Working is important. It not only provides material means, social status and pride in a well work done, but also meaning and motivation which in tern extend a person’s life. According to some studies, people who retire and don’t find another activity, die fast. Or that tech millionaires are unhappy once they are let go or fire, or that lottery winners are miss the working.
However, resting is important too and helps to avoid burn-out and all kids of nasty nervous diseases which tend to decrease one’s life. Working productively while having rest once in a while is the best approach. 👨💻🔄🛌 What’s crazy is that many people do things which they think is resting but in fact they are draining their energy even more. Here are some of these things. Some of them might shock you!
- Going out on the weekend: Breaking your sleep cycle with loud noise, excessive drinking or eating - not good.
- Traveling, especially stressful traveling: Being in a nice place taken care of by the hotel staff and restaurants is nice but the traveling itself is almost always a stress (airport, planes, traffic). Trying new food and changing time zones are bad stressors to.
- Watching sports, TV shows or news: they all drain your energy because your body is passive yet emotions and adrenaline glands are not.
- Being on social media: More people feel depressed after using social media due to “success theatre” and the addiction mechanism of novelty.
- Multitasking: Not being in the present and flow state, e.g., when you at your kids soccer game, don’t text with work. That’s a disservice to you, work and your family. Be present whatever you do. Put your phone on an airplane mode. Most likely you are not a firefighter or a brain surgeon. You work can wait until the weekend is over.
- Not sleeping enough or waking up on the weekend at different hours.
- Eating refined carbs (pizza, pasta, juices, smoothies): Sugar is easily digestible form spike insulin and very toxic for your body.
- Not getting resistance training and doing too much chronic cardio: Chronic cardio is a huge stressor, tough on joints and ages people fast.
- Smoking weed: If smoking tobacco causes cancer due to the burned stuff that people inhale, then why burning weed and smoking it wouldn’t cause cancer too?
- Hanging out with “friends”: Wrong type of friends can bring drama and having too much drama in your life is not good for mental health.
- Postponing important things, i.e., procrastination: It might feel good short-term to postpone an important project or a decision but it’ll snowball stress in the long-term.
There are probably more things which are misleading to people. They mask as rest but actually suck up your energy. I would say not watching news or TV shows and having enough sleep are two most important which will give the majority the most bang for their buck. Focus on that if you feel tired!