How to Rest Better: A Guide to Deliberate Rest

The gist: Discover how deliberate rest can help you recharge, avoid burnout, and boost productivity when you’re neurodivergent or chronically ill.

Most people that get into personal energy management end up quickly discovering that not all rest is created equal.

Just like different productive activities consume different amounts of energy (for example, consider 2 hours of housework vs. 2 hours of answering emails), different restful activities restore different amounts of energy.

Yet too many of us prioritize deep, deliberate work that requires lots of energy, then try to recharge with tiny amounts of shallow, haphazard rest.

No wonder we end up exhausted and, eventually, burnt out.

Because to be able to do deep, productive work, you need to balance it out with deep, intentional rest.

Just like productivity, rest is a skill that requires practice and intention to do well, but most of us don’t do that.

So we end up not knowing how to give ourselves the rest we need, or even that we need it.

It’s time to change that.

What is deliberate rest?

Deliberate rest is a coined termed by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang in his book Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less.

The term is a play on the self-improvement and productivity term “deliberate practice,” which K Anders Ericsson coined to describe kind of practice, well, practiced by the world-class performers he studies.

But those top performers didn’t just practice differently than their peers, they also rested differently, and it’s this kind of rest that Pang refers to as deliberate rest.

Most of us think that rest is just the absence of work, but it’s not that simple.

The absence of work might not further drain you of energy, but it also doesn’t give you any energy back…doesn’t restore or recharge you.

Deliberate rest is intentional and actively engages and stimulates you in some way.

As Pang describes on his blog, “brilliant, accomplished people are thoughtful about how they rest; they’re mindful about it; they do it regularly, almost rigorously; and far from being just a respite from their working or creative lives, it becomes an essential part of those lives.”

That is deliberate rest.

Why does it matter?

Just like an engine can't keep running without refueling, your mind and body can't keep performing without proper rest.

When you practice deliberate rest, you're not just taking a break. Like I said before, deliberate rest isn’t just the absence of work.

You're actively replenishing a kind of energy you’re depleted in.

This intentional approach to energy management and rest can improve your productivity and creativity, keep you in a better mood, and prevent burnout.

I know “magic fixes” don’t exist, but this comes pretty damn close. 

Examples of deliberate rest

To help you get a better idea of what deliberate rest looks like, let’s compare a few haphazard rest activities to more deliberate versions of them:

• Social media use
  • Haphazard rest: Mindlessly scrolling social media discover feeds, with no purpose or time limit.
  • Deliberate rest: Spending a 5-minute break catching up on the latest posts from a specific creator whose content you enjoy.
• Watching TV
  • Haphazard rest: Putting something random on just for something to do, and keeping it on while you multitask…even though you don’t really like it.
  • Deliberate rest: Making an “entertainment event” out of watching your favorite show, and avoiding multitasking.
• Practicing a hobby
  • Haphazard rest: Cramming things you feel like you “should” do (exercise, meditation, journaling, etc.) in between items on your to-do list and calendar, just to be able to say you did them.
  • Deliberate rest: Prioritizing and “blocking out” extended periods of time to actively engage in hobbies you actually enjoy.

Requirements for deliberate rest

As I mentioned in the introduction, most of us don’t realize rest is a skill we need to improve at. That means you may have a bit of learning to do before you can practice deliberate rest effectively.

Here’s what you need to rest deliberately:

• The mindset that deliberate rest actually matters as much as work.
• What the different types of rest deficits (social, creative, mental, physical, etc.) feel like for you, how to identify when you need rest.
• What kinds of activities you find recharging, and which types of energy they recharge the most.
• The commitment to build boundaries between work and rest.

How to practice more deliberate rest

If you’re realizing that you need to build up your deliberate rest skills, here are some ways you can get started:

• Try to make a regular practice of checking in with yourself to see how your energy feels. Things like daily and weekly resets, journaling, and energy tracking are very helpful here.
• Start building a toolkit of different restorative rituals for different kinds of energy drains. Have “go-to” ways to recharge socially, mentally, etc. when you need rest, so that you don’t have to spend more energy figuring out what to do.
• Make space for different kinds of rest in your weekly routine.
• Create boundaries for yourself so you stick to that routine.
• Use that space to experiment with different kinds of deliberate rest and get more proactive about resting, refilling your tank before you’re running on empty.

Get more deliberate

Now that you understand what deliberate rest is and how to practice it more intentionally, it's time to start getting more deliberate about your own rest.

Remember: the quality of your rest directly impacts the quality of your work, so treating it as a priority is one of the best things you can do for your productivity and balance.

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