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So many of us strive to be more productive, creative and effective in our work, and most people believe the best way to do this is through force, pressure and criticism. We commonly tell ourselves and our employees to just make it happen or power through, with further admonishment not to complain about feeling overwhelmed or worry about being tired.
But research and experience suggest we're doing it wrong: placing inflexible demands on ourselves or our employees will not result in better performance. And any good manager knows using criticism (or self-criticism) to motivate only causes anxiety and resentment and undermines morale and confidence. Sadly, most of us continue using these techniques, though we know they're ineffective and unsustainable in the long run. Leaders continue working 60-hour weeks, sending emails to their staff at 2 a.m., trying to gain a competitive advantage over rivals; office professionals stay at their desks through dinner to increase their output; supervisors push factory workers to do more faster; and writers worry about their daily word count. All this strain and struggle to get work done is causing a crisis of burn-out and dissatisfaction, and even physical and mental injury and strain.
A simpler and more effective way to work better is to learn to incorporate rest into your schedule. Rest is a state of present-moment awareness of your mental and physical experience. Rest is actively not doing — it's when the mind and body are still and relaxed, yet awake and alive. Most of us think of rest as whatever we're doing when we're not working, but that's not true. Sitting on your couch watching a movie might be pleasurable, but it's not rest — your mind is still busy taking in sound, light and story, making judgments and figuring out plot and characters, and you might also be eating, drinking, walking around, using your computer or having a conversation with someone. With so much vying for your attention at the same time, it's impossible to let your mind and body truly settle down. Effective rest means that you bring your attention to just one place — the here and now.
You can rest in the here and now anytime. Put down your devices, shut off your music or television and stop talking. Notice your body — feel your feet on the floor, take a few deep breaths and feel any places of tightness or tension. Close your eyes or just keep them still — don't let them move around. Pay attention to the thoughts that are arising, but don't get caught in them. When you realize that you're thinking about what time you're having lunch, or replaying a conversation you had with a colleague last week, come back to the here and now by taking a breath or hearing the traffic outside the window. You might feel bored and have an impulse to make something happen — to stand up, or think about a book you read, or try to remember the last time you got a haircut. When this happens, gently return to the here and now by inhaling and exhaling, bringing your attention back to the present moment.
If your thoughts and emotions are upsetting or overwhelming, you might not want to really rest. You might want to avoid your feelings, preferring to have a drink after work, take medication to help you sleep or keep your mind constantly busy with something else, like entertainment or recreation. Although there is nothing wrong with having a glass of wine to unwind, taking medication when you need it, or enjoying yourself, if you're unable to pay attention to your present moment experience because it's stressful or boring, you'll create pain, fatigue and unhappiness for yourself. Learning to rest in the here and now alleviates the discomfort of struggling against our experience and enables us to just allow our life as it is right now, without trying to improve it or control it.
These moments of ease through rest give your mind and body a chance to recharge, reducing tension and improving energy. Regular periods of rest can allow us to view difficulties from a fresh perspective, making room for creative solutions and new approaches to arise and improving our capacity to solve problems. Resting in present-moment awareness also contributes to greater concentration and focus, making it easier to stay on task and execute to completion, and it develops our capacity to let go of habitual reactions and self-limiting beliefs, restoring confidence in our abilities and enabling us to approach our jobs, projects and tasks with interest and curiosity, rather than with anxiety and dread. Rest is an essential ingredient for productivity, and when practiced regularly, we can do our best work consistently, over time, with confidence, competence and ease.