“If you keep interrupting your evening to check and respond to e-mail, or put aside a few hours after dinner to catch up on an approaching deadline, you’re robbing your directed attention centers of the uninterrupted rest they need for restoration. Even if these work dashes consume only a small amount of time, they prevent you from reaching the levels of deeper relaxation in which attention restoration can occur. Only the confidence that you’re done with work until the next day can convince your brain to downshift to the level where it can begin to recharge for the next day to follow. Put another way, trying to squeeze a little more work out of your evenings might reduce your effectiveness the next day enough that you end up getting less done than if you had instead respected a shutdown.” — [@newportDeepWorkRules2016]
Structured, deliberate pauses are beneficial, unlike random interruptions that drain motivation. Plan for breaks 1 that build momentum and maintain a clear path for returning.
Sometimes the best way to recharge is to unplug.
Build a daily ritual that allows you to create space to think and wrestle with questions.
There’s a simple formula for identifying the highest leverage relaxation for yourself = Energy produced ÷ Time it takes
- If rest increases your output per unit of time, then it was productive.
⭐️ Stop treating rest as a reward and start treating it as a critical/essential part of your high performance routine.
- Breaks aren’t a special treat. They’re an absolute necessity.
- Replace the label “relaxing” or “relaxation” with “recovery,” so you don’t view it as wasted time. Think of relaxing as recovery because it very much is.
Learn to rest, not to quit. The Last Man Standing is often the winner.
Properly break in your breaks — no sneaky working.
Prioritize Downtime
- Downtime replenishes our ability to practice deep work.
- Downtime improves our thinking.
- Downtime deserves time management too.
The Stop Framework
- Stop
- Take a breath
- Observe
- Proceed
The 7 Types of Rest 2
- Physical Rest
- Can be passive (sleeping, napping) or active (yoga, stretching, massage).
- Mental Rest
- Take short breaks between tasks and meetings, create a power-down ritual to separate work from personal, meditate.
- Sensory Rest
- Turn off social media, get away from screens and bright lights, switch from Zoom to phone call.
- Creative Rest
- Can be natural (taking in a sunrise/sunset, walking in the woods) or man-made (going to a museum, experiencing new music).
- Emotional Rest
- Spend time alone or with people with whom you can be your full, authentic self.
- Social Rest
- Spend less time with people who drain your energy and more time with people who give you energy.
- Spiritual Rest
- Connect with something bigger than yourself. Can be through volunteering, working on a purpose-driven job, or participating in spiritual or faith-based activities.
See also:
Footnotes
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Either doing nothing or unplanned energizing distractions / unrelated activities ↩
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proposed by Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith ↩