Rest Is Not Optional

My daughter recently completed her first year as a military officer. Not long afterward, we had the opportunity to spend ten days together exploring Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. We hiked, drove through some incredible country, saw wildlife, explored waterfalls and geysers, and spent a lot of time outdoors. At one point during the trip, she commented on how much she appreciated being mostly unplugged and, in her words, simply being able to let her mind rest.

That comment stayed with me because the trip itself was hardly inactive. We walked a lot. We hiked. We were up early on some mornings and covered plenty of miles. Physically, there were days when we were probably more active than either of us would have been during a typical workweek. Yet she experienced the trip as restful because the part of her that had been under the greatest demand for the previous year was finally getting a break.

Her first year as an officer had required a great deal from her. There were new responsibilities and expectations, long days, constant learning, decisions to make, problems to solve, and people to lead. For ten days, much of that mental demand was set aside. Her responsibilities hadn’t disappeared, and they would still be there when she returned, but she no longer had to carry them every waking moment.

I suspect many leaders can relate to that, particularly today. For those of us whose work is primarily done with our minds rather than our hands, fatigue can be difficult to see. We may spend much of the day sitting at a desk, working on a laptop, attending meetings, answering messages, or talking on the phone. From the outside, it doesn’t necessarily look strenuous. But our minds may be continuously processing information, shifting between priorities, making decisions, solving problems, responding to people, and anticipating what comes next.

Technology has made some parts of our work easier, but it has also made it possible for work to follow us almost everywhere. There is always another email we could answer, another message we could check, another document we could review, or another problem we could think about. We can physically leave the office and never really leave the work.

That is one reason I think we need a broader understanding of rest.

We Already Understand the Principle in Athletics

The relationship between exertion and recovery is well understood in athletics and strength training. Exercise places stress on the body. That stress provides the stimulus for growth, but the adaptation doesn’t happen simply because we keep adding more stress. The body needs time to repair tissue, replenish energy, and respond to the work that has been done. In strength training, muscles actually become stronger through the cycle of exertion followed by recovery.

No serious athlete would assume that the answer to getting stronger is simply to train the same muscles harder every day without allowing them to recover. Eventually, more training without sufficient recovery stops helping and starts working against the desired result.

Yet leaders often approach their work as though our minds operate under a completely different set of rules.

We keep going. Another meeting. Another decision. Another deadline. Another conversation. Another issue that needs our attention. When we begin to feel depleted, our instinct is often to push harder rather than recover. We tell ourselves that we’ll slow down when things settle down, when the project is finished, when the busy season ends, or when we’ve finally caught up.

The problem is that the work rarely reaches a point where everything is finished.

Mental Work Requires Recovery Too

The effects of fatigue on cognitive performance are well documented. Inadequate sleep and prolonged mental strain can affect attention, judgment, emotional regulation, problem-solving, adaptability, and the ability to make good decisions. Those aren’t peripheral capabilities for a leader. They are central to the job.

And sleep, while essential, is only one form of recovery.

Sometimes what we need is not physical inactivity but relief from a particular kind of demand. That’s what struck me about watching my daughter during our trip. Hiking through the Tetons wasn’t physically restful. Spending a full day exploring Yellowstone wasn’t sedentary. But she wasn’t constantly evaluating situations, making leadership decisions, responding to messages, or thinking several steps ahead.

Her body was active while her mind was getting a different kind of space.

That distinction feels increasingly important in a world where so much of our work is knowledge work. A person can sit in a chair for eight or ten hours and be exhausted at the end of the day. The fatigue isn’t necessarily muscular. It comes from sustained concentration, constant switching of attention, interpersonal demands, decision-making, and the feeling that our minds are never quite allowed to shut off.

Rest, then, doesn’t always mean doing nothing. It may mean doing something entirely different.

A hike can be rest. Working in the yard can be rest. Cooking, fishing, reading, traveling, exercising, sitting beside a lake, spending time with family, or simply being somewhere our phones don’t work very well can all provide a form of recovery. What matters is that we temporarily stop placing the same demands on ourselves that have been depleting us.

Rest, Restoration, and Renewal

I’ve started thinking about rest, restoration, and renewal as related but slightly different parts of the same process.

Rest is stepping away from the demand. It is creating space between ourselves and whatever has required our sustained attention, energy, or effort.

Restoration is recovering what that demand has depleted. We regain energy, patience, perspective, emotional capacity, mental clarity, and sometimes even physical strength.

Renewal goes a step further. It is what can happen when the space created by rest allows us to return with something we didn’t have before. We may see a problem differently, rediscover our creativity, recognize that something we’ve been treating as urgent really isn’t, or remember why the work matters to us in the first place.

The goal isn’t to escape responsibility. It is to return to it better able to carry it.

The People Around Us Experience Our Fatigue

This may be the most important reason leaders need to take rest seriously: our fatigue rarely affects only us.

The people around us experience the version of us that we bring to them. Our teams experience our patience or lack of it. They experience whether we’re really listening or simply waiting for the conversation to end so we can get to the next thing. They experience the quality of our decisions, our ability to stay calm when something goes wrong, and whether we have enough mental and emotional capacity to notice what they need.

Our families experience it too. They often get whatever attention, patience, and energy remain after work has taken its share.

That is why I don’t think rest should be viewed only as self-care. There is certainly a personal benefit, but for leaders there is also an element of stewardship and responsibility. The people who count on us deserve more than whatever happens to be left of us at the end of a long stretch of continuous output.

They need our judgment. They need our patience. They need our attention. They need our creativity. They need our presence.

They don’t need perfection, and none of us will operate at our best every day. There will always be demanding seasons. Sometimes leadership requires long days, difficult weeks, emergencies, sacrifice, and periods when we have to give more than usual.

But there is a difference between a demanding season and a permanently depleted way of living.

One may occasionally be necessary. The other eventually becomes unsustainable.

Rest Isn’t the Opposite of Responsibility

I think this is where many leaders struggle. We become accustomed to being the people others rely on, so stepping away can feel irresponsible. There is always something else we could be doing, someone we could be helping, something we could be preparing for, or a problem we could be solving.

If our standard is, “I’ll rest when everything is done,” rest will almost always be postponed.

Athletes don’t treat recovery as something they earn once training is complete. Recovery is part of training. The stress and the recovery work together to produce the adaptation.

Perhaps leadership requires a similar mindset.

Rest is not something we earn only after we have completely exhausted ourselves. It isn’t evidence that we are less committed, less driven, or less responsible. It is one of the disciplines that allows us to continue doing demanding and meaningful work well over time.

Those ten days in the Tetons and Yellowstone eventually ended. My daughter returned to her responsibilities, and I returned to mine. Nothing about the trip made the work disappear.

But that was never the purpose.

Rest doesn’t remove the work. It restores the person who has to do it.

And when other people are counting on us, that makes rest far more than optional.