REST ETHIC

Days where everything goes right are hard to come by:
You wake up ALERT, smash PBs in a training session, wow the workplace with your resplendent intellect, see friends for dinner and still have the energy to pour into a hobby before jumping into bed to do it all again tomorrow Only you wake up the next day and feel like… arse.

Where was the person who just eight hours ago glided through life like a pristine, productive swan?

Today let’s talk about rest ethic – chiefly because I’ve been blowtorching the incense at both ends for the past week and yesterday it caught up to me.
Work ethic is lauded in our global, incessantly competitive culture.

Its requisite other half though, rest ethic, is barely considered.

Overworking or Underresting?

Not being in the mood to work is typically the precursor to some kind of diagnosis. Whether physically, creatively, socially, romantically, productively or somewhere in between, choosing not to tends to imply that something’s wrong.

In reality, to truly perform at your best you need to rest. Deliberatively.

Fitch & Frenzel describe the interplay between the two modes brilliantly:

“Think of your work ethic as your inhale. Task list–inhale. Project execution–inhale. Making our ideas come to life– inhale. But we can’t keep inhaling forever. Eventually, we have to exhale. This exhale is your rest ethic, and it is just as essential.”

You Are Enough

Though the subtitle could be plucked from Eat. Pray. Love… it’s true. Rest ethic ultimately boils down to self-esteem. Do you consider yourself, your output, and your trajectory, as good enough?

If the answer’s no, whatever activity is considered as rest will be a masquerade. In reality, you’re escaping.

If the answer’s yes, you’ll genuinely unwind and the process will only enhance your ability to perform.

Nuance is dead. Performance can be measured. Rest? That’s far more subjective.

You can say “If my 5K time is under 30 minutes, I’ve performed.” On the flipside, there’s no end goal to rest – when is enough, or too much?

Who defines lazy? Only you.

We want clear-cut explanations and definitions to align our personalities today. The old markers of success we used to abide by en-masse have disappeared. An eight hour shift with a pleasant lunch break no longer cuts the mustard for those trying to get ahead – so we’re told.

But rather than adopting algorithmic affirmations of effort, what really matters is how you feel.

Quantity v Quality

Ancient Greeks defined time in two ways: Chronos (quantitative) and Kairos (qualitative). Kairos/Caerus was both the Greek God of opportunity, and a phrase meaning “the right or critical moment.” This speaks to our muddied understanding of time in the modern day.

Of course, time can be measured in seconds and hours, but disassociating the minutes from the potential they contain serves to mitigate our capacity to perform.

Prioritising rest doesn’t mean doing nothing. Active rest – like walking, stretching or swimming – often provides a more restorative effect than cosplaying your favourite vegetable. It increases blood flow and nutrient transportation to muscles and tissues to aid recovery without overly straining the system.

The gear change from movement as a means for exertion to activity for the sake of well-being parks the frenetic get this done as impressively as possible energy that coats much of our daily schedule.

That said, some times you just want to watch Rush Hour 2 (again) and forget the problems of the day.

Deliberating the way we rest, asking if it serves us, and prioritising the quality of the time we spend ‘switched off’ is a vital, oft forgotten, lever to pull in the pursuance of performance.

Narrow The Field

As we develop, we carve habitual grooves and fill the gaps with choices that serve us.

As we age, we continue those same habits on autopilot.

Adopting new ideas and behaviours, then, becomes a case of replacing as opposed to introducing.

To capture what you want, you’ve got to drop what you’ve been holding.

Inhaling is instigation. Exhaling is completion.

Chronos is out of your hands. Kairos is entirely in your control.