REST

The story of Telegraph Cottage should remind us that even people in very high-stakes jobs need to set aside time for recovery. It’s easy to forget that we need to build rest into our schedule. It’s easy to convince ourselves that detaching from work is impossible. We live in an era when we’re urged to be passionate about our work, to regard the boudary between work and life as an obolete relic of the industrial age. Mobile technologies keep us connected to the workplace day and night. At the same time, the boundaries between work and life are blurred, giving us more flexibility and choice about how to organize our time. Together, they create the illusion that we’ll find greatest fulfillment, and be most effective, if we’re always working.

But that’s wrong. The positive effects of time off from work, of being able to completely leave the cares and pressures (and even the positives) of the workplace behind, are by now too well-documented to ignore, as are the negative effects of burnout. The literature on vacations and recovery show that individuals, job performance, and the companies all benefit from time out of the office. The most creative and most productive workers are the ones who are able to unplug from the office, recover their mental and physical energy, and return to their work recharged. We also now know that recover isn’t just a function of time off. We get the most from breaks when we do things that are relaxing, that let us experience control and mastery, and that provide a sense of detachment from our working lives. Recovery is active, not passive, and we can design it to get greater benefit.

Extracted from the book REST : Why You Get More Done When You Work Less by Alex Soojung – Kim Pang.

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