Latest / The Confident Entrepreneur With Jennifer Ann Johnson / The Power of Productive Rest With Jennifer Ann Johnson
Transcript
- 0:38Jennifer Johnson: Today, I want to talk about something that I know affects almost every single person listening to this show.
- 0:44Jennifer Johnson: That nagging sense of guilt that creeps in every single time you try to take a break.
- 0:49Jennifer Johnson: You know the feeling I'm talking about.
- 0:51Jennifer Johnson: You've finally booked that vacation you've been promising yourself for months, and maybe for some of us it's years.
- 0:57Jennifer Johnson: And instead of excitement that we're feeling, it's this underlying anxiety about the work that's going to pile up while you're gone.
- 1:03Jennifer Johnson: Take a weekend off, and by Sunday afternoon, you're already mentally back at the office thinking about Monday morning.
- 1:09Jennifer Johnson: You try to have a lazy Saturday, and instead of relaxing, you find yourself feeling guilty about not being productive.
- 1:15Jennifer Johnson: I know that a lot of you are nodding along to this.
- 1:18Jennifer Johnson: You're not alone.
- 1:19Jennifer Johnson: I'm in the same crowd.
- 1:20Jennifer Johnson: More importantly, it's it's important to note that you're not broken.
- 1:24Jennifer Johnson: This guilt around taking time off isn't a character flaw.
- 1:27Jennifer Johnson: It's something that we've actually learned and something that our culture has been reinforcing for decades.
- 1:33Jennifer Johnson: But here's what I've discovered: learning to take guilt-free time off isn't about feeling better, it's about performing better, creating better, and living better.
- 1:42Jennifer Johnson: So today I want to dig into why we feel so guilty about rest and where it comes from.
- 1:47Jennifer Johnson: But most importantly, how to rewire our relationship with downtime so that taking breaks becomes a strategic advantage rather than something that we have to justify all of the time.
- 1:59Jennifer Johnson: So let's start out by understanding where this guilt comes from, because you can't solve problems that you don't understand.
- 2:05Jennifer Johnson: And the truth is that most of us didn't develop this guilt in a vacuum.
- 2:10Jennifer Johnson: It was carefully cultivated by years of messaging and personal experiences.
- 2:15Jennifer Johnson: Think about the messages that you maybe received growing up.
- 2:18Jennifer Johnson: I know I heard hard work pays off and success requires sacrifice.
- 2:22Jennifer Johnson: If you're not working, somebody else is getting ahead.
- 2:25Jennifer Johnson: I heard those all the time.
- 2:27Jennifer Johnson: They're not necessarily wrong, but they're incomplete.
- 2:30Jennifer Johnson: They teach us to associate our worth with our productivity and our productivity with constant motion.
- 2:37Jennifer Johnson: So I remember being praised as a kid for being busy, for having a full schedule, for always having something to do, for never being bored.
- 2:46Jennifer Johnson: The implicit message was that busy equals good, and not busy equals being lazy.
- 2:54Jennifer Johnson: That programming runs deep.
- 2:56Jennifer Johnson: Even now, when someone asks how I'm doing, my instinct is to respond with how busy I am, wearing that busy badge, as if that's a measure of how my life is going.
- 3:06Jennifer Johnson: Then you add in the modern workplace culture where being available 24-7 is seen as a dedication rather than poor boundaries.
- 3:14Jennifer Johnson: When taking all your vacation days is somehow viewed as less committed than leaving them on the table and we're responding to emails instantly, which I do all the time, is rewarded than taking the time to think and be slow about something.
- 3:29Jennifer Johnson: But here's where it gets really insidious.
- 3:31Jennifer Johnson: We've internalized these external pressures to the point where we police ourselves.
- 3:36Jennifer Johnson: Nobody has to make us feel guilty about taking time off anymore.
- 3:40Jennifer Johnson: We do it to ourselves.
- 3:42Jennifer Johnson: We become our own worst boss, our harshest critic, and our most demanding taskmaster.
- 3:49Jennifer Johnson: I learned this lesson the hard way a couple years ago.
- 3:51Jennifer Johnson: I've been pushing myself for months, working late nights and weekends and saying I'd take a break once the project was done or after the busy season.
- 3:59Jennifer Johnson: And then when it ended, of course, there was always one more thing.
- 4:02Jennifer Johnson: When I finally forced myself to take that long weekend, I spent the first day checking emails every 20 minutes.
- 4:08Jennifer Johnson: Second day, I kept thinking about all the things I should be doing instead.
- 4:14Jennifer Johnson: And then by the third day, I was so anxious that when I was so anxious as to what was waiting for me back at the office that I couldn't enjoy what I was doing.
- 4:23Jennifer Johnson: I'd given myself permission to rest, but I hadn't given my self that permission to actually enjoy the rest.
- 4:30Jennifer Johnson: So here's what we don't talk about enough.
- 4:32Jennifer Johnson: The guilt we feel when taking time off doesn't just ruin our downtime, it makes us worse at our work.
- 4:38Jennifer Johnson: When you operate from a place of guilt and anxiety about not working, you create a cycle.
- 4:43Jennifer Johnson: And that undermines the very productivity that you're trying to protect.
- 4:48Jennifer Johnson: Your brain isn't designed to be on all the time.
- 4:50Jennifer Johnson: I know that's a news flash.
- 4:51Jennifer Johnson: Creativity and problem solving and strategic thinking, they all require what neuroscientists call default mode network.
- 4:59Jennifer Johnson: Only it that only activates when you're not actively focused on a task.
- 5:03Jennifer Johnson: That moment in the shower when you suddenly have that breakthrough on a problem that you've been stuck on, that's that working right there.
- 5:10Jennifer Johnson: It's doing its job.
- 5:11Jennifer Johnson: But you can't let that do its job if you don't give it space to activate.
- 5:16Jennifer Johnson: I used to pride myself on being able to work long hours without breaks.
- 5:19Jennifer Johnson: I thought it made me more productive than people who needed that regular downtime.
- 5:24Jennifer Johnson: But what I didn't realize was that my quality of work was declining even as my quantity of hours increased.
- 5:30Jennifer Johnson: I was making more mistakes and coming up with fewer solutions that were creative and taking longer to complete tasks than I should have.
- 5:38Jennifer Johnson: So when you're feeling guilty about taking time off, you end up in what I call the burnout cycle.
- 5:44Jennifer Johnson: You push yourself until you're running unemptive.
- 5:47Jennifer Johnson: Then you feel guilty about not being at your best, so you push harder to compensate.
- 5:52Jennifer Johnson: And that depletes you even further and makes you even feel more guilty.
- 5:56Jennifer Johnson: And it continues.
- 5:58Jennifer Johnson: The irony is that taking regular guilt-free breaks prevents the cycle from happening.
- 6:03Jennifer Johnson: When you rest before you're actually depleted, you maintain a consistency that is of higher level performance.
- 6:11Jennifer Johnson: When you recharge proactively instead of reactively, you avoid that crash and burn pattern that costs more time and energy in the end than a regular break ever would.
- 6:21Jennifer Johnson: Are you catching what I'm putting down here?
- 6:24Jennifer Johnson: But perhaps the most important guilt-driven work is that, or when you when you work out of a guilt-driven space, it kills your innovation.
- 6:32Jennifer Johnson: When you're always feeling behind and feeling like you should be doing more, you default to that safe mode.
- 6:37Jennifer Johnson: You do familiar approaches, you don't have that mental space to explore new ideas or creative things.
- 6:43Jennifer Johnson: You become a productivity machine instead of a thinking and creating an innovative human being.
- 6:50Jennifer Johnson: Some of the best ideas have come from me during walks, vacations, lazy Sundays when I wasn't trying to think about work at all.
- 6:59Jennifer Johnson: But for years I felt guilty about that.
- 7:01Jennifer Johnson: I felt unproductive.
- 7:03Jennifer Johnson: So I minimized them.
- 7:04Jennifer Johnson: I was essentially cutting myself off from some of my most valuable resources and insight and creativity.
- 7:11Jennifer Johnson: So what are the steps?
- 7:12Jennifer Johnson: What can you do?
- 7:13Jennifer Johnson: The first step is overcoming that guilt about taking that time off, is reframing how you think about rest.
- 7:19Jennifer Johnson: Instead of seeing it as in an absence of productivity, start seeing it as a different type of productivity.
- 7:25Jennifer Johnson: View it as time that you're investing in yourself to increase the capacity of your work.
- 7:33Jennifer Johnson: Elite athletes understand something that knowledge workers often miss.
- 7:37Jennifer Johnson: Recovery isn't the opposite of performance, it's part of the performance.
- 7:42Jennifer Johnson: You don't get stronger during your workout, you get stronger during your recovery from your workout.
- 7:48Jennifer Johnson: And that same thing applies to your mental workout.
- 7:51Jennifer Johnson: When you take time off, you're not being lazy, you're allowing your brain to consolidate learning and process the information and restore your mental resources that you're going to need for future challenges.
- 8:01Jennifer Johnson: You're not falling behind.
- 8:03Jennifer Johnson: You're positioning yourself to leap ahead when you return to work.
- 8:07Jennifer Johnson: I started thinking about my breaks the same way that I think about my sleep.
- 8:12Jennifer Johnson: I don't feel guilty about sleeping eight hours at night.
- 8:15Jennifer Johnson: I at least I hope I can get that many or seven, because I understand that sleep is essential for functioning the next day.
- 8:21Jennifer Johnson: Once I started looking at it that way, from that lens, that guilt began to fade.
- 8:28Jennifer Johnson: Now, here's something that might surprise you.
- 8:31Jennifer Johnson: In a culture where everyone feels guilty about taking time off, actually taking guilt-free time off becomes a competitive advantage.
- 8:39Jennifer Johnson: Well, everybody else is out there doing their thing and burning out and operating at a 70% capacity.
- 8:44Jennifer Johnson: You're operating at 100% because you've properly recharged.
- 8:48Jennifer Johnson: It's not just a theory.
- 8:50Jennifer Johnson: I've seen it play out in my own career and in the careers of other people that I know.
- 8:54Jennifer Johnson: The ones that I've learned to, that have learned to rest guilt-free always outperform the ones who pride themselves on never taking breaks.
- 11:29Jennifer Johnson: So start thinking about time off as an investment rather than expense.
- 11:33Jennifer Johnson: When you take a day off, you're not losing eight hours of productivity.
- 11:37Jennifer Johnson: You're investing eight hours in returning to work with renewed energy.
- 11:42Jennifer Johnson: When you take a vacation, you're not falling behind on two weeks of work.
- 11:45Jennifer Johnson: You're investing two weeks and preventing months of lower performance because you're burnt out.
- 11:52Jennifer Johnson: Understanding why we should take off time off is really one thing, but actually doing it without guilt is another.
- 11:59Jennifer Johnson: So I'm going to share some practical strategies here that have helped me and other people that I know make this shift.
- 12:04Jennifer Johnson: So if you're someone who rarely takes breaks, don't start by trying to take a two-week vacation without that guilt.
- 12:11Jennifer Johnson: Start with small things, build up that confidence.
- 12:14Jennifer Johnson: Take a guilt-free lunch break.
- 12:15Jennifer Johnson: Spend a Saturday morning reading instead of catching up on work.
- 12:19Jennifer Johnson: Leave the office.
- 12:20Jennifer Johnson: This is a hard one.
- 12:21Jennifer Johnson: Leave the office at your scheduled time rather than hours later.
- 12:28Jennifer Johnson: And each time you take that small break, discover that the world doesn't end.
- 12:32Jennifer Johnson: You're going to build that evidence, and that's going to go against that guilt.
- 12:36Jennifer Johnson: And you start seeing that taking time off doesn't lead to disaster, it leads to returning to work refreshed.
- 12:42Jennifer Johnson: One of the biggest sources of guilt in the fear of returning to is returning to chaos.
- 12:47Jennifer Johnson: I remember this well.
- 12:49Jennifer Johnson: You can combat it by preparing your environment before you take time off.
- 12:53Jennifer Johnson: So set up your out-of-office messages, redirect the urgent messages to whoever it is that needs to take those messages, let your team know your priorities and clear your desk, make everything organized.
- 13:06Jennifer Johnson: Because the goal isn't to actually eliminate all the work while you're gone, it's to create systems that allow you to work without feeling that anxiousness with what's happening in your absence.
- 13:17Jennifer Johnson: Then expand your definition of what counts as productive time.
- 13:20Jennifer Johnson: Reading a book, taking a walk, or having a conversation with a friend.
- 13:24Jennifer Johnson: They're not unproductive.
- 13:26Jennifer Johnson: They're activities that contribute to your well-being and creativity and your relationships and really your overall satisfaction in life.
- 13:35Jennifer Johnson: Taking physical time off is easier than taking mental time off.
- 13:39Jennifer Johnson: Your body might be on vacation, but your mind might still be at the office.
- 13:43Jennifer Johnson: So practice creating those boundaries around your work thoughts and your downtime.
- 13:48Jennifer Johnson: I know it takes a lot of practice, and it's it's not about never thinking about work.
- 13:52Jennifer Johnson: It's just being intentional about when and how you engage the work into your thoughts.
- 13:58Jennifer Johnson: If a work idea comes up during your time off, write it down on a piece of paper because it gets it out of your mind.
- 14:06Jennifer Johnson: Then I want you to start paying attention to how you feel and perform after taking time off.
- 14:11Jennifer Johnson: Notice when you come back from breaks, if you have better ideas, more energy, sometimes it's just getting out of your environment.
- 14:19Jennifer Johnson: I started tracking my best and best ideas, and I was really surprised.
- 14:23Jennifer Johnson: Sometimes they came when I was floating in the pool or I was on the boat, or I literally went to a conference and sat in my hotel room for an hour after the conference, and things just came to me.
- 14:36Jennifer Johnson: Not all rest is created equal, and not all guilt about rest comes from the same place.
- 14:41Jennifer Johnson: Understanding the different types that you of rest that you need can help you address specific sources of guilt more effectively.
- 14:49Jennifer Johnson: So there's physical rest.
- 14:51Jennifer Johnson: That's the most obvious.
- 14:53Jennifer Johnson: Actually, stopping physical activity and letting your body recover.
- 14:57Jennifer Johnson: But this can even trigger guilt when you've been conditioned to associate physical stillness with laziness.
- 15:03Jennifer Johnson: This includes sleep.
- 15:05Jennifer Johnson: It includes taking a bath, getting a massage, lounging, just doing something other than moving.
- 15:12Jennifer Johnson: Then there's mental rest.
- 15:13Jennifer Johnson: It's giving your brain a break from processing information and making decisions.
- 15:18Jennifer Johnson: It's not, it's it's not engaging in repetitive activities.
- 15:22Jennifer Johnson: It's just being.
- 15:24Jennifer Johnson: And I know a lot of high achievers who struggle with this mental rest because they're used to their minds working on something.
- 15:31Jennifer Johnson: I am one of those people.
- 15:33Jennifer Johnson: And it's mental rest.
- 15:34Jennifer Johnson: It's not waste, it's maintenance, is how you have to think of it.
- 15:38Jennifer Johnson: Then we have emotional rest.
- 15:41Jennifer Johnson: This involves taking a break from managing emotions, whether they're your emotions or someone else's, especially if you're in your caregiver role.
- 15:49Jennifer Johnson: And this might mean spending time alone or with people who don't require that emotional support with you.
- 15:56Jennifer Johnson: I know it can feel selfish when you're used to being the person that others turn to for help, but you can't pour from an empty cup, my friends.
- 16:05Jennifer Johnson: And taking an emotional break allows you to show up more fully when it actually matters.
- 16:11Jennifer Johnson: Then there's creative rest.
- 16:14Jennifer Johnson: And creative rest is about stepping away from pressure to always produce.
- 16:20Jennifer Johnson: We're always putting stuff online, social media, that kind of thing.
- 16:24Jennifer Johnson: Maybe it involves actually visiting a museum, reading, watching a movie.
- 16:29Jennifer Johnson: I spend a lot of time in front of the TV at night sometimes just relaxing.
- 16:33Jennifer Johnson: I know you can feel guilty, but think about all of the creative things that are going to come after.
- 16:39Jennifer Johnson: Then there's social rest.
- 16:41Jennifer Johnson: Sometimes you just need a break from people.
- 16:44Jennifer Johnson: It's really important for introverts, but extroverts need it too.
- 16:48Jennifer Johnson: It may mean spending time alone again, walking outside, or again, being with people who don't need you to always talk.
- 16:57Jennifer Johnson: So the goal isn't to take one guilt-free vacation and call it good.
- 17:04Jennifer Johnson: We're done.
- 17:04Jennifer Johnson: The goal is to build this into your life.
- 17:08Jennifer Johnson: Don't wait for rest to happen.
- 17:10Jennifer Johnson: You need to schedule it.
- 17:11Jennifer Johnson: Put breaks in your calendars the same way that you're going to put a workout or going shopping or doing all those things.
- 17:16Jennifer Johnson: Put it on your calendar.
- 17:17Jennifer Johnson: I block out time on Friday, every single Friday.
- 17:21Jennifer Johnson: That is my time to do whatever I need to do.
- 17:24Jennifer Johnson: Every morning, I work out at 6 a.m.
- 17:27Jennifer Johnson: That's my scheduled time.
- 17:29Jennifer Johnson: Then creating rest rituals.
- 17:32Jennifer Johnson: Develop something that's going to help you transition from work mode to rest mode.
- 17:36Jennifer Johnson: It may be changing your clothes, whatever it is for you, come up with something that's a ritual.
- 17:42Jennifer Johnson: Then you need to communicate those needs to people.
- 17:45Jennifer Johnson: Be open with your team or your family or friends and let them know: hey, you know what?
- 17:50Jennifer Johnson: I just need to take a break.
- 17:53Jennifer Johnson: When you learn to take time off without guilt, the benefits extend far beyond just feeling better during your breaks.
- 17:59Jennifer Johnson: It creates what I call a ripple effect that touches everything in your life.
- 18:03Jennifer Johnson: You model healthy behavior.
- 18:05Jennifer Johnson: You're giving other people permission to do the same thing.
- 18:07Jennifer Johnson: And if you're a leader, this is really important.
- 18:09Jennifer Johnson: Your team is watching.
- 18:11Jennifer Johnson: They see how you handle work-life balance, and they're taking cues from you.
- 18:16Jennifer Johnson: You improve your decision making.
- 18:19Jennifer Johnson: Rest improves you, the gives you the ability to make good decisions.
- 18:22Jennifer Johnson: It reduces stress and makes things more clear, gives you perspective.
- 18:27Jennifer Johnson: When you're well rested, you're less likely to make reactive decisions and make more strategic ones.
- 18:33Jennifer Johnson: You increase your resilience.
- 18:36Jennifer Johnson: Guilt-free rest builds your resilience for handling challenges.
- 18:41Jennifer Johnson: When you're operating from a place of fullness rather than depletion, you have more capacity to handle unexpected stress, whether it's stress, setbacks, or demands.
- 18:51Jennifer Johnson: So as we wrap up today's episode, I want to leave you with this thought.
- 18:54Jennifer Johnson: The guilt you feel about taking time off isn't protecting your productivity.
- 18:58Jennifer Johnson: It's actually undermining it.
- 19:00Jennifer Johnson: It's not making you more committed to your work.
- 19:03Jennifer Johnson: That's a news flash, I know.
- 19:05Jennifer Johnson: It's making you less effective at your work.
- 19:07Jennifer Johnson: It's proving, it's not proving your worth, it's preventing you from operating at your full potential.
- 19:13Jennifer Johnson: So learning to take guilt-free time off is a skill.
- 19:16Jennifer Johnson: And like any skill, you know the drill.
- 19:19Jennifer Johnson: It requires practice.
- 19:20Jennifer Johnson: You're not going to flip a switch and suddenly feel completely comfortable with rest, but every small step you take toward guilt-free rest is an investment in your long-term effectiveness, your creativity, and your well-being.
- 19:32Jennifer Johnson: So start small.
- 19:33Jennifer Johnson: Schedule those small breaks.
- 19:36Jennifer Johnson: Reframe your rest as a strategy.
- 19:40Jennifer Johnson: Track how you actually feel and build those rituals into your transformation and your transition from work to rest.
- 19:48Jennifer Johnson: And most importantly, remember that taking care of yourself isn't selfish.
- 19:53Jennifer Johnson: It's necessary.
- 19:55Jennifer Johnson: You don't need to earn the right rest through exhaustion.
- 19:57Jennifer Johnson: You don't need to justify taking time off by working yourself into the ground first.
- 20:02Jennifer Johnson: That's rest is not a reward for productivity.
- 20:04Jennifer Johnson: It's a requirement for productivity.
- 20:07Jennifer Johnson: The world needs you at your best, not your most depleted.
- 20:11Jennifer Johnson: And your best self is rested.
- 20:14Jennifer Johnson: So give yourself permission to rest.
- 20:17Jennifer Johnson: Not someday when everything is finished, but today.
- 20:21Jennifer Johnson: Not because you earned it, but because you need it.