Clean rest: What is it? Why do you need it?
Have you ever had a day off, but at the back of your mind you felt guilty and like you ‘should’ be doing something? Maybe you do something that’s still ‘productive’ like the laundry or getting the groceries done, just to alleviate some of that guilt?
Or maybe you feel too guilty to even try to take times off, but then notice your productivity levels drop off over time anyway? This is partly because of something called ‘Parkinson’s Law’ that states a task will fill to the time allocated. If you give yourself 4 hours to do an essay, it will take 4 hours. If you give yourself two weeks, it will take two weeks.
Clean rest is where we rest without guilt. It’s one of the most helpful things we can do for our productivity levels. If you have trouble with burnout and procrastination, this is an important skill to develop.
You might feel what I am referring to as ‘clean rest’ a few days into a holiday when you’re away from your laptop and emails, and you finally get to unwind.
Unfortunately, we can’t always go away on a lovely holiday that physically removes us from stress when we need to rest, and so we need to learn how to rest properly at home, too.
Having clear boundaries between work and home life is one key step in doing this. For instance, not checking your emails after a certain time or on weekends. Your brain is smart, it will know if you are lying to yourself and might do a sneaky check at 10pm on Wednesday night. You really need to properly 100% stick to those boundaries for your brain to know it can switch off.
The other thing to note is it that when you give yourself time off, you will feel bored. It might not feel ‘relaxing’ at first; in fact it might be uncomfortable. After all, you normally fill that time with work or tasks. You may be tempted to fall back into doing things, but don’t! Your brain doesn’t like being bored for long, so if you let it be bored it will find things to fill the time. Maybe it’s a new hobby or reading or walking. Maybe there is more time to be social. This can mean your identity is not just linked solely with work, but also to other things that are not achievement based. Just because it feels uncomfortable doesn’t mean it’s not beneficial.
The best benefit however, is that often when you have had some proper time off where you have not focused on being productive, you will end up being more productive and refreshed when you return to work. It means your success can be more sustainable in the long term.
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