Our Gemara on this Daf discusses the prohibition known in Lomdus as Hakhana De-Rabbah, that is the unique prohibition of passive preparation that Rabbah derives from the verses describing the preparation for Sabbath and the Manna in Shemos 16. Essentially, according to Rabbah,  something prepared on a non-weekday for a holiday, such as on Yom Tov for shabbos the next day, or Shabbos for Yom Tov the next day, is forbidden. This applies even to an egg which developed naturally, since it was “prepared” on a non-weekday, it is forbidden on the next day if it is also a shabbos or Yom Tov.

According to the simple reading of the Gemara, and many commentaries, this prohibition is Biblical, while some maintain it is rabbinic (for example see Rambam commentary on Mishna Beitza 1:1). Regardless, it is hard to understand this prohibition, as how can this really be considered a form of work or preparation on any level?

Be’er Mayim Chayyim (Shemos 21:6) discusses the idea of hachana and how it emphasizes the process of preparing in this world for the next. No reward can be earned in the next world after death; everything must be prepared during the “weekday” for “shabbos”. Once the holy day or the holy era arrives, there is no more ability to make the preparations. The time for growth and accomplishment is during our mortal time in this world. 

In fact it is a pattern of life and nature that experiences need to be consolidated by inaction after a flurry of activity. For example, every woman who bakes challah knows that she has to beat and knead the dough properly. However, at a certain point the dough must be left to sit and rise. If you try to knead it then, you will ruin it. Or a collection of logs for a campfire that first burns intensely, and then slows to long and steady burning embers.

In his book “Bursts: The Hidden Patterns Behind Everything We Do”, Albert-Laszlo Barabasi notes that human nature, in almost every area, is in bursts of intense activity followed by rest.

Biologists had long since noted that animals tend to forage for long periods in the same area before moving on to search for food in some far off elsewhere. 

No matter what human activity we examined, the same bursty pattern greeted us: long periods of rest followed by short periods of intense activity...Bursts were everywhere in nature, from the edits individuals published at Wikipedia.org, to the trades made by currency brokers; from the sleeping patterns of humans and animals, to the tiny moves the juggler makes to keep his sticks in the air...something deeply linked to human activity, something announcing loud and clear that none of us behaves randomly, ever. In and of itself, this was not surprising, as no one really believes he or she is ruled by chance. We all have free will, which complicates everything, including our e-mail, printing, and Web-browsing activity. Yet no matter what we did, we unconsciously followed the same law - a power law. Conceptually simple, yet rather surprising.

Today bursty search patterns explain an amazingly wide range of behavioral phenomena, from how people recall facts stored in their memory to how they locate information on the World Wide Web. In publication after publication, scientists have offered evidence that the most effective strategy for locating a given target is not the one that is the most obvious, systematic, and regular but a search strategy that is bursty, intermittent, and even haphazard.

Here we once again see patterns of nature and Torah co-existent. This has been commented on by the Rambam in Guide for the Perplexed (III:43) and also by the Zoharitic (II:161b) statement That Hashem looked at the Torah and used it as a blueprint to create the world.

Translations Courtesy of Sefaria, except when, sometimes, I disagree with the translation

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