It is the end of the year. The time that means a complete collapse in everyone's daily life and daily habits. Everyone goes into the slow and lazy flow where everyone ends up resting and building up energy for the year ahead.
In my opinion and looking back at the 4 months when I practised this, the best way to rest is to rest with a plan.
Rest planner
It might seem crazy, but while some people have a daily planner with what they will do and what meetings they would have, I, in turn, have a rest planner.
That rest planner includes what I have done and what I would want to do in my free time. Everything is blocked in 10-minute time slots that basically doesn’t allow me to waste my time doing mindless things for a minute here and there.
The rest planner does multiple things.
- It reality checks to see if that time is actually free, or is it better used to finish one of the side projects.
- A check to make sure that I have enough or too much free time, and also it allows me to increase or decrease the amount of work I do.
- Most importantly, it allows me to see straight away, whenever my activities that I do have any enjoyment and cognitive relaxation for me.
For example, many people love watching Netflix in their free time as it is the easiest and trained habit. Even though watching Netflix can help you get enjoyment, what you are doing is numbing yourself and your brain more often than not.
That is very bad for you and your creativity.
Amazing article by David Perell showcases all of this and explains his real-life example of how he saw for himself smart and effective, vs mind-numbing and depressive rest.
I choose to plan my free time as it certainly improves the quality and even the amount of time available.
Sometimes you spend a weekend “relaxing” and not really planning to do anything and the day flashes past you.
While if you planned your weekend with every time slot filled, it can feel that you might be even more tired and not relaxed, but if the activities that you planned are enjoyable, you will feel more rested, than after a full two week holiday.
The most awesome feeling is when you have somehow done activities that usually would take a whole holiday or at least a couple of weekends in a single day.
That is the power of planning.
Types of resting activities
I believe that the way you rest determines how much energy you have for the week or even a month ahead.
As we are usually swamped during the week with our day job, I tend to feel crushed on the weekends.
If I spend the weekend playing video games or staying at home and doing so called “nothing”, I would go into the next week with the same feeling being tired.
While, if during the weekend, I do activities that instead take effort and feel like a drag at first, in the process build up my energy and let every cell in my body enjoy themselves and truly rest.
That can seem counterintuitive at first, but you have to try and challenge yourself and you will understand what I mean.
New Year
Maybe you should use the new year holidays time as time that you can rest actively instead of mindlessly.
I truly hope that your holidays are spent with the family and doing the activities you love. I hope that you really enjoy yourself and get the energy back from the 2020 that was , em, bad?
2021 is in my head going to be amazing, and I hope that it will all start with amazing first week of January!
Have a great end of 2020!
Klim Y
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