The Lazy Genius Podcast - #258 - The Seven Kinds of Rest and How to Know Which One You Need

Episode Date: April 18, 2022

Rest itself is such a needed thing for all of us. After all, a Lazy Genius principle is to schedule rest, mostly because we just let it happen and it never does. But I have also been paying a lot of attention to the different kinds of rest and why certain kinds don’t always land for us. Or why we take the time to rest but still feel unfilled after. A conversation around the nuance of rest is desperately needed, especially when a lot of us are working with less margin than we ever have before. So let’s dive in.   Helpful Companion Links This episode covers principles from my first book, The Lazy Genius Way. You can get a copy here. The Popcast with Knox and Jamie Episode 257: The Lazy Genius Guide to Work-Life Balance Watch The Lazy Genius Kitchen Video Series here Download a transcript of this episode   This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Amazon presents, Laura versus Fruitflies. Swarming your fruit and terrorizing your kitchen, these little freaks multiply at a rate that would make a rabbit say, yo. Chill. But Laura shopped on Amazon and saved on cleaning spray, countertop wipes, and fly traps. Hey, fruit flies, your baby boom ends here. Save the Everyday with Amazon. Hey there. You are listening to the lazy genius podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi. And I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today is episode 258, the seven kinds of rest and how to know which one you need. I'm so obsessed with this episode, even though it has not even started yet. It's just so needed. Rest itself is such a needed thing for all of us. After all, a lazy genius principle is to schedule rest, mostly because we just kind of let it happen.

We assume rest is going to come, but then it never does, right? But I also have been paying a lot of attention to the different kinds of rest and why certain kinds don't always land for us, or why we take the time to rest, but then we still feel kind of unfulfilled after. I think a conversation around the nuance of rest is desperately needed, especially when a lot of us are working with less margin than we ever have before. So I'm so excited about this episode. We're going to dive in.

First, I'm going to share the seven kinds of rest, and then I'm going to share just a few words about how you might know what kind you need to pursue and schedule. Also, these seven kinds of rest are totally made up for my own head, right? So this list is, it has nothing scientific about it. It's not researched. It is anecdotal. It's anecdotal. But I also think it's super helpful. So these seven kinds of rest are do you need to, number one, relax, two, reset, three, recharge, four, you need a break, five, you need to rest before something busy, six, rest during something busy, or seven, after something busy. Now, there is a lot of nuance in these seven things. And the problem with scheduling rest broadly, without naming the nuance of what you need,

is that you end your time of rest, whether it's an afternoon, an entire weekend, or just a walk around the block, you end that time unfulfilled. And you're still tired or drained or overwhelmed or whatever because you didn't fully engage in the detail of what kind of rest you need. Now, I do this all the time. And once I started noticing the differences, though, I was like, gosh, I just rested. Like, what's wrong? Why am I not rested? Once I started to notice those differences, it made a huge difference. Again, I'm sure that there are more kinds of rest that I'm sharing here. Like,

these are just my own experiences. But I think even though these are anecdotal examples, they're still going to be helpful. So I want to break down the seven individually. First, relax. I think this is sort of this standard, like most necessary kind of human rest we should all pursue for the rest of our lives. Like we all need to relax. We all need to not be productive purely for productivity's sake, right? We all need to just be a person enjoying life without feeling guilty about it. Now, the lovely thing about relaxation is that we all have different kinds of things that help us feel relaxed. It could be reading or doing some kind of quiet craft or activity. It could be moving your body with a hike or a walk or dancing or playing a sport with a friend.

It could be hanging out in a friend's living room or at a cocktail lounge or at a park and just chatting with your pals, right? It could be doing yard work. It could be sitting on your porch watching a favorite show. It could be cleaning your house. Now, that is not me, but I know a lot of you experience actual relaxation when you turn off your brain and you move your body and scrub something. Now, that one is like productive technically, but the relaxation builds out the task getting done. You know, like it's more important or whatever. Now, whatever it is, we all need to be able to relax to take a breath, to feel slower on the inside. This type is the first type I'm mentioning, because again, I think it's the baseline. This one never goes away, you know? Like relaxation

will always be, or should always be, part of your life so that you can do the work that matters and you can fulfill your life's purpose in a way that is healthy and balanced and fulfilling. And I believe it's something that we should all do every day that it is available to us. And if it's not available to us often to relax, I would ask you to schedule it, to work relaxation in some form for some period of time into your daily life. We all need to relax. It's like the mental experiential version of unbuttoning your pants or taking off your bra at the end of the day. So that's the first kind. The first kind of rest is relaxation.

The second kind of rest is a reset. This requires, I think, a different kind of energy. If you need a reset, it likely means you've gotten off the path of where you'd like to be. Maybe you haven't relaxed in weeks and weeks, and therefore you have not connected with the joy and calm and fun of being yourself in this world. And you need a reset to get back to the foundation of who you are. Or it could be more like logistical or practical than that. You've gotten off your rhythm or your routine in some area of your life. And because life doesn't stop, you haven't been able to take the time or find the margin to tend to this area that needs some tending. You need a specific amount of time to reset that thing. But ultimately, a reset to get you back on the path that matters

is what you're trying to do. If you're off that path, relaxation, it might not do it for you because you're not able to fully sink into yourself and actually relax because you're somewhere else. You're off your path. I don't mean like a purpose path, you know, like, I mean it can be. It could be that. But I mostly just mean that you live your life day to day. And then something gets off. It's kind of like how mail and paper are magnets that if you don't put Monday's mail in the mail basket or whatever, or you don't tend to something when you come home, even though that's a regular practice and you don't do it one time.

And then every day after, you just keep adding to that pile of mail with more mail. It's like it's a magnet. Mail is a magnet. Clutter is a magnet. Mental clutter is a magnet. And the pile becomes physically or metaphorically so high that it becomes disruptive, that you need a reset. Does that make sense? So I think it's important to name when you need a reset versus when you need to relax. I think often it's hard to relax when something very prominent in our lives needs a reset when it fills off. So if you are feeling that way. If you're feeling off, if you're feeling overwhelmed, and let's say you have like a Saturday

afternoon all to yourself, you might think, I should take a nap or take a walk or do something relaxing. And that could very well be true. But is there something specific in your life that unless it gets attention and even the smallest reset, it will just continue to make you tired? Then perhaps the better use of your time on that afternoon is to tend to that thing that needs a reset. Only you can know that, Maybe that's more important in that moment. Maybe that's a different kind of rest you need. And it could be a closet. It could be your own soul.

It could be that you need to spend your afternoon journaling or going to counseling and then talking to a friend after. Or you need to reset your homeschool room before the school year is over so that you're not drowning day to day and you can actually enjoy the end of school. You know what I'm saying? Does that make sense? So it's kind of like it could be really, really tangible. it can be really soulful and intangible.

But the second kind of rest is a reset, physical, mental, energetic. Just name where you feel off your intended path. What is a way that you can, we'll grab a lazy genius principle? What's a way you can essentialize that area and get rid of what's in the way according to what matters to you, right? If you are new to the idea of essentializing or any of the lazy genius principles, they're all in my book, the lazy genius way, there's like a chapter about each one, just so you know. Okay, so that's the second kind of rest is a reset.

The third kind of rest is to recharge. I think we need a recharge when we feel empty or behind. That is different than being off the path, right? That's different than being off. Being empty or behind is different. A reset is when we feel off and a recharge is when we feel behind or that we just don't have anything left. This is the type of rest that we're requires a lot of doing what makes you feel like yourself. And also maybe some sleep. I think a recharge needs sleep. I think a recharge also might need a longer runway as well, you know, a whole day, a weekend away, like taking a day off of work and planning, like takeout or spaghetti or delegating dinner if you have a family that you live with, like delegating

that dinner for that day so that you really do have like a whole day off. Like a recharge needs some space for a lot of deep breaths and for the widest experience of what makes you feel like you. For example, I took a like a recharge trip recently a couple weeks ago. I was feeling very behind and very empty. I was not off track. I didn't feel off track. I was just really tired and really draggy and I needed some space to feel like myself to move slowly through those things to not have anyone need me. That's a big one, you know, to not have anyone else's expectations exist for like 60 hours. And in those 60 hours, I mean, I listened to music, I took naps, I took my time making food, I watched shows, I went to a concert, I stayed up late and then I slept in because that's what

my body wanted to do. And at the end of those couple of days, I didn't feel behind anymore. I didn't feel empty. I got to recharge. You know, it's like a battery. Sometimes we got to plug it in for a little bit and do a few things that make us feel like ourselves. It's like relaxation, but for a long time. Maybe that's a good way of seeing it. Recharging is being able to relax for a while, like for a long while. And knowing that that's what you need, as opposed to, you know, to a reset or one of the other kinds of rest we're going to talk about, it helps you know how to spend your time. And you feel like the time that you did spend that it made a difference, right? The fourth kind of rest and possibly the most annoying because of how short and bursty and

emotionally tough it is is when you need to take a break. And needing and taking a break as opposed to to relaxing or taking a longer time to reset or recharge is mostly centered around those of you in a season of life where that season makes it much more difficult to take longer time away, even mentally and emotionally, like having tiny kids, having babies for sure, caring for a parent or a family member whose health is struggling. For many people, you are mentally always connected to your season of life. You're directly connected to using your body to feed a baby. You're directly connected to your teenager who's going through chemo.

You are directly connected to your mom who is in the early stages of Alzheimer's, and you're trying to figure out how to care for her. There are seasons of life where long periods of rest just aren't an option from like a logistical standpoint. If you have a newborn or your baby is still a baby, you are unlikely to even want to be away from your baby for longer than a day or two. Like just emotionally, it's like, I love her some. I don't want to leave her.

You know, like you do, but you don't. You know, it's like that pushpole. And then if you breastfeed, like logistically, you're working out the timing of a break with like how long you can go without pumping, you know? If you have a child or a parent or a dear friend who is in treatment for something life-threatening, you're not going to want to be away from that person for a very long time. Because what matters most is being there for them and with them.

And also you need a break. If you are in a difficult season of life, your kind of rest for a certain period of time is to get a break to catch your breath. To take a little bit of time away from the difficulty or the monotony or the sadness or the being consistently, even constantly needed. You just need a break. And if you name it as that, if you name it as taking a break, I think you're less grippy to make that time count. You're less resentful towards the person or the situation or the season of life that is making it difficult for you to recharge or relax. There's very little relaxing when you're in a season like that. But if you name it as a break, that little pocket of time,

that hour, that walk around the block, that meal in the sunshine while someone else holds your baby, those breaks feel impactful because you're not forcing them to look like something else. Some seasons of life only give us breaks, not a lot of like real deep, relaxation or recharging. And that's okay. It's hard, but it's okay. And it won't always be this way. But since it's this way right now, live in your season with kindness and honesty and take a break. We'll be right back. Aw isn't something we need to travel for.

It's something waiting for us in everyday life, whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art. I'm Dacher Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness podcast. Join me for Cities of Aw, a special series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Now, the final three kinds of rest are not based on your need or your season of life, but more on the timing of the rest. And those three that we'll talk about kind of together are rest before something big, during something big, or after something big. Now you get to decide what big is, by the way. But maybe you're a teacher, you know, maybe you're a teacher. A lot of you are teachers. And it's spring break right now. you might flounder a little in that time or have in the past because you likely need a few kinds of rest. You need to recharge because you're super tired. You need to reset something because

the life of being a teacher doesn't always leave much room for getting back on the path once you're off it. You need to relax. You know, maybe you just need to relax because you've been going and going and going like you want to have these moments of like being chill when you're on your spring break. And perhaps spring break is a way for you to rest before the craziness that is May in school. So even looking at your week of spring break, hypothetically, maybe the first day is just about relaxing. Maybe if it's a whole day, it is kind of like a recharge, you know? You eat fun, easy food, you read, you take your kids to the park with some friends, you just have, you know, conversation, you'd be in the sunshine, whatever. You're just relaxing. Then,

maybe you take a day to reset. Like, what's off? What needs attention? What if tended to would help make the rest of spring break and even the rest of the school year feel a little better, a little smoother? You know, take some time to do that kind of rest on purpose. Then recharge. Maybe you go on a solo overnight trip to just be able to sleep in or you even send your family to grandmas or camping or to Great Wolf Lodge or something for a night or two so you can sleep in your own house without anyone else there? And as you get to the end of your spring break, put on your metaphorical hat of,

I am resting to prepare for what's coming. And not in a like chicken little skies falling kind of way. It's not panicking, you know. You're just naming that you're about to enter another like quick hit busy season. So rest before that. prepare yourself on the inside and the outside, if you need to, for that in a way that matters to you. There's also rest in the middle of a busy something. We just passed April 15th, aka Tax Day, which I'm actually, as I'm thinking about it,

I'm pretty sure it was extended to today because April 15th was good Friday. So congratulations, we are still in tax season. But if you are an accountant, you have been busy for months, especially the last three or four. rather than waiting to rest until tax season is over. Next year, plan some rest in the middle. Plan an easy weekend or go ahead and know you're going to take a day or even half a day. On the occasional Friday or maybe even on a Friday before, like if there's a Monday when the office is closed or something, you know, you can take that Friday off and plan some rest in the middle during, right? it's kind of like getting a break, but a break that can be longer because no one is depending on

you the way a baby or a sick family member might be. And you don't have an emotional connection or obligation to the thing you're leaving. Like you can leave the taxes for a day in early March, you know? It's not like you're longing to be with them again. So rest during a busy season. And that is almost like an extended break. You're not resetting. You could be recharging, you're likely relaxing a little, but the point is where and when you're doing it. You're doing it in the middle of a busy season, like a break, because you will likely not be as okay at the end of that busy season if you don't take some kind of decent break in the middle, you know? I'm going to keep sticking with the accountants right now. I even think that it

could be like a decide once for you. Decide once is another of the 13 lazy genius principles. You decide that during March and April, within your power, you have one day or at least half a day in your weekend where you can just relax. That is a decision you make. End of story. Now, a lot of you have kids with like soccer games and you have church and chores and all the things. But in March and April, maybe you can be lazy about whatever you can for that season so that you can have a break during a busy time. can have some rest in the middle. You just block off Saturdays from four o'clock on as you're like, we're not doing anything stressful time. You eat out or you eat easy. You watch a movie as a family.

Or if your family is like mine and doesn't watch movies, you let your kids watch their own screens or do their own thing while you have your own movie night or something. I don't know. You can make choices that are different than what you would normally make in a busy season, and you should. I don't throw that word around very often, but right now, will. You should adjust as much as you can and be as lazy as your comfortable being in the middle of a busy season so that you can feel like a person. You're not going to ruin your kids or yourself by eating takeout seven Saturdays in a row. You're not going to. It's a season. And you're teaching yourself and your family how to deal with stressful times, how to manage

busyness, how to experience the permission to let some things go. It is a valuable life skill you can model, honestly. That's not like a cop out to make you feel better for choosing chicken nuggets or like a food truck at the park or something where you just like let your people run wild. Like, it's helpful. It's important. It is a valuable choice to be lazy about certain things in a busy season. It just is. And then finally, rest after. After. After. a busy season or a big project or, you know, fill in your own blank with whatever, but rest after. To me, this is like recharging, but with a celebratory bent. Like, you did it. You made it. You finished that huge report. You closed your classroom. You made it through that

season of travel. You presented at that conference. Your kid is going to preschool and you have time now. your daughter made it through chemo and has a clean bill of health. Like you made it. You need to mark those moments and seasons and rest after those moments and seasons with intention. I think about, I think about Knox McCoy and his family. Knox is one of the co-hosts of my favorite podcast, the pop cast with Knox and Jamie. And Knox's family, they like literally load up their vehicle like with their vacation stuff and their kids on the last day of school. They, pick up their kids from school, like at the actual school, and drive from school to the beach, like immediately. I don't know if they do that like all the time, but I know they have done it

multiple times before. That is like a big old, we did it. We are resting after, right? We are celebrating getting through school or that season or whatever. And that energy is different than daily relaxation, than recharging, then resetting, then getting a break, or then resting. before or during something, right? Is this not making sense? Like, these are all very different kinds of rest. They require different energies. They give us different gifts.

They take different amounts of time. They have different purposes. I wish I had thought through this and experienced this kind of nuance when I wrote The Lazy Genius Way because I would have included all this in that chapter on the principle to schedule rest. That's Life, man. We learn.

We iterate, right? We learned that last week in the episode about work-life balance. and then a little bit more two weeks before that in the episode about naming what matters, the power of iteration of starting small and making small changes over time. A significant through line in living like a lazy genius is to pay attention and iterate in small ways when you notice something. You don't figure it out all at once. I didn't figure out all of how to rest all at once, and I still wrote a chapter about it.

You know what I'm saying? Like we live, we experience things. We fail. We try. We celebrate. We have changing hormones and new babies and transitioning jobs and kids moving out and parents moving in and all kinds of things. Life is so dynamic.

And we all live well in that dynamism, which I'm pretty sure is a word, when we start small, when we adjust small, when we change our minds without guilt. And when we see that big ideas like rest are more nuanced than we realized. So I want you to think about what kind of rest you might need right now and then embrace it, make it happen. If there is a kind of rest you know you will need later, go ahead and start taking steps to schedule it. even if it's just like putting a block on your calendar, like weeks or months from now, where you intend to recharge or celebrate the end or give yourself space to rest in the middle or whatever it is, like go do that now. You don't have to book the Airbnb today,

but you can think about what you might need in the future. Just like put a flag there. No big deal. Start small. I really hope this episode is helpful in how you see and experience the specific rest that you need in the specific time of life that you're in. And I'm really excited for you about this. Like, I feel like this is a really freeing, a really freeing idea. Now before we go, let's celebrate the lazy genius of the week. This week is my friend in real life Haven Sink. I was at her house last week. And a few of us were like just standing around in her kitchen, you know, as we all do when we go to someone's house. She has three younger boys. And her tiniest one, he kind of toddled over to this big, deep drawer, low to the ground in the kitchen. He opened it. And that puppy was full of toys, full of toys.

I immediately gasped, and then I squealed, and then I declared it a genius decision. And Haven, she laughed and she said, this is how I keep this room feeling less chaotic. And I love this so much because Haven named what mattered to her, having space in the main room of the house, the kitchen, where her kids have access to toys, but they're hidden away. That way she can have less visual chaos, which keeps her a bit calmer. And I also love that it's using one thing for a different purpose than we assume. You know, we think that only pots and pans go in big, deep drawers. But if you have the space, or even if you don't, and it's better to store your pots and

pans somewhere completely different because having toys in that drawer matters more to you, you should put your kids toys in a kitchen drawer. You just should. I just love the choice and I wanted to share it with you. And even though Haven is hating this, congratulations, my friend. You are the lazy genius of the week. Okay. And if I can make all of you lazy geniuses of the week, I would.

You guys have been so amazing as we launched the lazy genius kitchen book and the video series this past week into the world. In case you missed it, I am releasing my second book, The Lazy Genius Kitchen, have what you need, use what you have, and enjoy it like never before. It comes out on May 3rd, super soon. And alongside that, we basically made a TV show. It's not on actual TV. I mean, you could stream it to your own TV. it's not like, you know what I'm saying. It's not like on a thing.

But it looks good enough to be. Like it really does. The production team at Unimutable did an amazing job. Now, the first episode has already released. I went to Sharon McMahon's house in Duluth, Minnesota. You might know her as Sharon Sessau on Instagram. And I helped her organize her kitchen utensils. And it was an absolute blast.

Now, the second episode will drop tomorrow, April 19th, at 2 p.m. Eastern. All episodes are doing that. And that episode is with the endlessly chic and incredibly funny Maddie James, whose problem was that she needed to cook more. So we lazy genius that problem for her. It is such a fun episode. I hope you love it. All information about the episodes, about the book, literally everything related.

It is your train station for all things lazy genius kitchen are found at the lazy genius kitchen.com. So you can go there for all the things. And I just am so grateful for your support. for buying the book, for sharing the videos. It is an absolute dream to have you guys in my corner, so thank you. Okay, that's it for today. Thanks so much for listening.

And until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra. I'll see you next week. If you ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life, it's so dangerous to live that more dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough.

Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A-plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.