How to Enjoy Rest – TPW356

We can give ourselves permission to rest, relax and recharge without feeling guilty about it. It's possible to make time for rest, enjoy it, and still be productive. Enjoying rest means we can be more productive in our everyday life Not long ago I asked the TPW community to share with me productivity questions and struggles they’d like me to address. One topic that was suggested had to do with getting back on track when we’ve let things get out of control, which we talked about in episode 354.  Another comment in that discussion came from Marla, who said, “Because I do aim to be productive I have trouble with being in the moment. I can not really enjoy doing nothing. I’d be interested in an episode about how to enjoy rest.” Several members of the community echoed Marla’s struggle with this, so I thought it would be worth looking at. Why do we have trouble being in the moment and enjoying downtime? Many of us who care about productivity and about making lives that matter feel the same way Marla does. We feel that if we’re not doing something “productive,” we’re wasting time. As one writer put it: “We can be very hard on ourselves, can’t we? We can feel battered by the demands we put on ourselves to achieve and to do. That feeling that everything we do with our spare time must have a purpose. It feels like it’s not enough just to be. But the things that seem to have little or no purpose are actually the most important things of all. Pointless things have a point.” We struggle with being in the moment, often because our minds are going 100 miles per hour, thinking about the next things we need to do next or what we could have done better. And if our mindset is focused on productivity as measured by doing, that can make enjoying our rest even more difficult. Things we can do to enjoy time off to rest and restore. Let's first start with understanding the meaning and significance of “rest”. Definition: verb: “cease work or movement in order to relax, refresh oneself, or recover strength”; noun: “an instance or period of relaxing or ceasing to engage in strenuous or stressful activity”. Rest matters because taking time away from work is necessary for the restoration of energy, focus, and perspective. Researcher and Silicon Valley consultant Alex Soojung-Kim Pang has written a book called Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less, in which he has said  “Rest is not this optional leftover activity. Work and rest are actually partners. They are like different parts of a wave. You can’t have the high without the low. The better you are at resting, the better you will be at working.” [quoted in Why Restorative Rest Makes You More Productive And How To Achieve It] Rethink what it means to be productive. It's important to recognize that rest is not unproductive but is an essential component of productivity. All this is just as true when we’re busy--too busy to take time off to rest. Give yourself permission to rest and relax.  “The times when we least feel like doing something for ourselves are the times when we most need to do exactly that. We need time out. We need to give our brains a rest.” [from