Are You Getting Enough Rest?
What stops you from getting rest and why creating space for more of it is so important.
“What would you do if you knew that every good thing in your life depended on your getting enough rest? Because it does.” — Martha Beck
“Can I afford myself a moment to pause, stand still, think a little bit differently, and see the world a little bit differently?” — Jerry Colonna
Rest and integration are two of the most important facets of powerful, sustainable leadership. Yet, it’s often the most looked over and under prioritized among busy leaders.
As Jerry writes in his book Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing up:
“Standing still and powering down allows us to start anew and, if you will, reboot our core operating and belief systems. Standing still and listening deeply to our heart as well as to the hearts around us, is the necessary first step toward moving past merely, numbly, surviving our lives.”
What comes up for you when you think of taking a sabbatical, or even time off? When suggesting rest, sabbatical, vacation, or even a day off to clients, we often hear: “There’s so much to do, who has time to rest?” or “If I stop, how will anything get done?” or “If I stop, it’s all going to pile up when I get back.”
While it is true that work is busy day in and day out, without giving ourselves room to step back and process all that’s going on, we compound stress and tension in our nervous system. Giving ourselves space and time to process work (even giving ourselves a normal workday versus working overtime) gives our bodies a chance to “catch up” to all that happens for us in a day. That space affords us time to reflect and gain perspective on what’s happening and how we’re contributing to and relating to the “busy.” Failing to grant ourselves this space is a fast path to high-stress issues and burnout.
Below are some thoughtful questions for evaluating how you give yourself the time and space to rest properly. Which ones show up in your relationship to rest?
How well do you delegate? How is the team functioning?
Many clients, when asked to look at the tasks they do or the meetings they are in, often discover that they are too far in the weeds. As the team and organization scale, it can be hard for leaders to let go. Letting go as you grow into the leader that the company needs you to be often means stepping back from the day-to-day.
Do you have the right leaders in place in the right roles in your team to do the work that is theirs to do? Once the right people are in place on the team, and in the right seats on the bus, can you trust them to do the work you hired them to do?
What are your boundaries around work?
How often do you work beyond a normal work day? What compels you to put in the extra time on a daily basis? What are your rules or behaviors about working on the weekends? When and how do you unplug? How can you build or protect these boundaries so that you are getting the time off you need?
How much sleep do you need to wake up and feel refreshed?
When was the last time you had that? How can you get more of that? When it comes to sleep, it is the critical piece that helps us be clear-minded and healthy. It allows us to show up for the people in our lives and our work lives. It sets us up for whatever the day throws at us.
What needs to happen in order for you to get the amount of sleep you know you need? How can you set things up so that good sleep happens on the regular? What might you need to give up? What, if any, conflicts do you have about what you might be giving up in order to get the sleep you need.
What supports you to do your best work on a daily and weekly basis?
What are the ways you unplug weekly or daily that allow you to process the day or take care of yourself in the way you need? Building in time for exercise, meditation, journaling, bodywork, reading, play, social time, and creative pursuits and hobbies outside of work reconnects you to your core creative self and your aliveness. What brings you alive outside of work?
What do you know about how much rest you need? How rested and restored are you on a day to day basis, currently? How do you feel when you are well-rested? How are you at work? How are you in your relationships? How are your days, generally, when you are well-rested?
What is your relationship to work?
All too often our notions about work come from what we saw or lived with growing up. We internalized what it meant to “be successful,” or what it meant to “work hard.”
What was your family’s relationship to work? What did your parents and grandparents do? What did you learn about work from your family? What did you learn about money from your family? What did your family teach you about life outside of work?
What did you learn about work from your family or your first work experiences? What beliefs about work do you question? What do you know about your ideal work environment or workday? What might be different? What would the pace be like?
What does “being productive” mean to you?
For a lot of people who learned our value by doing things, it’s hard to sit still and “do nothing.” Yet, our value as a human has little to do with the output of work we do in a day, or how productive of a hamster we are on our hamster wheel. “Part of what we do, which I think leads to a significant amount of burnout and existential struggle, is we take meaning from motion,” As Jerry Colonna notes in his conversation with Tim Ferriss. “We take meaning from performance, and then when I take away the motion, what happens to my meaning?”
What happens for you when you’re not doing something productive? How do you relax?
“Part of what we do, which I think leads to a significant amount of burnout and existential struggle, is we take meaning from motion,” Jerry notes. “We take meaning from performance, and then when I take away the motion, what happens to my meaning?”
What does productivity mean for you? How does it play a role in how you spend your time or decide to spend your time? What’s behind the need to be busy all the time? How does being busy all the time serve you?
How does work help you cope with other feelings or situations in your life?
We are driven to work for a variety of reasons. The most generative reasons give us a true sense of purpose that we are doing good work in the world for the right reasons.
For many workaholics, work becomes a coping mechanism for deeper feelings that lie beneath the surface. Sometimes there is a deeply lacking sense of self-worth or big piece of shame that drives people to work work work. Some folks even arrive at midlife only to look around and see that that’s all they’ve done since they were 16. Yet, they never paused to consider any other options on the menu because if they did, the big feelings would get too close. As long as they kept moving, doing things, working harder, they hoped those big uncomfortable feelings would be abated. The thing is, they catch up with you eventually.
If you look closely at your own work tendencies, what do you see? How do you feel when you’re not working? What feelings might you be trying to outrun or bury with work? In what ways is work a distraction for not facing larger issues in your life (such as relationships, happiness, a true sense of purpose)?
How might you be afraid of a (really) good-feeling life?
We all have our own internal thermostats for what feels normal to us. Often, it ties back to situations and environments that we’ve survived in the past. If you have had a particularly stressful life, or only know working hard until you’ve got nothing left for the rest of your life, then some part of us might be resistant to another way of relating to work and life.
What would you like to change about how you work? What might feel better? How does your body respond to the thought of something more easeful (or whatever better would feel like to you)? What might you dare to ask for here? How could you allow yourself to have a different experience?
How do you plan time off? What is your relationship to blank space on your calendar?
At the top of the year, Jerry Colonna sat down with Tim Ferriss to talk about the art of the sabbatical, and what comes up when most of us think about taking one.
What might a sabbatical look like for you? How much time would you take? Where would you be? How empty would your to-do list be? What feeling would you like to have? What would feel restorative and nourishing to you? What could you create on a smaller scale or greater frequency that would be an easy yet substantial reset? How can you build retreat time, or downtime, into your weekly and monthly, and quarterly calendar? What might that look like?
The best versions of ourselves are present when we’re rested. From that state of being, we generate our best work, best ideas, and a greater ability to be collaborative on projects with our colleagues. When we’re not stuck in our way of being in our relationship to ourselves and our core needs for reconnection and rejuvenation, our life flows as well.
