Three Things That Are Robbing Your Rest Every Day

Do you find it hard to make good choices with your time when you are busy? Were you hoping for a little rest in your day but instead you ended up feeling like this:

What happened?

There are a number of reasons you’re not resting like you should. Things like decision fatigue, mode confusion, and overload are rest robbers. Here's more information about each of them, and what you can do to minimize their impact on your ability to rest.

Decision Fatigue

How many small decisions do you think you make in one day? Research indicates that it can be as many as 35,000! One research study found that we make over 200 about food. Simply grabbing a bite to eat on the way to work involves lots of smaller decisions:

Eat at home or grab something on the way?

What are you hungry for?

Do you go to the fast-food restaurant that’s closest, or a little further to get what you’re actually craving?

Do you just grab a cup of coffee in the office?

We have so much information and freedom of choice that we are depleting our mental energy on trivial things. This leaves us precious few resources to make good decisions on items of greater significance. This is often referred to as Decision Fatigue.

According to a New York Times article by John Tierney, “Decision fatigue helps explain why ordinarily sensible people get angry at colleagues and families, splurge on clothes, buy junk food at the supermarket and can’t resist the dealer’s offer to rustproof their new car. No matter how rational and high-minded you try to be, you can’t make decision after decision without paying a biological price.”

If this scenario describes your workday, check out my article, How To Stop Decision Fatigue From Limiting Your Productivity for a more detailed list of the seven steps you can take to conserve (and/or replenish) your mental energy.

The seven steps Tierney shares include:

1. Schedule tasks requiring a significant decision earlier in the day

2. Choose one important factor on which to make your decision-and make it

3. Limit your choices

4. Use a timer to improve (and streamline) your decision-making process

5. Make decisions that free you from making more decisions

6. Leverage the mental energy of others

7. Be more intentional about restoring your mental energy

Mode Confusion

In a past Jones Zone, I talked about the concept of mode confusion. Technically speaking, “A mode confusion occurs when the observed behavior of a technical system is out of sync with the behaviour of the user’s mental model of it.” (Jan Bredereke, Axel Lankenau) Primarily, fighter pilots understand this well in that they know exactly what the role of autopilot is and what their responsibilities are in flying the aircraft.

The same concept can be applied to the idea of getting rest: we think we are getting into a rest mode but often end up unintentionally doing things that work against it.

See if this sounds familiar? You come home to relax after a long day, and you get comfortable, settle in and begin streaming a favorite TV show. But soon you check your tablet, scroll through social media, or maybe see a text you need to respond to. Your brain is getting confused when you SAY you want to rest but you keep making it work on other things. It’s in mode confusion.

Your brain is getting confused when you SAY you want to rest but you keep making it work on other things. It’s in mode confusion.

Instead of sending mixed signals to your brain, try simply planning to rest. Give yourself 30 minutes of “busyness” (check your social media, do a mental scroll through your to-do-list, etc) before you settle in to relax. By getting all the business out of the way, your brain is free to unwind.

If one of the last things you do before getting some sleep is check your phone for messages, you are keeping your brain in mode confusion. Checking emails at night can create open loops in our brains. Our minds dislike unfinished tasks and will focus on how to complete it rather than shut down and give us the rest we need. If you stop checking your emails at night as well as turn off notifications, you give yourself a better chance at getting some solid sleep.

Overload

We've become so busy that it's no longer about determining if the glass is half-full or half-empty. We often don't even notice there is a glass sitting in front of us.

Making all of those small decisions as well as making larger ones, can greatly contribute to your overload. Under a growing mountain of tasks and obligations, the person we strive to become gets squashed by unrelenting demands on our time and unrealistic expectations of ourselves.

Under a growing mountain of tasks and obligations, the person we strive to become gets squashed by unrelenting demands on our time and unrealistic expectations of ourselves.

The most underutilized weapon you have in battling overload is YOU! Where are YOU in all of your overload? Most likely you’ve made a habit of putting yourself last and focusing on others first. But just like in an airplane, if you don’t put your oxygen mask on first, you won’t be able to help the person next to you with theirs.

Here are 3 ways you can redirect some of your focus back to you:

1. Begin by stopping. Yes, although it seems contradictory to stop when there's so much to do, if you do not give yourself permission to stop, you are in danger of losing you.

2. Another thing you can do is tune into yourself. Taking moments of self-reflection are essential to renewing your energy. I’ve created a checklist of questions you can use as a guide to help you tune into yourself more effectively.

3. Finally, you can spice up your self-care by following the SPICES model. Oftentimes we don’t do a great job of taking better care of ourselves because we don’t know what areas to focus on. The SPICES model is a breakdown of 6 key areas to look at in your life to help you focus on personal renewal. These areas include:

Click here to learn more about the SPICES model.

As Alan Cohen, author of A Deep Breath Of Life said, “There is virtue in work and there is virtue in rest. Use both and overlook neither.” May you soon steal back some opportunities for rest in your day!

“There is virtue in work and there is virtue in rest. Use both and overlook neither.”

-Alan Cohen

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