Intentional Rest: The Key to Boosting Productivity
Intentional Rest
Are you someone who's constantly feeling drained, yet you continue to push yourself to do more each day?
If this does sound like you, rest probably feels like it's just a luxury and not a priority with everything else that needs your attention. But the thing is, rest isn't a luxury, it's an absolute necessity if you want to sustain your energy, health and wellbeing, and achieve those goals.
When you're intentional with rest, it's more than making a bit of time for a bit of relaxation once a week, it’s a practical approach to energy management designed to improve your productivity through recharging your often depleted energy stores.
When you rest purposefully, it can boost your focus and spark your creativity. Despite what it may sound like, intentional rest isn't about simply doing less, it's about working smarter so that there is plenty of time and space to rest and recover without reaching burn out.
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Table of Contents
What Is Intentional Rest?
Intentional rest is a deliberate choice to take time out and do things that recharge your mind and your body. Whether it’s a quiet moment with a nice cuppa, spending time on your hobbies, or taking a mindful walk; intentional rest restores your energy and focus so that you can handle life’s demands more effectively.
Active vs Passive Rest
Rest can be either intentional or passive.
- Intentional rest is planned and purposeful. For example, regular yoga sessions, daily meditation, journaling, or walking.
- Passive rest is rest with minimal activity and shutting out distractions. For example sleep, relaxing your body and mind on the sofa, with your eyes softened or closed.
While passive rest is essential, sleep is different to rest! Sleep is a necessity that bodies need to recover, and too little can lead to mental and physical issues.
But, if the only time you switch off is when you climb into bed, you're definitely not getting enough rest to replenish your physical, emotional and cognitive energy stores.
Intentional rest nurtures your mind, body and mental wellness. As with sleep, it's a necessity and one that is largely ignored or the first to be dropped when time is tight.
The Science Behind Rest
Research shows that intentional rest lowers the stress hormone cortisol, reduces anxiety, and improves focus. Rest also boosts productivity by allowing your brain to reset. This helps to improve problem-solving and decision-making skills.
According to Psychology Today, over time, skipping rest can lead to physical and mental fatigue, reduced efficiency, and ultimately burnout.
The Impact of Overworking & Limiting Rest
Skipping rest to work on your goals doesn’t result in greater productivity in the longer term, it leads to burnout and health issues. You might think that a good night's sleep following weeks of long hours is enough to counter the loss in rest.
However, prolonged overworking can lead to:
- Burnout: Complete exhaustion that impacts your emotional and physical health. This can cause disengagement with not only your work, but in life generally. Burnout can take a lot of time to recover from, inevitably causing it to take much longer to achieve those goals.
- Lack of focus: When you don't make time for rest it can lead to fatigue, which lowers concentration, making it difficult to do anything at all. It can cause you to make more mistakes, taking longer to complete tasks, and ultimately impacting your confidence and emotional well being.
- Health issues: Persistent and long-term overworking can impact your health quite significantly. It increases the risk of heart disease and weaken your immune system.
- Emotional fatigue: The impact of fatigue can lead to irritability, increased stress and overwhelm, as well as low mood or potentially depression.
The hustle culture that has prevalent for decades is unsustainable and a recipe for burnout. As a young person the belief of “you have to work hard all the time” was ingrained. I remember when I began teaching and there was an air of competition around who had the most to shoulder.
Stepping into the online business world this was still very much the message. However due to my chronic health issues that were, in part, caused by pushing too hard when I was unwell, I knew I needed to stay focused and talk about how there are other ways to achieve goals.
This is why I am so passionate about gentle growth and advocating for the importance of proper rest. According to a study by Brevard Health, intentional rest prevents burnout and enhances long-term well-being. When you prioritise rest, you’re giving yourself a productivity boost.
How Rest Improves Productivity
As mentioned above, when you think about rest you probably imagine yourself relaxing on the sofa, or just doing nothing. But intentional rest is more than that. It's about intentionally stepping away from your work to recharge your mind, body and soul.
Intentional rest improves your focus, efficiency and creativity because you are giving yourself the space to engage in things that fill your cup, allows you to be you and to simply experience the world around you. This is vital for improving mental clarity, energy, and creativity.
Improved Cognitive Function
Rest sharpens your brain. Without it, you can experience mental fog, like you're unable to think clearly. It can also lead to poor decision-making that can impact your work as well as your personal life. When you're exhausted it can also reduce your creativity, frequently experiencing ‘blank page', or being unable to solve problems like you normally can.
Intentional rest breaks act like a reboot for your mind. It allows you to approach problems or creative blocks from a fresh perspective. If you think of your brain like a computer, when you have too many tabs open it can run slower!
Choosing to step away from your work is similar to closing those tabs, giving it a rest to allow you to free up space in your mind and refocus your attention.
Increased Energy and Focus
Short, intentional rest breaks are a great way to keep you energised throughout the day. It's why I love approaches like the Pomodoro Technique and time blocking.
Whenever I sit back down after a 10 or 15 minute intentional rest break I find it much easier to refocus and tackle the things I need to work on. If you do use short focused sessions during the day, try to include some intentional activities. This could be a quick 15-minute walk, a quick stretch, or chatting to a friend on the phone.
These frequent breaks can help to prevent the fatigue that often leads to brain freeze and becoming easily distracted. When you plan intentional rest breaks each day, it can help you to finish the day feeling accomplished and energised instead of exhausted and mentally drained.
Subconscious Insights
This is my favourite part of intentional rest – giving space for those subconscious insights to seep into your consciousness.
ave you ever had one of those “aha moment” while in the shower or doing something completely unrelated to your work? It always reminds me of when you've forgotten the name of something, and the more you try to force yourself to remember, the more it stays on the tip of your tongue! But once your mind is distracted “Ta-da!” you suddenly remember it!
That’s your subconscious problem-solving at work. Intentional rest gives your brain the space to process things. When you don't take this time, your brain is constantly switched on and alert, giving little room to process things.
If you're hyper-focused on something but it's just not happening, or you're struggling to connect the dots and solve a problem, stop for a while and take an intentional break. This will give your brain the space that it needs to process and problem solve in the background while you're enjoying a mindful walk or relaxing with your favourite book!
This is how intentional rest improves your cognitive and thinking skills, which in turn helps you become more productive and confident in yourself and your work.
Ideas for Intentional Rest
Mental & Physical Recharge
Meditate: While this may seem like an obvious one, there are many different ways to practice. A few minutes of mindfulness reduces stress and increases clarity. You don't need to sit in a particular position or listen to meditation music if you don't want to, but taking a few minutes to sit quietly, rest your eyes, and use your breath to allow you to quieten those thoughts racing around in your head. It can be particularly powerful if you're feeling anxious or stressed. If you prefer music, create a relaxation playlist, find a meditation on Youtube or if you prefer, apps like Calm or Insight timer are great for beginners with lots of guided or unguided meditations.
Journal: Spend at least five minutes clearing your mind by writing down worries or gratitude. Journaling can be a powerful tool if you're under a lot of pressure, studying or working on a big project. Emptying your mind frees up that much needed space, helping to lessen overwhelm and improve critical thinking. Keeping a journal throughout my dissertation helped enormously and meant it didn't keep me awake at night!
Mindful walk: Plan a daily short and mindful walk outside when you can. This feels like a breath of fresh air, and is a great way to boost your mood while giving yourself that much needed mental refresh.
Sleep Quality
Nightime routines: We know that sleep is essential for our physical and mental wellness. If this is something you struggle with, experiment with an evening routine to help you unwind. If your mind races, have a journal next to you and dump them out – it's so effective and something that has helped me over the years. If possible, aim for 7–9 hours of restful sleep to allow your body and mind to recover and recharge for the next day.
Power naps: A 20-minute nap can refresh energy and enhance focus, however if sleep is an issue be mindful of this. My health condition (ME/CFS) means that a power nap will likely mean no sleep that night. But, when I was in the acute phase of the illness, it helped me manage my fatigue and still function for larger parts of the day.
Micro-rests: If like me a nap could potentially have the opposite effect, or if time is tighter, then simply closing your eyes for a few moments to recharge can help to reset your energy.
How to Include Intentional Rest
Remember, intentional rest is something that you need to plan for. When you build it into your daily routine, you lessen the risk of it being forgotten, especially during those high pressure times.
Plan Regular Breaks
Plan your short breaks throughout the day. Hold your boundaries with these, and block out your calendar as you would if you were attending a meeting. Use the Pomodoro Technique, or your version of it where you work for 25/30/45 minutes, rest for 5/10/15 minutes, and repeat throughout the day.
Use this time for walking, stretching, breathing exercises, arts and craft, preparing a meal, chatting to a friend on the phone etc. These pauses dotted throughout the day are a great way to recharge your focus and energy.
Stay Consistent, Even on Busy Days
Even when life is hectic, and you're approaching a tight deadline, still make rest a priority. It may look a little different to the times when you have more flexibility, but by continuing to prioritise rest, you're giving yourself and your brain the best possible chance to hit those deadlines.
Remember that consistency isn't about being perfect with it, it's about building those habits into your day-to-day life that will benefit your both today and in the longer term.
Tools, Resources & Support
Below are some of my favourite tools and resources:
Mindset & Wellness Worksheet Bundle – A set of worksheets and activities to help you improve your confidence and sense of wellbeing. A great selection of printable mental health & therapy & coaching tools for personal use, or to use with clients.
Canva Pro – Upgrade your content design with Canva Pro. Explore the enhanced features available in Pro. Grab your free trial here.
Etsy – Are you ready to create your own online store? Etsy is a brilliant shopping platform that's used by millions. Setting up your store is simple, and when you sign up with this link we both get 40 free listings!
Grow With Evelyn – Evelyn Weiss is an extraordinary coach. GWE is the best membership I've been in. The level of support, the courses, challenges & community are exceptional. Highly recommend if you're a coach, digital creator or small business owner.
Impact Stationery – Have you ever dreamed of creating your own high-end stationery products? Laura has an amazing course & community designed to help you created printed products that you can market on Amazon, or your own website. It's different to KDP in that they're not print on demand, and the quality of products are incredible.
Final Thoughts
Intentional rest and gentle productivity are two of the things that I am most passionate about. As someone who manages chronic health issues, fatigue and low energy, working this way has enabled me to continue being able to achieve my goals.
Rest used to be a swear word for me – I hated being forced to rest – but now, it's part of my life every single day. Yes there can be times when I'm working much harder / longer than others, but I always take those focus breaks and it's helped me massively.
Intentional rest isn't some fashionable new idea, it's a way of living and working that will help you achieve your goals without burning yourself out.
It's important to remember that rest isn't just about doing nothing, it's about making time to do things that are meaningful to you.
I would love to hear from you! How do you feel about Intentional rest? Is it something you do or that you're going to start to do? Share below ☺️
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Meet Lynsey
Hey there! I'm Lynsey, a coach, counsellor, and mentor for low energy, introverted or low confident female coaches & small business owners. With over 5 years’ experience of running businesses, and over a decade as a tutor and trainer, I've learned the value of effective time management that energises you through working with your energy.
I've lived with chronic illness – ME/CFS since 2011 and since then I re-trained as a counsellor, and achieved a distinction for my MA in Counselling and Psychotherapy Practice; all while running 4 businesses! I want that for you as well & it is possible with the right support and pathway to success.
Improving your mindset, finding acceptance and developing a solution-focused approach to achieving your goals is my passion. Blending mental health support where needed, as well as a supportive space and methods to manage your work more effectively.
If you'd like to know more about working with me, you can email [email protected] or find me on socials (links in the menu)
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