You can't really be on form if you don't know how to truly switch off. Jess Stuart explains.
I’m just back from a month’s holiday and I’m feeling the benefits of some deep rest, powering off and taking some down time. It’s not something we often allow ourselves in an ‘always on’ culture. While I loved the break I also found it challenging at times to give into rest.
We live in a world that celebrates hustle. In many workplaces and personal circles, productivity is currency, and rest is often mistaken for laziness. We reward overachievement, admire the ability to ‘push through,’ and wear exhaustion like a badge of honour. But at what cost?
Despite our obsession with performance, many of us are running on empty. Burnout is widespread, creativity is stifled, and our ability to focus is challenged by constant stimulation. Ironically, what we need most to function at our best isn’t more effort, it’s deep rest. Yet, the art of true rest is something we struggle to embrace.
Why we struggle to rest
Deep rest isn’t just a nap or a Netflix binge. It’s the kind of recovery that restores our nervous system, replenishes our mental bandwidth, and reconnects us to our sense of self. It’s deliberate, intentional and often deeply uncomfortable.
Not only is it uncomfortable but rest has been devalued. In our culture, we avoid it because rest is often seen as something you earn after the work is done, if there's time left. We equate busyness with importance and productivity with worth. The person who stays late at the office or answers emails at midnight is often seen as more committed, more driven. And so we keep going, because stopping feels like failure.
Add to that the psychological payoff: being busy makes us feel needed, important, even virtuous. It can distract us from discomfort, from feelings we’d rather not face. Stillness, on the other hand, can feel confronting. To be alone with our own thoughts, without distraction, is something many of us have forgotten how to do. It’s why it’s so tempting to stay busy and why rest can easily be ignored. Slowing down, paradoxically, can feel harder than speeding up.
The performance benefits of rest
Deep rest is essential not just for our wellbeing but for our performance. The science is unequivocal: rest improves focus, fuels creativity, strengthens decision-making and boosts resilience. In 2024 a group of medical scientists published a study on deep rest and concluded it reduced stress, boosted energy and enhanced emotional resilience and cognition.
I’m often telling myself that rest is not time away from work, it is the work! I’ve had to learn this over years though and via a period of burnout which has made these lessons even more valuable. Even when I became my own boss and could set my own hours I’d feel guilty for taking breaks, I’d feel pressure to be at my desk all hours despite no boss watching me. I’d still get that achievement high from productivity focused time, even if the quality of what I was producing was suffering as a result of this approach.
Things are different now and my energy is greater, my focus more sharp and as a result I produce more quality work. My business is thriving and yet so am I. I work hard and I can be found in my hammock in the garden at 3pm, enjoying the afternoon sun, or a yoga class at 11am or a surf when the swell and tides happen to align between 9am and 5pm on a week day.
The delusion of hustle
Hustle culture has glorified overwork, but it's increasingly being called into question. The World Health Organisation has now officially recognised burnout as an occupational phenomenon. Productivity experts warn against the diminishing returns of long hours. And yet, many of us still feel guilty when we’re not working.
We’ve internalised the belief that our value lies in what we do, rather than in who we are. This is hard to shake. Rest doesn’t deliver the immediate external validation that work does. It doesn't fill your inbox or impress your boss. But it does something much more powerful: it sustains you. It re-centres you. It gives you access to your full intelligence, your creative spark, and your grounded self, something no amount of hustle can replicate.
Reclaiming the art of rest
So how do we re-learn the lost art of deep rest? It starts with redefining what rest means. True rest isn’t just physical, it’s mental, emotional, and spiritual. It’s stepping out of ‘doing’ mode and into ‘being’ mode. We must give ourselves permission to pause; not because we’ve earned it, but because we need it.
Take Ayesha, a senior leader in a fast-paced law firm, who prided herself on being the first one in and the last to log off. Her relentless drive and constant availability were praised, until they weren’t. After months of brain fog, emotional exhaustion and sleepless nights, she hit a wall during a key strategy meeting when she couldn’t recall basic facts she once knew instinctively. It was the wake-up call she needed.
Stepping away for six weeks, Ayesha began to unravel her identity from her busyness and discovered how uncomfortable stillness really felt. But through intentional rest she not only recovered but began to lead with more presence, creativity and clarity. She told me; “I used to believe being busy made me important. Now I know being well makes me powerful.”
It takes courage to rest in a world that never stops. It takes clarity to know when to step back, and confidence to believe that your worth isn’t tied to your productivity. But when we reclaim rest, we reclaim our power.
Four ways to tap into deep rest today
1. Schedule white space (periods without tasks) and protect it like a meeting.
Treat rest as a non-negotiable appointment that you block out in your calendar.
2. Disconnect to reconnect.
Deep rest requires disconnection from stimulation. Start with a tech-free hour each evening, put your phone in another room, turn off notifications, and allow your nervous system to come off high alert.
3. Learn to sit with stillness.
If being still feels uncomfortable, you’re not alone. Try gently leaning into stillness: sit with a cup of tea, gaze out a window, or lie on the floor without distraction. If you feel the urge to get up and break the stillness, sit with it some more, let it break and wash over you like a wave.
4. Explore restorative practices.
Not all rest looks like sleep. Explore what restores you: yoga, breathwork, guided meditation, forest bathing or even quiet time with pets, craft or cooking.
The art of deep rest is less about doing nothing, and more about reconnecting with everything that makes you whole. It’s time we stopped seeing rest as an escape from life and started seeing it as the gateway back to it.
SHARE ME