In Defense of Rest
Why your most important KPI for the year might be hours slept or days offline.
Ryan Findley
By now, most people have finished their 2020 ‘strat plans’ and signed off on their KPIs for the year. Budgets are allocated, Quarterly targets are set and every employee has his/her performance plan in place, but I would wager that very few — if any — have one pivotal component of success in their annual plans: rest.
Rest is an elemental part of life — literally one of the most physiologically important things a human must do to survive — and yet most leaders I interact with on a daily basis regard it as a luxury. Whether it’s a lack of sleep, answering emails around the clock for the London/San Francisco/Singapore offices, working through weekends, or having away-but-online ‘holidays’, top professionals are neglecting the natural bio-rhythms of life to our own peril. Two Dutch social scientists — Theo Meijman and Gijsbertus Mulder — authored an oft-cited paper called “Psychological aspects of workload” which showed that our work diminishes over time and this loss of productivity is explained as the “effect-recovery” model. This theory states that our brains, like our muscles, need down time (rest) to recover between work sessions. Without rest, output from brains or muscles diminishes over time.
Research from across the medical field and organizational behavior field back this up. A lack of proper rest — classified in many cases as ‘overwork’ — can start with small things like distractibility or anxious thoughts and grow into endless cycles of illness and chronic fatigue. Extended periods of sleeplessness correlate strongly to weight gain, rises in cholesterol and heart disease, as well as the onset of diabetes and substance abuse.
If all of that was not persuasive enough, consider that worn down leaders are least effective in tasks that require “interpersonal communication, making judgment calls, reading other people’s faces, or managing (their) own emotional reactions.”
So, the endless work that executives are doing (sometimes up to 72 hours per week) is bad for their health and — ironically — their performance reviews.
Individuals alone can’t be to blame, however; organizations and their culture shape much of the milieu that leaders operate within. Many leaders I know — especially in middle management — are pinched by perceptions of those above and below them in the org chart. They are easily viewed by their peers and superiors as being less-than-committed for taking dedicated time for themselves and/or their families. Those who plan their holidays proactively are seen as being non serious about the companies’ business — or at least willing to prioritize their own leisure over the company performance. The same person might be viewed by his/her direct reports as leaving them unsupported or exposed on weekends or long holidays with no support. Consequently, many don’t take their full annual leave each year, or do take the leave whilst conducting business through a large part of it.
Organizations should be mindful about the messages they send directly and indirectly to employees about work ethic and corresponding rewards.
If everyone implicitly knows 90 hours/week of desk time is required to make partner, de facto expectations are thereby set company-wide. But even expectations for working employees substantially more than half of that are misguided and ridiculous when looking at the data. A landmark study — conducted twice over a century — reveals why:
In the 19th century, when organized labor first compelled factory owners to limit workdays to 10 (and then eight) hours, management was surprised to discover that output actually increased — and that expensive mistakes and accidents decreased. This is an experiment that Harvard Business School’s Leslie Perlow and Jessica Porter repeated over a century later with knowledge workers. It still held true. Predictable, required time off (like nights and weekends) actually made teams of consultants more productive.
By actually limiting the hours that employees work, instead of maxing them out, employers actually achieve better output. They also save money by avoiding costly mistakes and accidents — and this may not be the only cost savings. Tying back to wellness data and the prevalence of fatigue-borne illnesses, economists can estimate the costs to businesses (and whole countries) from time lost to absenteeism, work-related injuries, and general ineffectiveness. The American Institute of Stress estimated that as many as one million Americans per day miss work because of stress, totalling a $300 billion loss annually for employers.
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead”
This month, I challenge you to look at your annual priorities (for yourself, your team/department, and your company) and to tack on a Rest Target/Goal for the year. I suggest you consider the following:
For You
If you need to start small, try setting small boundaries with response times on late-night emails/Whatsapps. Vow to take at least weekends entirely for yourself and your loved ones. Put a solid week (or two!) of holiday in the calendar now and make sure everyone knows you’re doing it. Get more advanced by tracking your ‘sleep performance’ against your work performance; chart your wellbeing inputs (e.g. morning prayer/yoga) against work outputs. (create a system that works for you — I’d start with a simple 1–10 rating for inputs and outputs and see how they relate) Take up a hobby in 2020 and and make health and personal goals a part of your overall priorities for the year.
For Your Team
It begins with a conversation; as the ranking member of any team/office, you have a great deal more latitude to address the ‘rest’ issue and set the tone and expectations. Prompt each employee to take their full annual leave and to do so in a manner that is planned and intentional (e.g. staggered across teams, accounting for quarter-end, etc.). This year, instead of a midyear fitness challenge, use everyone’s fitness trackers to do a sleep challenge. Model balance by leaving by a reasonable hour and discouraging after-hours emails, at least for your team (even if you can’t stop the problem org-wide, you can at least stop adding to it).
Final Word
In the last two years, I’ve worked with four senior managers who have taken sabbaticals and two others that have gone on Vipassana retreats to rejuvenate themselves. Even I had a short two-month sabbatical in 2018 after a chaotic three-year sprint without a proper holiday. Each person who has carved out this time and space to rest and recharge has found these times ‘off’ game-changing. Unaware of the depth of the fatigue, overwhelm, and distraction, each of these senior managers found a new sense of clarity and purpose in their work upon return.
More than that, though, each colleague, upon reemerging from their extended periods of rest found their time away to be…spiritual. Of course, this shouldn’t surprise: every major faith has rich practices of rest and/or retreat, from Shabbat to Sabbath, Vipassana to Uposatha, the enlightened ancients have built in habits of rest into their faith traditions. Significantly, in the Abrahamic religions, God rested on the 7th day.
So, taken altogether: science, data, business and religion — all agree on the criticality of regular rhythms of rest. Can you or your organization afford another year without rest and care for the health of your teams? What will you do to take better care of yourself — and prompt others in your charge to do the same?
About the author: Ryan is the Chief Product & Innovation Officer at African Leadership University (ALU). In eight years with African Leadership Group, Ryan has led design on many facets of ALU’s award-winning program, most notably the end-to-end design of ALU’s School of Business MBA program. He’s passionate about creating experiences, programs, and products that help people and organizations realize their potential. You can see more of his work on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter.
