Rest Is A Skill

If you’re anything like me, you’ll relate to making plans and then — when the time comes — you feel the tiredness wash over you.

Always feeling like you’ve got too much on the go. Because — let’s face it — we’ve always got something on. If it’s not one area of our lives, it is another.

It can feel like we never have time to rest, breathe, and just be.

However, you will be pleased to know there are ways around this stifling feeling of everything being ‘up in the air’.

Here’s a helpful tool.

Make a To-Do list

You’ll have heard this thrown around as the go-to strategy that’s going to, somehow, solve all your problems. Let go of that exasperated sigh and hear me out.

Instead of listing all the tasks you need to do, first write down every task you have to do. This could be to write your next article, and edit another — or it could be to do the laundry. Whatever it is, write it down.

Then look at the list as a whole.

• What task(s) take priority?

• What dates and times do they need to be done by?

• How long do you expect them to take you?

Answer these questions, and a bullet point on your list may look something like this:

• Write article on resting as a skill (45 mins) — Friday 17th

Now you have a solid plan in place. You know what you are going to do, when you are going to do it, and how long it may take you.

This alone allows you (and your brain) to process the task at hand. You now don’t need to worry about how and when you are going to do something. This takes away the stress in the back of your mind that’s burning away at your energy reserves.

What am I telling you this, and what has this got do with rest?

Well, now that the stress of remembering how, when, and what, you are going to do is out of the way, you can rest.

You can plan when you’ll be able to rest.

Tasks will get done, whether you stress about them or not. And planning when we can rest, helps reduce the stress and potential guilt of resting. So that when it comes to resting, we are actually resting.

The skill comes in with knowing when we need to take a step back, when we need to rest. It is okay to rest. As a perfectionist, I know we all need the reminder sometimes. Learning to rest takes practice.

Rest can actually enhance your productivity. I know, from a creative sense, that my best ideas come to me when I’m resting — hence the irony of this article.

This a brief, and narrow, overview on the value of rest. I’m hoping that this will trigger some thoughts of your own, in terms of your own life. And then allow yourself to appreciate the idea that rest is an essential part of your day. Not to mention avoiding burnout - but there will be more on that soon.