The importance of rest

When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.  

(Lao Tzu) 

Recently, during the win-and-loss portion of my bi-weekly Zoom meeting with other advisory owners, I was taken back by how many people mentioned taking time off to be with family and friends in the coming weeks as a win.  This stood out to me, because for much of my life I’ve been groomed for work (or doing).  

Socialized towards work

Raised by Asian immigrant parents, I grew up associating work with survival and vacation as a Western (foreign) concept. The only memory I have of a family vacation was after my junior year in high school when my parents finally took my brother and me on a planned trip to Niagara Falls. While our original plan was to stay 3 days and 2 nights, my parents decided to leave after 2 days and 1 night.  They noted that we’d run out of fun things to do and so should head home early to save money (of course!).  Similar to past assimilation efforts (e.g., unwrapped gifts underneath the Christmas tree), my parents understood the concept but struggled with the execution.  

As I grew up, I became increasingly socialized towards work first in school and then after school.  Much of my 20s and the first half of my 30s were spent working in one form or another.  However, by my mid-30s, I started to notice that I was stuck in a vicious downward spiral/cycle of work, burnout, break, work again.  How could work and the pursuit of the American dream result in such dysfunctionalities?   

The accepted value of work (doing)   

We live in a world that values work over rest, doing over non-doing.  The US ranks 10^th in terms of hardest working countries in the world.[1] The average American works 1,779 hours per year.  Technology was supposed to help us work more quickly, efficiently, collaboratively, interactively and seamlessly so we would have more time to rest.  Unfortunately, what it did was reset the bar on productivity.  Thus, many of us find ourselves having to work faster, longer, more, more, more.  Elon Musk famously said “…no one changes the world on 40 hours a week.” [2]  What his comment left out was the trade-offs: anxiety, depression, poor sleep, disconnection with ourselves and loved ones.  Granted, it’s important that we earn a living to support ourselves and our families.  But, how much and at what cost?  Given the respectability of work, it seems like many of us rarely stop to ponder such questions.  As a result, we eventually find ourselves stuck on the hedonic treadmill that requires more (work) to feel good (enough). 

The importance of rest (non-doing)  

In the US, we often associate productivity with work, not rest.  But is this accurate?  Can we work productively without rest?  Although less discussed and lesser still practiced, rest is the yin to work’s yang.  We receive a number of critical benefits from rest:

     ·      Rest allows our body and mind to recover from the daily wears and tears of life and work.

     ·      Rest gives us distance from a problem or situation.  This often leads to a clearer perspective on things.

     ·      Rest enables better judgement and greater creativity. 

     ·      Rest gives us space to reflect so we can work more intentionally and productively. 

     ·      Rest connects our doing with our being.   

Without adequate rest, not only will we lose our productivity but also our sense of purpose and self.  Then, we are truly lost.    

How I integrate rest into my life   

Creating flow