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Work and rest are not on opposite ends of the spectrum. The single best productivity tool you have is REST. In today's episode I'm going to be making the connection between rest and productivity, explaining exactly what needs to happen for you to become more productive and then ultimately give you 2 ways to get your brain on board with rest so you can use it as a tool for getting more done. Do less and get more done…
Topics in this episode:
How rest contributes to productivity
How end the overworking cycle
The difference between rest and sleep
Rest increases confidence
What actually rests your brain and what does not
Show Notes:
Register for the free training Stop Overworking and Create Balance in 30 Days – Click here to sign up: www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.net/stop-overworking
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Transcript
Intro
Alright working mom's we are going to be talking about the single most effective tool for productivity - rest. Rest is actually a tool that creates productivity; it's not just something to be used when you're overworked and exhausted. In today's episode, I'm going to be making the connection between rest and productivity, explaining exactly what needs to happen for you to become more productive, and then ultimately give you 2 ways to get your brain on board with rest so you can use it as a tool for getting more done. Do less to get more done…here we go…
Welcome to the Ambitious and Balanced Working Mom Podcast, the place for women who want to balance their ambitious career goals with their life as a mom. If you're looking to feel more confident, decisive and productive at both work and home, then this is the place for you. I'm your host, Rebecca Olson. Let's get to it.
Work and rest are not on opposite ends of the spectrum.
The single best productivity tool you have is rest. All of us have experienced what happens to our productivity after we come back from a vacation where you really rested vs a vacation where you couldn't turn off your phone. Or a weekend that we are completely unplugged from vs a weekend where we worked. There is a direct correlation between rest and productivity but yet for some strange reason, we don't think of it as a tool to be more productive. You don't see a whole lot of ambitious working moms intentionally deciding to rest because they know that they will be more effective and productive at their job. Usually, rest comes from exhaustion, when we feel like we have no other option but to rest because we will burn out. But what I want to do here today, is really shift your thoughts about rest so that you use it intentionally as a mechanism for being more productive.
What productivity and rest means.
OK, for the sake of this conversation, I want to make sure we are on the same page on what both productivity and rest mean:
Productivity is the number of things you can accomplish within a time frame. You are more productive if you get 10 things done in an hour vs 5. This is about accomplishing more.
Now rest and sleep are two different things. Sleep is when your body shuts down and you are physically rejuvenated. The way I want you to think about rest, as ambitious working moms, is moments of awake mental rejuvenation. These are moments or activities that don’t have mental stimulation. Today we are talking about rest, not sleep…though sleep could easily be a productivity tool as well, that’s not where we are focused today.
When I talk to my clients about what it would take to stop overworking I asked them a question: what percentage of your overworking is your job, meaning anyone in the job would work the amount of hours – it’s a requirement vs what percentage of your overworking is you? It's the way you specifically are approaching the job. Take a minute and maybe even just ask yourself that same question, pause the podcast for a moment if you have to, and really assess for yourself.
For all of my clients, the answer is at least 50/50. 50% of their overworking is on them and 50% of their overworking is on their job and requirements. But the majority of them say it's closer to 75/25. 75% of their overworking is because of their approach to work. So if you really break that down, if you are someone that averages 55 hours a week at work (or 15 hours of overtime) what that means is 10 of those hours could be fixed, in other words, you would gain back 10 hours of your week just focusing on being more productive.
Ending overworking and becoming more productive go hand in hand.
What I want you to see is that ending the overworking cycle and becoming more productive go hand in hand. Because likely the things you would need to do in order to end the overworking cycle, the parts of it that are within your control, are the same things you would need to do in order to be more productive.
My client just told me the reason she puts in so many hours is because she has such a heavy workload and there's no one else to do the work. She also doesn't like to tell people no because she doesn't want them to be disappointed and so more just gets added to her plate.
Another client told me the reason she puts in so many hours is because she doesn’t want to fail and look like a fool, so she spends a lot of time researching, redoing and feeling “prepared”.
Another client says that she is in back to back to back meetings all day and so there is no time to actually DO the work unless she does it at night or when others are off-line. She constantly feels like people need her and she can’t say no because she wants to be available to her team.
Ok, so in all three of these cases, here is what it would take to end overworking and increase productivity, there are 4 things:
Make faster decisions (no more procrastination and second-guessing, researching and redoing).
Strategize and proactively decide what’s most important (no more overwhelm and making decisions based on urgency – no more meetings unless they are necessary and important).
Make rational decisions instead of emotional ones (no more people-pleasing - it’s ok for people to be disappointed and for you to be offline even when others are not).
Trust in your own expertise and self-validate (no more perfectionism - you don’t need other’s opinion or approval – trust your instincts and all the reasons you were hired for this job to begin with).
We could really just boil it down to perfectionism, people-pleasing, and procrastination. These are what cause overworking and eliminating them would bring an increase in productivity.
Ok, we’ve talked about what it takes to be more productive, let’s talk about rest and how it relates.
How rest relates to productivity.
Remember rest has to do with decreasing stimulation for your brain. Not sleeping, but doing low-level activities that require very little for your brain. What research shows is that during these rest periods, your brain isn’t shutting down, instead the parts of your brain that you used the most during work take a break which allows for other parts to become active, specifically the parts that retrieve memories, link ideas, self-actualize and sympathize.
In other words, in the background your brain is taking all of the data from the day all of the things that you did and achieved and worked on, and projects that are unresolved it's taking all of that in and it's connecting it to past memories, past solutions, similar scenarios, it's literally making links to other pieces of information and making sense of it all. It’s sort of bringing order and ease to all the new data you’ve recently inputted.
That's why our brains come up with some of the best ideas when we're in the shower, or when we're taking a walk when we're doing something that's unrelated to work. Because what's happening is your brain is trying to make connections on your behalf but it's doing it in a more creative & non-linear way.
So, in a lot of ways, when you are resting, your brain is still working but without all the overwhelm and exhaustion.
Your brain during rest time.
It’s strategizing, building confidence, giving you ideas which when you get back into active work, is going to help you make faster decisions, prioritize, trust yourself and self-validate – all the things that need to happen for you to stop overworking and be productive. You can see how this comes full circle.
So, to recap here. What is happening when you rest, what is being activated, are the parts of your brain that allow you to think creatively and problem solve and to strategize and all of those things are what you need to really end all of the procrastination and people-pleasing, and the perfectionism that causes overworking.
Now one thing we need to be clear on, rest is not watching Netflix or scrolling your phone. Those are mental stimulators that do not allow your brain the space to mind map and make connections. Those are more data points that your brain is storing up just waiting for you to give it space to do it’s thing and create some order in there.
Rest can be physical exertion (like exercise), reading a book or article, playing a game with your kids, cooking, even folding the laundry (as long as you aren’t listening to a podcast), dancing, listening to music, doing something creative with your hands, taking the kids to the park and watching them run around…remember the point is to give your brain space to connect the dots to be bored.
Boredom allows one to indulge in curiosity, and out of curiosity comes everything.
We tell our kids all the time that it's OK to be bored. That from boredom comes curiosity and creativity and that is true for us as adults as well. Steve Jobs was famous for saying “I'm a big believer in boredom. Boredom allows one to indulge in curiosity, and out of curiosity comes everything.”
Productivity Is dependent on us getting creative and curious with ourselves. If you keep operating the way you're operating, you will only ever be as productive as you are today. You actually have to start approaching your job, your projects and the way you spend your time differently if you want to achieve more productivity.
And there is no greater tool to achieve creativity than rest.
Now you might hear this entire podcast and shake your head and go yeah I understand that rest is really important but never really do anything with this information. So here's what I challenge you to do, 2 things:
Spend time writing down all the ways that you connect rest in your own life with productivity. You can think back to other jobs, you can think of other people that you see as an example, you could think about authors or books you’ve read. Your brain really needs to be on board with this if you're going to do something with this information.
Commit to one week of working less hours and resting more and experiment with what happens. Push yourself to see if you gave yourself less time to work and more time to rest could you achieve the same amount.
I'd love to hear what comes up for you over the next week as you connect more with rest and increased productivity because of it!
If this topic really resonated with you, if you are looking to decrease the hours you work and be more productive with your time then join me tomorrow for a free training where I dive into how to stop overworking and create balance in 30 days. I'm going to be breaking down the overworking cycle, get very specific on what causes it and then boil it down to just one thing you need to work on in the next 30 days to truly end the cycle. You can sign up for this free training by clicking the link in the show notes. Join me tomorrow at 1:30 PM or 8:00 PM eastern.
