This weekend was a Bank Holiday in England to celebrate 70 years of Her Majesty’s reign. Thankfully I had the weekend off work, with no other plans than sleep and more sleep. Okay I did hit the town on Saturday night but I mostly slept through the weekend. Lately, that’s all my body seems to want - to lay down. And I’m not mad at it. Working 12 hr shifts 4 times a week is actually gruelling and so for me, rest is essential and something I have chosen to be intentional about.
Since sleep is my primary source of rest, I’ve designed my other habits to support my quest for better sleep. For a few years, I’ve had my phone automatically set to DND between the hours of 10pm and 8am so I don’t receive any notifications during those hours. In my former flat, I would leave all my devices in the living room so I’d have to manually shut down my brain to sleep and I wouldn’t be tempted to pick up my phone even if I woke up randomly during the night.
Another habit that helps me prioritise rest is my habit of saying no to things. If I had made plans for this past weekend, I’d have felt obligated to keep them and I wouldn’t have enjoyed the rest my body clearly needed.
I recently listened to an episode of TKP on the science of small changes, where Shane and Andy Huberman talked about the importance of sleep and how to get better sleep. He shared some valuable tips, including a list of supplements that supposedly improve sleep quality. Personally, I’d rather try methods that don’t involve me spending money or having to set a reminder, so I’ve never been a fan of supplements.
As much as I understand the need for rest and do my best to prioritise it, I still get that feeling of guilt sometimes, where I feel bad for doing less than I know I am capable of. Being in environments where people are constantly doing things can make you feel like you’re slacking when you slow down. There’s also a general condescension towards sleep/rest/taking time off, especially in the corporate world. People are usually very quick to tell you how little sleep they need.
I have to remind myself that rest is part of the work. Just like muscles need rest days to recover and grow, so do our brains need rest for many of the consolidation processes that keep us functioning optimally. In addition, the health benefits of getting adequate rest are endless.
Rest can sometimes be putting our phones down, limiting the amount of disaster porn we expose ourselves to, spending time in nature, exploring creative hobbies, taking days off from work just because, and so on.
Rest is how you recover, so you can go again.
Rest.
This week I read
Peak Mind: Find Your Focus, Own Your Attention, Invest 12 Minutes a Day Dr Amisha Jha. I’ve been trying to get into meditation for a while now, so when I heard Dr Jha on the Dare to Lead podcast talking about her research into the benefits of mindfulness practice, I was intrigued. The book chronicles her work as a neuroscientist, teaching mindfulness practice and studying its effects on different groups of people, especially military personnel. Throughout the book, she used mindfulness practice and meditation interchangeably and I think this was very helpful for my inner skeptic because I’ve always thought of meditation as … not very practical. So to hear her describe it as a practice, one that is strengthened by repetition, that helped convince me. What really sealed the deal was how she related mindfulness to attention and the various ways our lack of attention can play out in our daily lives. I’ve not managed to complete a single 12 minute practice session yet, but it is something I would like to incorporate into my daily routines.
This week I listened to
An episode of Dare to Lead where Brene talked about Burnout with a pair of twin sisters - Drs Emily and Amelia Nagoski, who wrote a book about Burnout. I say this all the time, but I absolutely love how Brene’s interviews focus on the very real human problems we face daily, as opposed to the ideals that society tends to promote. The word Burnout for example is typically used when referring to professional/work situations, but this interview reminded me that the never endingness of adult life also comes with it’s own emotional exhaustion and can also lead to burnout. I also enjoy conversations that highlight the importance of emotions, something the self-help/ productivity genre tends to gloss over or completely overlook. Listening to the ladies talk about the emotions as a neural response made both my inner sap and inner science geek very happy.
I’m working 6 days this week so I don’t have a lot of cheer for you today.
Here’s wishing you all the rest I wish for myself this week.
Chioma.