Have you ever wondered why after sleeping fifteen hours you still feel exhausted? Why after spending thousands of dollars vacationing on a tropical island you forget your passion for life? We talk about going to karaoke, to nightclubs, to amusement parks to forget troubles and start a new day, but after having fun we return feeling only emptiness? Do we truly understand what rest means? Are we resting correctly? Do you really understand what rest is—a good night’s sleep or going wild?
What Is the True Meaning of Rest?
Rest means recovering from fatigue, relaxing your nerves, so when you reinvest in work and learning you feel energized and refreshed like a new person. If your rest method doesn’t bring you these results, then no matter how relaxing the activity sounds or how high it looks, it’s mistaken. Abandon these wrong old ideas and let science lead us through a rest revolution!
Misconceptions About Rest
First, let’s see what misconceptions we have about rest:
One: For Mental Workers, Catching Up on Sleep Doesn’t Help Much
You spent all day writing copy and chairing meetings. When everything’s finished, you sigh: “I’m so tired. I need a good night’s sleep tonight.” Our common sense makes our first response to fatigue simply “go lie down.” But this is a trap. Sleep is indeed an effective rest method, but it mainly applies to sleep-deprived people or physical laborers. For physical laborers, “fatigue” is mainly caused by large amounts of acidic substances produced in the body. If very fatigued, static rest should be adopted—through sleep, replenish lost energy and eliminate accumulated waste. If not too tired, rest in bed with eyes closed and body relaxed first, then get up and move around. If you work in an office… your cerebral cortex is extremely active while your body is in low excitement. For this fatigue, sleep doesn’t help much (unless you’ve been working overtime without enough sleep). You don’t need “stillness” to recover energy—you need something to relax your nerves. This explains why staying home all weekend leaves you sluggish, but just thirty minutes of swimming after work leaves you refreshed.
Two: Don’t Stop—Just Change
Since sleep isn’t helping our brain rest, what can? The answer is: don’t stop activity, just change its content. The brain cortex has over ten billion neurons with different functions arranged in various combinations creating different functional areas. When one area is active, another rests. So by changing activity content, different brain areas get rest. Psychophysiologist Ivan Sechenov conducted an experiment. To eliminate fatigue in the right hand, he tried two methods: one was static rest of both hands, the other was static rest of the right hand while the left hand moved appropriately. Testing right-hand grip strength afterward showed fatigue disappeared faster when the left hand was active. This proves changing activity content is indeed active rest. If you spent five hours Friday writing business proposals, you’d better spend Saturday pruning your potted plants rather than sleeping to noon. There’s another point: when you can’t switch from mental to physical labor, consider switching within mental labor. The French Enlightenment thinker Rousseau shared his experience: “I am not naturally suited for studying, because when I concentrate too long I get tired—I can’t focus on one problem for more than thirty minutes. When facing multiple problems, it’s best to alternate! Don’t finish one before starting another or you’ll be consumed quickly. I can study several different problems continuously without breaks and think through them easily one after another—one problem eliminates the fatigue from another without needing mental rest. So in my studies I fully utilized this characteristic, alternating between problems. This way even working all day I felt no fatigue.”
Three: Best Rest Rekindles Life’s Passion
Our exhaustion mainly comes from boredom with unchanging life. So the best rest is activities that rekindle our passion for life and work. If after finishing something you can happily sigh “tomorrow is a new day,” then that activity is the best way to restore passion and adjust emotions. Unfortunately, we lack imagination about “rest.” We can only think of either sleeping or playing foolishly. We’ve prepared an activity list below. The basic idea is solving “tired” with “doing”—replacing passive indulgence with active rest. Of course, you need to explore what works best for you. If you find cleaning more relaxing than riding roller coasters, then go ahead—never mind what others enjoy. Try these 7 methods:
- Instead of going to bars Saturday night, sleep at 10 PM and wake at 7 AM to walk empty streets or watch a morning theater you’ve never seen—you’ll discover this day is completely different from millions of past weekends.
- Replace two hours of reading something you love with singing tired karaoke songs.
- Stop finding entertainment at familiar vacation resorts. Find a street you’ve never walked and complete it. You’ll discover this city you thought was boring still has charm you never fully appreciated.
- Travel with curiosity about places themselves and good intentions about your journey, experiencing different lifestyles—not just taking a five-hour flight to mahjong, swim, or play in a different location…
- Socialize! Don’t think it’s always exhausting. Though slightly more tense than reading, it creates excitement and belonging. You should spend two or three days weekly with people outside work and family circles. It keeps you lively in nine-to-five routine drudgery. Women especially need to get out with friends—these moments you’re not a neutral efficiency-stamped person but a charismatic focal point.
- Starting this weekend learn a new skill like synthesizer, drums…practicing 1+ hours weekly.
- Do something difficult if you’re extremely mentally tense. Psychologists find relieving nervous tension means handling problems requiring that tension. One CEO on the verge of collapse was advised to become a lion tamer at the zoo. He fully recovered in a month. So when under extreme pressure you can find another job—just not similar to your career. Try volunteer work at an orphanage, learn as apprentice at a complex mechanical factory, or solve an extremely complex math problem.
Those who truly cherish life seek rest at any cost. Rest ten days, two weeks, and they return transformed! What a miraculous change they’ve undergone! They’re like newborn people—vibrant, energetic, with new hopes, new plans, new life dreams, having eliminated fatigue and gained momentum for new journeys—fuel. Spending time resting gives you vast energy and strength, enabling you to handle any work and problems, giving life pleasant and correct understanding. Can any other time investment benefit you more? When I hear someone say they’re too busy working to rest, I think something’s wrong: either their abilities inadequate for their duties, work lacks system, they’re bad at delegating (so everything stops without them), or they’re too stingy with time. Even bathroom time they won’t sacrifice. Of course, if work lacks planning or system so everything stops in their absence, they naturally can’t rest. But if you’re organized, if work is systematic and planned, moderate rest is profitable business investment—returning energized with sharper focus and fuller spirits, thus longer life and fuller value realization. Everyone should abandon the notion “as long as life continues, fighting continues”—that’s wrong and should be erased immediately. Otherwise before completing life’s journey you’ll lie in the earth, and your ideals, prospects, career become bubbles. Therefore those unwilling to take time for rest are absolutely not wise. Humanly speaking, rest benefits outweigh drawbacks. The old saying goes: “When ill, everyone is someone.” Even the kindest soul becomes unreasonable and irritable when exhausted and nerve-wracked. Therefore when needing rest, rest. Otherwise as revolutionary leader Lenin pointed out: “One cannot work without knowing how to rest.” Currently whether you’re student or any working person young or old, don’t ignore nature’s warnings commanding adequate rest extension, temporarily stopping study or work. Otherwise you’ll face strict punishment by natural law. Regardless of position or wealth, all are equal before life. This is heaven’s authority through nature’s judge—an unchangeable natural law.
There’s a feeling we call boredom—these past days I’ve been experiencing it. Months of busy rhythm creates stubborn funny biorhythms preventing me from enjoying quiet rest moments, always feeling something missing in leisure, sometimes even thinking I understand emptiness. Recently reading an article, I discovered something called “enjoying boredom.” Traditional education warns “boredom” is negative emotion—an ambitious person absolutely shouldn’t feel it, shouldn’t even allow such emotion to emerge. Carrying too much responsibility, we live exhausted. We nobly blame external pressure but I think most is self-imposed—in this pressured society we never learned stress relief. Looking at people quietly resting on beaches, we should understand boredom is a rare state, perhaps harder to achieve than diligent busy work. It needs good mindset, far-sighted vision—accept it first, let your heart settle, then truly enjoy it. It’s absolutely not decadence—it’s recuperation, accumulation, letting us quit “only working” addiction. People told us long ago: those unable to rest cannot work. But we’ve forgotten due to utilitarianism. So we rush, we toil, thus we fear boredom, fear idleness, even nearly panic in leisure. Work shouldn’t be life’s entirety—work serves better living. We should be work’s masters, never its slaves. Never think boredom is negative or unethical. So busy people should learn enjoying life, get used to experiencing boredom, get comfortable with this novel wonderful feeling! Living peacefully!