Resisting a Rest.

Do you take all of your vacation days every year? 

I took my first full week of vacation last week, (and I now have that I-need-a-vacation-from-my-vacation feeling). My first year at my first job out of college, I didn’t even know how many vacation days I had. I think I took 2. I had that gotta-get-ahead-because-I’m-young-and-don’t-know-what-I’m-doing mentality. I wanted to prove myself to my coworkers, my parents - but mostly, to myself

Add those sky-high expectations that I set upon myself to my arrival in a new city where I didn’t know anyone, and reporting to my job right before a 6 month stretch of craziness, and you have a recipe for burnout. And bitterness. And they definitely both happened.

The problem is, we think rest is for whimps. Taking a break means we're weak. Having boundaries shows you don't really care about your work. If you really wanted to be the best, you'd push yourself harder.

During the Olympic coverage tonight, Minneapolis/St. Paul's NBC station had a spotlight on teen swimming sensation Missy “The Missle” Franklin. The report mentions that she takes weekends off, refuses to go pro, and that she’s a normal teenager (as normal as you can be when you're an Olympic Champion at 17).

Her coach designs creative workouts in a way that avoids burnout. Her parents don’t push her, but encourage her to enjoy the process. This rest/work balance is not a new idea, but it could be one that becomes more central after Missy’s Olympic success.

Matthew Edlund, M.D. has spent two decades researching rest, sleep, performance and public health. Edlund is the author of several books on the subject, including “The Power of Rest,” a book detailing how to actively rest - physically, mentally, socially and spiritually – to control regeneration and maximize efforts of passive forms of rest (like sleep). He claims that active rest techniques, performed within a minute, can call you down or revive you when tired, while improving productivity.

The NBC article also quotes Nicole LaVoi, Ph.D, associate director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport at the U of M, on the idea of rest/work balance: "Missy Franklin is living proof that there are many pathways to elite performance."

Edlund’s website claims that using rest can “actively rebuild body and brain... active rest can improve the public health, and is a skill everyone needs.”

How contrary this is to our fast-paced, competitive, work-obsessed culture. Why rest when you can just take a shot of caffeine in your favorite form and boost productivity? (Guilty). Last May, after my biggest work weekend of the year, I was totally burned out. A dear friend suggested a take a day off. My response? I have to work. It’s already a 3 day weekend (Memorial Day was the following Monday). I can’t dare take 4 days off in a row!

I took her strong advice and took 4 days off. It was glorious! It took at least 36 hours to calm my anxiety about the work weekend, and all the projects I wanted to catch up on over the summer. Once I fully disengaged from mulling over my mental to-do list, I was able to get some solid rest.

There's another facet to this idea that resting can make us more productive. If you have a strong resistance to rest, there might be an alarming reason. It might be that we obsess over our work because we base our self-worth on what we do. When that happens, rest is impossible.

Or, when I fear what my coworkers will think of me if I take a personal day, I'm hurting not just me, but my team, too. It creates disunity and competition.

When we work weekends and travel out of town for conferences, Cru gives us comp days proportionate to the amount of time we were gone. I'm grateful that my boss always encourages me and my teammates to take these days off. And once a month, we are encouraged to take a half or whole day off to spend with the Lord.

What are your thoughts on rest and productivity? On rest and our values as a society?