Leonardo da Vinci said, “Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer.”
I remember when I first started telecommuting (that’s what we called it back in the day at PwC – PriceWaterhouseCoopers). One of the greatest challenges was making time for “rest.”
Because I had associated being Home as REST since I traveled 70% of the time as a Road Warrior, it was confusing to now call home my office and figure out when to rest.
I was terrible at it. I did all the wrong things at first. I would work no joke from 6am to 1am to be on calls with various other time zones in the world. I would take breaks to teach yoga then get back to work.
My diet was terrible. I didn’t plan times to eat like I did when I was in the office so as a result I wouldn’t eat until 11pm. (On the other hand some of my friends who telecommuted would eat non stop.)
I worked MORE than when I went downtown Chicago to the Amoco building to my office.
I had to learn better ways because I could see that after a year with unhealthy habits I was going to burn-out if I kept going like this.
Eventually I got asked to create a better system to interview internal candidates for telecommuting and create helpful tips and techniques training for Telecommuters.
FAST forward to 2020. I haven’t been in one place this much for 16 years. No kidding.
I fell into some of the old bad habits early on working 18 hours day after day.
And some of my techniques like going to an “external office” like a coffee house were off limits. Or scheduling lunch with a friend, also not an option..REST is a Job.
For some people 2020 has been a whole lot of doing nothing.For others of us 2020 has been non stop doing, doing, doing to stay afloat and survive this turbulence.
I’ve updated my Tips & Techniques for Working from Home on my personal blog, Loving Your Day.
If you don’t schedule Rest it can easily get skipped. If you don’t schedule a “day off” per week or two each week flows into the next and a month goes by without a true day off.
It takes WORK to rest. Let’s not kid ourselves.
We NEED it. The benefits are many. One of the big one’s for me is:
**It offers us an opportunity to reflect and feel into how things are really going. To check into what we value, evaluate if we are staying true to our non negotiables. Take the temperature of our relationships, including the one with ourselves. It allows you time to celebrate what you’ve accomplished. You’ve come so far already so give yourself some credit..If you are only busy and not making time to rest what can happen is you look back a the year and realize you created a ton but you didn’t enjoy it as much as you could have.
Now let me also say this, if you are the head of household wage earner with dependents, or single, or were downsized, had your employment and earnings shrunk this year then there may not be as much time for rest – but there is still some.
TODAY PLAN SOME FUN: Get some rest beautiful people.As my first philosophy Teacher the Cat in the Hat wisely said, “It is fun to have fun but you have to know how.”
What do I do for FUN? I ride my bike for FREE. I sit by the ocean for FREE. I dance in my kitchen for FREE.
This is part of my #25DaysofZen program on teachable for $25. Each day has a theme – this belongs to the theme BALANCE.
