physics and has been an AI researcher. John is an entrepreneur and business coach.

At breaking points in both of their work experiences, they realized that many of the commonly held beliefs aren't useful, but destructive. As a result, they decided to be more intentional and deliberate with their approaches to work and time off. Their quality of work and life have improved ever since, and they now want to share that transformation with others.

Website: http://timeoffbook.com Twitter: John Fitch and Max Frenzel Podcast: https://www.timeoffbook.com/#podcast

Question and Answers with Max and John

Where did you get the inspiration for the book? 

John’s backstory: 

John was a workaholic and he eventually ruined his health and a romantic relationship. The constant hustling, late-night hackathons, 80-hour work weeks, and wanting to always be on was his standard. His family, friends, mentors, and girlfriend would often comment that he deserved breaks or should actually enjoy the weekend by unplugging from work. He would brush off their comments and keep working hard for the sake of working hard! They didn’t know the secret he knew: more work equals more success. Boy was he wrong. After a humbling breaking point in his life, he started a new company with a few others who valued rest. Their company had a cultural policy where everyone took mini-sabbaticals after ample deep work and shipping a big project. John was dubious about this, but had a life-altering experience during his first sabbatical. A kind Greek woman passed him wisdom that changed the way he looked at time and leisure. He came to realize the power of having a rest ethic. The quality of his work and life have not been the same since. Going from someone obsessed with always working to being someone who now was a believer in the power of intentional rest, he started to wonder… was his experience an anomaly? Was time off essential for other people too? Were there others that prevented burnout through their own forms of rest ethic? He started a podcast to have conversations with people to find out. After a few episodes and weeks of research, he realized that his company culture was not an anomaly, and there were a lot of people and cultures who also believed that being busy isn’t the only way you accomplish what you want in life. And many don’t see it at all as a way to accomplish anything. Since putting this book together, he has found wisdom in the analogy of juggling. We all juggle many things in our day to day life. We balance work, finances, our health, and relationships. Let’s imagine them all as balls that we juggle. John believes that the work and finance balls are made of rubber, and the health and relationship balls are made of fragile glass. If we mess up and drop the work and finance balls, they can always bounce back. We can start juggling them again. But if we ignore the health and relationships and drop the ball on those parts of our life, they can break and be very difficult to put back together. So he decided to co-author this book for his former workaholic self that said no to too many dinner parties, prioritized an inbox zero instead of enjoying tea with his girlfriend, and was working really hard without getting much done. He hopes that anyone reading the book who is as overworked and overwhelmed as he was, can not only see that they not only deserve time to take a break, reflect, play, and recover, but that what they are working so hard on will also benefit.

Max’s backstory: 

“Why do I feel so unproductive and uncreative?” It was August 2017 as Max wrote these words in his notebook. He was sitting in a quiet room in an old guesthouse overlooking the mountains of Yamagata Prefecture, Japan. He was on holiday, a slow trip on local trains through rural Japan. He lived in fast-paced Tokyo and thought it might be nice to get a break for a few days, explore Japan a bit more, and get a fresh perspective. It wasn’t an attempt to escape, He didn’t feel like there was anything he wanted or needed to escape from. He thought everything was great. He loved Tokyo, and also thought he loved his job as AI researcher at a fast growing tech startup! Yet after a few days away from it all, it hit him. Max realized that never since these concepts have had any real meaning to him, had he felt less productive or creative. He also realized that he had never before felt more distracted and unable to focus. He started thinking back to my Ph.D. days. 

While doing his Ph.D. in Quantum Information Theory Max rarely felt stressed or busy, but at the same time got a lot of stuff done. He co-founded and ran a startup, worked several hours a week as a private tutor, trained for ultra-marathons, and somehow still found plenty of time to read widely, take naps and meditate daily, work on random creative projects, and hang out with friends. Rarely did he feel stressed or busy. In fact, I rarely spent more than four hours a day actually engaged in work.
After his insight in the mountains that this was no longer his reality, in an attempt to figure out what exactly was wrong and how he could fix it, he started writing articles about the importance of rest and our misguided busyness addiction. John discovered his articles, and invited Max on his podcast, Time Off. From there on John and Max became friends, and one day Max found an email in his inbox asking him if he’d want to write a book together.

How has society’s view of “noble leisure” time changed over the years?

In Ancient Greece and Rome, leisure was at the center of society. According to Aristotle, we rest for the sake of work, and we work for the sake of leisure. But leisure is defined entirely through itself. It stands at the top of the hierarchy. And it was exactly this leisure-focused life and the time it provided for philosophy, games, literature, family, and sports that allowed culture to blossom. Leisure, as Betrand Russell would later write, was “essential to civilization.” But over time, this appreciation for leisure started to change. As people started collaborating on more complex projects, our perception of time shifted from natural cycles and a task-oriented notion, to timed labor. Time suddenly became a currency that could be traded and had value, and leisure was wasting this value. This became even worse around the turn of the 18th century, when the idea of “time discipline” developed. The middle and upper classes started to worry that the poor wouldn’t know what to do with their leisure, so they invoked religion to give work a divine justification and meaning. The “Protestant Work Ethic” was born. Now leisure wasn’t just wasteful, it was actually a sin. Another century later and the Industrial Revolution takes place. As religion gradually lost its omnipotent grip, the perception of why work was good, or rather the opposite so bad, started to change amongst the elite. Rather than a sin against god, the newly emerging class of industrialists started to equate idleness with another moral vice: theft. They paid for their employees’ time, so they felt like they owned it. Over and over again, the question of work became deeply fused with our morality. Are you productive (good)? Or idle (bad)? Today, we have largely forgotten the religious origins of this morality question, but it’s so deeply ingrained in our psyche that it’s hard to shake off. And this is especially true for knowledge workers, who don’t have eight model T engines to show for their day’s labor. Without any tangible progress indicators or a boss constantly telling us that he owns our time, our internalized sense that time equals value and morality becomes even stronger to compensate. Those who could choose to once again live Aristotle’s idea of noble leisure are often furthest away from it! But we need noble leisure more than ever. Genuinely productive knowledge work is the opposite of busyness and requires taking time off seriously. We wrote this book because we are extremely optimistic that our culture can and should find its way back to noble leisure.

What is the culture of “busyness”? How is it harming us?

Busyness—essentially productivity without the output—is a bad habit from the start of the industrial era and it still reigns supreme. For entrepreneurs and creatives this is particularly problematic. Like addicts seeking the next quick fix, we are hooked on busyness. Without any tangible progress indicators or a boss constantly reminding us that he owns our time, our internalized sense that time equals value and morality becomes even stronger to compensate. 

In the 2019 edition of their International Classification of Diseases, the World Health Organization (WHO) included burnout as “a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.” The official WHO report states that burnout is characterized by three key components: “feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and reduced professional efficacy.” Sound familiar? 

Just as a century ago people were overworked beyond healthy sustainable physical capabilities, we are now experiencing something similar with our mental abilities. Where early industrial factory workers were physically drained and exhausted, modern workers in the knowledge factories of the world suffer the same fate on a mental level. 

Genuinely productive knowledge work is the opposite of busyness and requires a harder, more thoughtful approach. It requires taking time off seriously. In addition to a solid work ethic, it requires an equally well-established rest ethic. Good knowledge work is, like the work of a craftsman, based on mastery and quality, rather than the sheer quantity of simple and repeatable tasks—which will soon be done by robots and AI anyway. 

We need to acknowledge that productivity in creative work is much more multifaceted than the one-dimensional productivity of a manual laborer churning out widgets.

What is “Rest Ethic”?

Take a deep breath in. You can think of your work ethic as this inhale. Task list—inhale. Project execution—inhale. But you can only inhale for so long before you get very uncomfortable. Eventually we all need to exhale. This exhale is your rest ethic. Even though many of us seem to forget about this, it is just as essential. It allows us to build up our enthusiasm and sustain our passion. Gaining a fresh perspective—exhale. Project ideation and “aha” moments—exhale. Letting big ideas incubate in your mind—exhale. And just as a deep exhale prepares you for a better inhale, your rest ethic enables you to have a better work ethic. 

A great rest ethic is not just about working less. It’s about becoming conscious of how you spend your time, recognizing that busyness is often the opposite of productivity, admitting and respecting your need for downtime and detachment, establishing clear boundaries and saying no more often, giving your ideas time and space to incubate, evaluating what success means to you, and ultimately finding and unlocking your deepest creative and human potential.

How does someone unlearn workaholism to prevent burnout?

The morality of work has been burned deep into our culture and psyche over centuries, and unlearning this is a big task. Rather than making drastic changes, we recommend taking it step by step, and the book is full of actionable advice that people can try to implement in their own life. Entrepreneur and writer Derek Sivers encourages us to say “no” more often. The story of Swedish chef Magnus Nilsson teaches us how to use redundancies in our routine and build systems that allow us to disappear for a while. Filmmaker Tiffany Shlain recommends a tech shabbat, one day a week on which we try to avoid technology as much as possible. The German writer Hermann Hesse knew how to find joy in the simplest things in life, like a flower, or kids playing in a park, and his story can show us how we can “microdose” on time off. Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, the founders of project management software Basecamp, help us identify—and fix—bugs in our working culture. Musician Ed “Woody” Allen shows us how we can use a short creative retreat in solitude to get some distance from the daily grind and get our creative juices flowing.

Those are just a few of the many examples. We strongly believe that everyone has to find their own version of Time Off. Some people may find theirs in solitude, others among friends. Some prefer activity, while others find energy in complete rest. If done right, even work can fall under our definition of time off. We want to present readers with an extensive collection of tools, tactics, and habits that worked for a variety of very successful people, past and present. Using this as inspiration, we encourage our readers to mix and match, try them for themselves, keep what is useful, and ignore the rest.

What constitutes quality time off?

First, we want to make sure that you don’t just think about “time off” as a vacation. Although vacations are awesome, our book talks about the many macro and micro practices for having more quality time off.
We commonly think of rest as the opposite of work. We either rest, or we are productive. Hear the words “time off,” and you might picture yourself sitting on the couch playing video games or lying on the beach sipping cocktails. But that’s not what time off is about. It is not a call to be lazy, or permission for slacking off. Far from it! Time Off is about the practices that keep us from feeling overwhelmed and overworked. Practices that allow us to live happier, richer, more fulfilled lives. Practices that, somewhat counterintuitively (although we hope that it will seem very obvious after reading the book), allow us to be our most productive and creative selves. 

Quality time off is when you are able to detach from your work-work. You are able to disconnect from your main job and instead give your attention to “noble leisure,” an activity which you engage in not just to recover for more work, but because it is actually deeply meaningful to you. And this shouldn’t be thought of as an escapism from work. They are the practices that are so valuable, they rarely have a price tag associated. These practices make life meaningful, beautiful, and interesting. You don’t squeeze in quality time off. You protect it and plan it out as intentionally as you would any of your projects and timelines at work.

Quality time off is not mere relaxation. It is often active and challenging. It can demand our full attention. It stimulates us and gets us into flow states. It allows us to forget all our other concerns for a while, and be fully present in the moment, without the unspoken anxiety that’s at the heart of boredom. One person’s time off can even look like someone else’s work. Sometimes, all that is required for good time off is a healthy dose of variety.

What are small things people can do every day to recharge?

Instead of lunch at your desk or a meeting in a conference room, you can go for a walk and discuss or call a loved-one and talk about the little things in life that make you happy. You can talk about hobbies with your coworkers and discuss what value those activities bring to you. If you are having a creative funk and can’t get an idea out, it is OK to press pause and step away because you can’t force creativity. Ideas need time and new environments to properly incubate. You can pick a time where you call it a day and shut off your work-work. Have a wind-down schedule and routine at night that allows you to prepare yourself for bed rather than reading emails as you lay your head down. Starting and ending your day with time off practices outside of work is a great way to ensure you that you show up for work your best self. And developing little time off rituals, like brewing a cup of tea or coffee, or taking 5 minutes to doodle in your notebook, can also be great to sprinkle throughout the day whenever you feel a bit overwhelmed. 

Maybe the biggest thing people can do is to actually schedule their time off in the same way as if it was an important work meeting. It will probably take time, but slowly unlearning the guilt associated with this is also important. We hope that with the book we can convince people that they are not harming their productivity with this, but actually allow themselves to become more productive and creative, while at the same time being less overwhelmed and stressed out. 

Plus, throughout the book we have several time off pages where we give you creative prompts to help encourage you to put the book down and try them out!

Why is solitude so important?

Finding our unique and disconnected self has become an increasingly scary and daunting quest for many of us. Rather than relishing and seeking solitude, we equate it with loneliness and are trying to avoid it at any cost. Self-reflection, particularly when we are not used to it and might feel like our life is lacking in meaning due to an underdeveloped leisure life, can be painful and scary. But embarking on this quest is worth the pain. It might unveil some void in our lives that we have tried to ignore, but it will also point us toward filling it. 

One force that keeps us on the seemingly safe shores of connectivity, far away from confronting our own undisturbed thoughts, is the addictive power of connected technology. And it is not just a connection to others which creates the noise that disturbs our solitude. Solitude can essentially be defined as being free from input. So even when we are physically alone, it doesn’t mean we are experiencing solitude. Most of us are constantly listening to music, playing with a variety of apps, or reading the news. Even the briefest moments of solitude and boredom are banished now and replaced by quick glances at our smartphone. We no longer find any time to just be alone with our own thoughts. 

Our work environments have also transitioned to places designed around social and group activities. Teamwork and group projects are more and more highly valued and seen as the gold standard for productivity. We value teamwork and collaboration above all else. But all too often this just wastes a lot of time and attention, leads us to perform visible busyness rather than being productive, and prevents us from actually engaging in undisturbed concentration. Yes, communication is necessary. But the amount of communication and the number of different channels have gotten out of control, and it is completely numbing our ability for deep thought, self-reflection and contemplation, and unhindered idea incubation. 

For many, the mention of solitude immediately conjures up the idea of loneliness, isolation, and anti-social behavior. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. If we can not find solitude, we will inevitably find loneliness, no matter how hard we try to drown it out with digital and social noise. Constant online companions and thousands of “friends” or followers don’t fill our inner void. The lack of true and deep connection just amplifies it. The way out of loneliness is to embrace solitude. Solitude actually allows us much more to reflect on our interaction with other people, experience gratitude towards them, and have much more meaningful connections when we do spend time with others.
So to boost your creativity, take a rewarding journey into your own mind, and improve your connection with those around you, consider spending some time in solitude, whether that’s an extended solo trip into nature, or just an evening alone at home with the internet turned off. We’re convinced that the initial discomfort you might experience will eventually give way to a blissful and rewarding experience.

How will AI impact busy work? And will this help us?

Today, we find ourselves in a culture that all too often wears busyness, stress and overwork as a badge of honor, a sign of accomplishment and pride. Someone who leaves work on time and takes ample breaks during the day can’t possibly be as productive as someone who grinds out long hours of overwork day after day and barely ever leaves their desk, right? The problem is that even though we have largely shifted from manual labor to knowledge work, workers still suffer from the intellectual equivalent of factory work mentality and the remnants of the protestant work ethic, confusing hard work with morality.

But busywork, the kind of work that genuinely justifies long hours and sacrificing time off, is also the least valuable kind of work. And this value is further diminishing all the time. Rapidly. These are exactly the kind of tasks that are ripe for disruption, and ultimately replacement, by AI and other productivity and automation tools. Their days are almost numbered. 

Yes, AI will disrupt the job landscape, but the kind of jobs that will remain, as well as newly created, will be centered around human skills such as creativity and empathy. And these skills are highly non-linear with respect to time. More time in does absolutely not correspond to a better or higher output. In fact, it is very easy to put in too much time, to ignore the balancing and nourishing effects of rest, the idea incubation power of high quality leisure, and as a result to diminish one’s output. In the future of work, time off will not be something that is considered a “nice to have” or an enticing benefit that a generous employer provides to attract and retain talent. Instead, the deliberate practice of time off will be one of the key skills and competitive advantages that will allow us to be more productive, creative, and ultimately human.

Anything else you would like to add?

One interesting fact about the book is that as of today, John and Max have never met in real life. Our friendship and collaboration has so far been completely virtual, and the entire book was created through remote collaboration, with John based in Austin, Texas, and Max in Tokyo, Japan. Similarly the rest of the team is based all over the world: our illustrator also in Tokyo, our editor in Colorado, and our designer and copyeditor both in the UK.

We found that this kind of global remote collaboration can work remarkably well, if it is planned and approached in the correct way. We are happy to share our insights into how to make this work, and encourage others to try similar approaches, and not be put off by geographic boundaries or long distances.