Host
Sheila Griffin
Podcast Content
Even just a few minutes of rest from a variety of types of activities can help you feel more productive, creative, and content in your day. For those who do information-driven work, or who spend a lot of time at a computer, letting the mind rest may be particularly beneficial. Although it may sound counterintuitive, the time spent on Rest Actually Makes You More Productive. In fact, studies show that taking too much mental rest can actually extend your recovery time, making you more responsive to tasks when you get back to them.
Pushing through the soreness and exertion rather than giving your body proper rest could actually hurt you in several ways. Exercising every day, without taking any days off, causes physical as well as mental fatigue. If you are exhausted, the best thing you can do for your body is get a good nights rest, then hit the gym again the next day.
You are still going to need some rest, and the goal is to go back to sleep ASAP. Go to bed and wake at the same times every day, even on weekends or when traveling. Try to keep differences between weeknights and weekends in your sleeping schedule to no more than an hour. If you are working nights, though, you may have to take an extra nap in the afternoons before you go to work in order to make up for your sleep debt.
While you may not control factors that impede sleep, you can embrace habits that promote better sleep. Talk with your doctor about changes you can make to help get better nights sleep.
Feeling drowsy during the day, and being told that you are loud-snoring at night, can be signs you have sleep apnea. If you are constantly drowsy, or if it is difficult for you to get enough sleep at night, it might be time to talk to your doctor. If you feel tired and cannot perform your activities for more than 2 to 3 weeks, you may have a sleep issue. Waking up each day feeling tired is a sign you are not getting the sleep you need.
Most times, when we feel exhausted, we try to make up for it by getting more sleep. As you can see, sleep alone cannot get us back to a state where we feel rested.
It is time we start to focus on getting the proper types of rest that we need. Once you find the type of rest that you need, it is time to adjust your rest to meet this particular need. Making sure that you are getting all of the different types of rest requires changing your thinking. Taking advantage of both types of rest will have the biggest impact on your bodys energy levels.
By giving yourself ample amounts of rest, you are helping give your body the energy needed to do its job. Keep body temperature where it is comfortable for you so that you can rest. Get extra sleep, if possible, or snuggle up with a blanket and read, complete a crossword, or watch TV. While you will need more rest and sleep than usual, you will not need 100% total rest.
The issue with sacrifice is sleep provides you with the energy needed to get back on track for another hectic day. While getting some extra sleep may help you recover from the occasional night of bad sleep, in the long run, this is not a smart strategy. Making sure that you are getting plenty of sleep each night may help boost your immune system so that you do not catch the illness again. Developing good sleep habits at night may help you have a better nights rest.
You can keep yourself from becoming really exhausted by building in opportunities to take breaks during the workday. When you accept that being busy does not necessarily equate to being productive, you can incorporate rest into your day without feeling guilty.
Most of us see rest simply as a lack of work - it is not a value unto itself. When we treat rest as an equal partner in work, acknowledge it as the creative minds playground and launching pad for new ideas, and learn ways to rest more efficiently, we lift it up into something precious, one that can help to soothe our days, order our lives, free up our time, and help us accomplish more by working less. You can enjoy rest more deeply, and feel more refreshed and restored, when you just put some extra effort into it.
Rest time gives you time to recover from the strains that you put on your joints and muscles, it keeps you from getting tired and burned out, and it may even help you push past that tough plateau that you might have been facing. Sleep allows your body and mind to rest, giving your body energy for greater productivity, and boosting your mood, which helps you feel refreshed while dealing with stress.
For you, resting socially may mean reconnecting with old friends that understand how you think and feel without a long explanation. If you are needing emotional rest, then you may also be suffering from social rest deficiencies.
It is probably easier to know if you are lacking physical rest: Your body tells you whether you are hurting or if you are getting enough sleep. We go through life thinking that we are rested because we are getting enough sleep -- but we are actually missing out on other types of rest that we desperately need. Our nations current form of rest is to cancel plans and watch TV -- a move doctor Saundra Dalton-Smith says may actually lead us to exhaust ourselves even more than we did beforehand, because most of us need screen time.