The Life Changing Difference Between Pausing & Resting (And Why You're Burning Out)

Welcome to the 10 Minute MBA, I'm your host, Scott D. Clary. On the 10 Minute MBA, I give you tools, tactics, strategies, and insights that you can use to start scale, grow, and 10X your business. Let's get into it. Hey, it's Scott here. Today, I want to speak about pausing versus resting and the life-changing distinction between the two. It's a super important topic to me because I feel like in the world that we live in now, the lines between pause and rest and work and work and life, they're so blurred, more than ever before because everybody's working from home. So I want to ask a question to kick this off and hopefully after watching this, you'll be able to understand the distinction and then ultimately optimize your life so that you get a little bit of both in the way that will actually end up saving your life in the long run and ultimately what I mean. So let me ask you this question. When was the last time you had a rest and by rest, I don't just mean lunch break. I want you to think beyond your afternoon break or coffee or your half day off. I feel very strongly that the word rest is way overused. We use it in North America and other parts of the world are adopting North American habits which I think are sometimes negative and some parts of the world that do understand rest better than us. But we use it to describe a few minutes of downtime between checking emails and attending meetings and then checking emails and attending meetings and jumping on a call and going to a client and so on and so forth. Those are pauses. Those are not the kind of lengthy mindful breaks that we actually really, really need once in a while. And I know what you're thinking, Scott, when do you want me to take a break? I have three kids. I work full time. It's not even in my vocabulary. To that, I'd say it's time to get creative. It's time to change your perception of what it means to rest. And there's a lot of misconceptions around rest. A picture of this. Saturday after long 40 hour plus week, I know 40 hours is like a part time job for me. I mean, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm building stuff all the time. I can go from when I wake up to when I sleep every single day of the week, seven days a week. So you're desperate for a break and you can't wait to dive into your weekend plans. You read books, you lounge around the house, you get some errands done, some personal stuff. You spend the time with the family and the week can fly by as per usual and you're back to work Monday after two blissful days of rest. That's the normal schedule, right? Here's the problem. You're still completely and utterly exhausted. Doesn't make any sense at all. Didn't you go to bed at 8 p.m. sharp for three nights in a row? Didn't you take two hours out of your weekend to sit in the park to do some yoga? The answer is yes. But you also did something else. Whenever a work email lit up your phone screen, you took 10 minutes to type a reply. You also spent about 30 to 45 minutes each day reading up on industry news and trends. And if that wasn't enough, you agreed to a quick Zoom call on a Sunday night to help a colleague with a tech problem they were having. So yes, perhaps you spent most of the week in resting, but you weren't taking a proper break from work, you were just pausing it. There is a life changing difference between pausing and resting. Pauses and rests are two different things. Let's go back to the source, take a look at their definitions. A pause or a break is a short rest period between two tasks or during the same task. A rest is a period of time in which you cease from action motion work or performance of any kind. I understand that these two definitions hold many similarities, but did you catch the difference? A pause anticipates resumed action, while a rest does not. When you take a pause from work, be it your lunch break or on a Sunday afternoon, you're doing so with the intention of getting back to your tasks. The same is not true for resting. When you rest, there's no expectation that you'll return to it after a certain amount of time has passed. To rest is the fully step away and disengage from whatever it was that occupied your tension beforehand. This is the life changing distinction between these two very different activities. Pausing can help you feel refreshed and energized, but it won't ever give you the same level of emotional and mental clarity as a proper rest. Resting is about creating space for yourself to think deeply, reflect on life, and gain new perspective. It's about knowing when to step away from the chaos of everyday life in order to nurture your mind, body, and soul. Why do we need vacation days? I was reading an article in Forbes yesterday and it brought this whole tension, issued to my attention in the first place. Did you know that taking vacation days is literally a matter of life and death? If you work 55 plus hours per week, you're 35% more likely to die from a stroke than if you worked 35 to 40 hours. Unfortunately, taking vacation days isn't a strong suit for Americans and Canadians. The United States is literally nicknamed the No Vacation Nation. That's not admirable, that's sad. Because it isn't just stroke, risk, work, and holics that need to worry about this. Workers who don't take vacations are more likely to suffer from heart disease, metabolic syndrome, as well as heightened stress, and that's only scratching the surface. We can take all the lunch breaks we want and take as many weekend Pilates classes as we want. But without days of complete and total detachment from work related thoughts or activities, we won't ever experience the true power of rest. Let's speak about the psychology behind all of this. There are so many fascinating points to unpack when it comes to the psychology of rest. First, note that our brains are only wired to handle a specific amount of focus. So if you prolong that focus, our brains become overwhelmed and fatigued. Research actually shows that our brains are designed to switch back and forth between periods of focus and relaxation. Now, scientists are still figuring out exactly what happens when we focus on a certain task. We do know, however, that it takes a lot of mental energy. That's why it feels so draining when we've been working on something for too long. The role of resting then is to allow our minds time to recharge and process the information we've taken in. It's also a chance to emotionally detach ourselves from our work to gain perspective on it, which can help us become more creative problem solvers in the long run. So what happens when you rest? Believe it or not, your mind doesn't suddenly lie dormant when you enter rest mode. Instead, you actually activate a circuit in the brain known as DMN or default mode network. This circuit is responsible for many of the things that make us human, like our ability to reflect on the past and plan for the future. When this circuit is activated, it helps you connect with your inner self, your hopes and dreams, goals and feelings while also helping you process past experiences. In other words, it's a chance to develop emotional intelligence while being in tune with your emotions. When rest is interrupted, it really screws up this entire cycle. It's unfortunately easier than you might think to interrupt this state of rest. Just because you're at home on the couch instead of sitting at your work doesn't trick your brain at all. All it takes is one work email or a text to throw off that balance. The reason this is such a problem is because of something called task switching. This happens when we move back and forth between different activities and it takes our brains more energy than if we just stayed focused on the one task. That's why multitasking can be so exhausting and actually doesn't exist even if you think you're good at it. Since our work lives are so often drenched in high levels of pressure and stress switching from a restful reading session to a work related task like responding to an email on your phone can be an abrupt and overwhelming transition. You're suddenly launched back into a mental office environment which can be difficult to return to a state of rest. This is why vacations are so beneficial. They give you prolonged amounts of time to remain in a restful state without interruption. But you're saying, hey, but Scott, we don't all get vacations. Our world would be a lot healthier if everyone got vacation weeks during the year. It's simply a fact. Vacations are linked with much better health outcomes for those fortunate enough to have them. But the unfortunate reality of life is that most of us don't get the chance to take extended vacations. Some of us are so entrenched in the work of a hollow culture that even if we earn vacations we don't take them and we can't afford them and they just end up being wasted. This is where we need to get extremely strict and disciplined with ourselves. You need to set a schedule for working out, so why not set a schedule for resting? It's equally as important. The most important element of taking breaks from work, whether over the weekend on vacation or in a few hours between end of day and dinner time, is your ability to completely switch out of that work mode. That means being totally disconnected from all of it, work all slack, messages, emails even, the company social calendar. Your periods of rest should have nothing to do with work whatsoever. Even a quick 5 minute window spent replying to a boss's email is enough to derail your momentum and keep you in work mode for the rest of your break. Your brain doesn't get a chance to truly relax and reset. So what are some strategies? I've had to embrace restful discipline in order to combat things like burnout, exhaustion and overworking myself. Here are some of my top tips for protecting your peace during rest. Use your phone's focus mode. If you've got an iPhone or any other phone, you may have seen the cool feature where you can toggle between focus modes. For instance, there's a do not disturb preset with blocks all notifications from coming through when enabled. I recommend creating a new focus that only allows notifications from loved ones. Walk out all of your work related apps and contacts, set aside one hour each day for a guaranteed rest. We all lead busy lives and it's easy to neglect rest. Make sure to give yourself that one hour every day where you do something that's completely disconnected from your work. Get a calendar and literally pencil in that hour of rest each day depending on your schedule. When make your plans transparent, sometimes the pressure to overperform at work prevents this from taking proper breaks. So we feel obligated to stay available 24-7 so turning off our phones on the weekend feels unthinkable. There's a simple solution for this. Make your plans known. Let your teammates and your managers know that for your health you are proactively staying away from work related activities on certain days. The pressure immediately lifts and you can take a true break. Don't wait for the weekend. I strongly believe that we need to take complete breaks from work every single day, whether you do that in the hours before work after work or both. Let your work day end at the same time each day and respond to emails first thing in the morning instead. Keep in mind that resting doesn't mean you can't focus at all. In fact, I think it's super beneficial to take up a solid hobby. You can invest your time and energy into on weekends or after work. The only requirement here is that you keep work out of it. Now, another question that comes up would be what if I'm on a call, because I fully recognize and respect that not all employees have the same benefits. Many of you are entrepreneurs and in fact, you probably don't even know what a weekend feels like anymore. How can you rest when every day calls for your professional input? My solution to this remains the same, discipline. You need to break up your days into sections so that at least a portion remains sacred. So if you are on calls all day, on the weekends, whatever, you got a block shit. You got a block time for calls, for rest, for focus work. For example, if you respond to messages and emails every single day, get them all done in a block on weekend mornings so that you can enjoy the rest of your day free from work-related stress. And you can do this every single day with blocking things. You just have to set yourself up for success and set expectations across your organization. If you have peers, let them know when you're available. This is something that is the default mode when you work with people in different time zones. But when you work with people in the same time zone, many people don't appreciate or try to create a work schedule where they block off parts of the day for certain tasks. It's wildly efficient and helps with rest. So the key is not to let yourself switch from work to rest without any regulation, because that's not true rest, okay? So this is why you have to architect your environment to support what you're trying to do. Now, to wrap this up, I will always be an advocate for rest. It's not enough to simply pause. We need real, deep rest that excludes work from our minds. Discipline is a great tool. It helps us make this happen. It allows us to separate work, life, and rest life in a way that we can actually manage. If you have feedback on how to regulate rest in your own life, please, I would love to hear some strategies. And if you have never thought of this before, I encourage you to try out some of the tactics I just spoke about and see how it influences your work performance and your health and well-being. If you enjoyed this, if you're watching it on YouTube, please leave a comment below, like, subscribe. And if you're listening to this via podcasts, share this with somebody who'd find it useful. And as always, give me some feedback on other topics you want me to dive into.