I Didn't Do the Thing Today: Letting Go of Productivity Guilt

by Madeleine Dore

Viewing rest as self-replenishing rather than selfish might help ease the guilt or shame some of us feel for taking a break, and instead help us see that it’s part of the rhythm of the day. It also shifts the frame so we see the inherent value of rest—we need it to restore and replenish but also to rethink. The trap we can find ourselves in is that we are too busy to rest, so we don’t have the time to rethink our circumstances and come up with another way to be. Rest might be the key to releasing us from the busyness trap because it’s the very thing that can help us see we’re in it. To allow ourselves more rest, we can perhaps broaden our idea of it so we can find what is within our reach, depending on our circumstances but also our preferences. Rest can take different forms—it doesn’t have to be an expensive retreat or ten-step self-care ritual. The way we experience rest varies from person to person, as does the type of rest each of us needs. In her TED Talk “The Real Reason We Are Tired and What to Do About It,” Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith talks about how we have incorrectly combined the concepts of sleep and rest, when sleep is simply one of the seven types of rest we need: physical, mental, sensory, creative, emotional, social, and spiritual. We can determine the rest we need by looking at where we are using most of our energy in the day. Perhaps rest for you is getting more sleep. Or maybe it is walking in nature, a morning of solitude, playing an instrument, or watchin...