The world around us constantly seems to be in a race to see who can do the most, be the busiest, and hustle the hardest. All around me, I hear and see people bragging about how little sleep they got or how late they were up. For people who have ‘side hustles’ this seems to be doubly the case. Almost every person I know who is working a day job and trying to create in the fringes of their time, constantly battle the pull against resting.
I have an exceptionally hard time resting. In therapy, sometimes I get asked to think about taking things easy and just enjoying a book. However, my brain doesn’t quite join in on that party. Reading a book is work, I mark the pace of the story, the rhythm of the plot. I can’t just turn off and enjoy the story.
If I sit and try to do nothing or enjoy a TV show, I instantly begin to beat myself up for being lazy. My to-do list starts repeating in my head like a mantra. Instead of relaxing or focusing on what I’m watching, my brain chases itself in masochistic circles until I’m too exhausted to even try to do any work.
For the past year or so, I have been trying to force myself to recognize that rest is important. It’s vital to enjoy other works, to take breaks from work so that you can recover and restore your own creative energy. I’ve been avoiding that and burning out spectacularly in the process.
What’s helped me probably sounds a little silly but it’s putting my rest activities on my calendar or on my to-do list so it still ‘counts’ as work or as something productive. When the mantra of all the things I should be working on starts playing on repeat in my head, I can simply take a deep breath and count ‘watching Netflix’ as something on my list.
I’ve also found habits help a lot. While I’m not the best at remembering rest is important, I am working on ways to add it into my life in more sustainable ways. Rather than going with the ‘work until I collapse from exhaustion for several months’ model, I want to build a life that has rest and recovery built into it. That means building in reading into my bed time routine. It means that I try to play a game or listen to an interesting podcast in the evenings. Something that isn’t work every day.
You’re so much more than your productivity and the number of things you’ve checked off on your to-do list. Remember that and repeat it often.