The Productivity Benefits of Rest

Hey Reader,

I’ve been thinking about rest a lot lately. A few of the books I’m reading are big proponents of more rest, and to be honest I’ve dismissed or neglected it in the past. Even in college, when productivity was not very important to me, rest was the enemy of good times. Then in my career, rest was the enemy of advancement and ambition. You rest, I work = I win.

But the last couple years have shifted my thinking. Call it burnout, pandemic changes, having three kids, or just getting older — but I’m finding and experiencing more benefits to rest and revitalization. This month we’re going to focus on the different types of rest and how they allow us the physical, mental, and emotional space to do better work and be better people.

Better Rest = Better Work

One of the books I’ll refer to this month is Rest by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang.

Some of history’s most creative people, people whose achievements in art and science and literature are legendary, took rest very seriously. In order to realize their ambitions, they needed rest. The right kinds of rest would restore their energy while allowing their muse, that mysterious part of their minds that helps drive the creative process, to keep going.

If you read a lot of work and productivity books like I do, then you’ve seen a version of this passage before. Anecdotal evidence that rest has an important role in the pursuit of great work, especially over the span of a career. But what activities (or lack thereof) are included in this catch-all term of “rest,” assuming we’re talking about more than sleep?

5 Types of Rest

From my research and personal experience, I came up five types of rest. Over the next several weeks I’ll dive deeper into each category, but let’s start with a quick description.

Sleep: overnight rest and the most effective long-term benefits.
Naps: 20-120 minute mid-day rests to refresh the mind and body.
Mental: allowing the mind to disengage from activity (but not sleep).
Active: walking and other light to moderate physical exercise.
Associative: reading, journaling, or casual research that can help form connections between ideas from different fields of study.

Prioritizing & Tracking Rest

My bullet journal tracker for this month is all about these five types of rest, but not in the way you might think. I’m not trying to fit in all five each day — that doesn’t seem restful to me! Instead I’m prioritizing one each day while shooting for 7.5 hours of sleep for three nights/week. For example:

Saturday, Feb 4 = Active + Associative
Sunday, Feb 5 = Sleep + Associative
Monday, Feb 6 = Nap + Mental

Today, February 7, my rest priorities will be getting 7.5 hours of sleep and meditating (mental). The sleep rest type can be the trickiest, because I often find it at odds with other types of rest. Do I sleep an extra hour or wake up to read and meditate? That’s the conundrum, but we will discuss that more in the coming weeks.

Books on “Productive” Rest

To wrap up, here are the books I’m reading and researching as the source material for this series.

*I haven’t read this one yet, but it’s highly recommended and in my book stack.

Thanks for reading this edition of my To-Do’s Day newsletter, I will talk to you next week! If you know any friends who would like to read this, share on Twitter, LinkedIn, or email.

Matt

Your brain needs a jet pack 🚀

In The Knowledge, writer and startup operator, David Elikwu, shares tools and frameworks from psychology, philosophy, productivity, and business to help you think deeper and work smarter. The Knowledge is like NZT for your work and CBD for your mind.