For taken as a whole, more work is done and the work is done better when we avoid strain than when we do not. What is required to find this out is common sense and strength of character.
Character grows with practice; it builds and builds on itself when once it has a fair start, and a very little intelligence is needed if once the will is used to direct the body and mind in the lines of common sense.
Intelligence grows, too, as we use it. Everything good in the soul grows with use; everything bad, destroys.
Let us make a distinction to begin with between "rest while you work" and "working restfully."
"Rest while you work" might imply laziness. There is a time for rest and there is a time for work. When we work we should work entirely. When we rest we should rest entirely.
If we try to mix rest and work, we do neither well. That is true. But if we work restfully, we work then with the greatest amount of power and the least amount of effort.
That means more work and work better done after the right habit is established than we did before, when the wrong habit was established. The difficulty comes, and the danger of "getting fired," when we are changing our habit.
To obviate that difficulty, we must be content to change our habit more slowly. Suppose we come home Saturday night all tired out; go to bed and go to sleep, and wake Sunday almost more tired than when we went to bed. On Sunday we do not have to go to work.
Let us take a little time for the sole purpose of thinking our work over, and trying to find where the unnecessary strain is.
"But," I hear some one say, "I am too tired to think." Now it is a scientific fact that when our brains are all tired out in one direction, if we use our wills to start them working in another direction, they will get rested.