Rest Without Stimulus Is Just Time Passing

Our industry has swung so far away from working hard that I feel like not working became the flex.

Don’t get me wrong - industries have (and still do) glorify overworking and burnout.

Finance, tech, law - the badge was the 80-hour week and whatever it did to you. I don’t want that, obviously

But I can’t help but feel I see so many people posting their holidays, rest days, days off, self-care days, recovery days, ‘listening to my body and taking it easy today’ days

That I do often ask - From what?

This is fine if you’re at peace with how everything’s going, and you’re thriving - amazing!

But if you’re not where you want to be - I don’t see how this is the answer.

If I’m taking multiple recovery days from training, am I a) Working enough to move my body to a point where recovery is necessary? And b) Am I growing my capacity to cope with the demand of the training, to therefore need fewer recovery days and to increase output?

The problem for a lot of people is that they DO work a lot of hours - they just don’t get 8 hours of output.

They sat and worked for 2-3 of them, doing essential business stuff like client messages, check-ins, programming etc.

But this is followed by hours of paralysis, procrastination and deliberation that feels like work - but isn’t generating output.

Taking a day off because your brain and body feel knackered from this? Doesn’t solve it.

The answer is solve this, then put in the amount of work that it takes to build what you want

To grow to the point of the people you look up to, you have to be willing to do the work that they’ve done to get there.

I’m not for hustle culture, I’m not anti-rest, I’m personally sometimes too far on this side myself and have to pull back.

But I worry that people have warped expectations of what running a business takes.

You can’t do your client facing work, sit and think about doing stuff - have your rest and recovery days, take some photos of you enjoying yourself to post your ‘weekly roundup’ photo carousel

And then wonder why your business hasn’t grown.

Telling people they should work 80 hour weeks forever was always a terrible idea.

But so is letting people convince themselves they’ll have their dream business by working 20 hours per week

Rest without stimulus isn’t recovery, it’s just lost time

When you feel bad about your business, the day off doesn’t touch it.

You know what does? Working hard and generating income

It’s just not easy to hear.