Rest Isn’t a Reward

Takeaways

Our culture has taught us a myth that rest is a reward we need to earn and that our value is in what we produce. We are being formed by that story. The most important thing about our lives is not what we accomplish; it is who we are becoming while we're accomplishing it.

Have you ever felt guilty while resting?

Isn't that strange? We know rest is good for us. We prescribe it. We encourage it. We tell our employees to take their vacation. And yet when we finally stop, we feel guilty.

There was a season of my life when I was secretly proud of how exhausted I was. I never would have said that out loud. If you'd asked me back then, I would have told you I was simply passionate about my work. I was working in an organization fighting human trafficking. The work mattered, the stakes felt high every day, so I worked long hours, answered emails late into the evening, took calls on vacation. That's what people do when the work matters. Right?

Looking back, I think something else was going on. Somewhere along the way, without ever deciding to, I started believing exhaustion was evidence my life mattered. That if I was tired, I must be making a difference. That if people needed me, I must be valuable. I wasn't addicted to the work. I was addicted to the feeling of significance the exhaustion gave me. 

I don't think I was alone. Have you noticed that we admire exhausted people? The founder who tells the story of sleeping under his desk like it's a résumé line instead of a red flag. We don't look at these people and think, “That can’t be healthy.” There's a part of us that thinks, “They must be important.” Why? Because at some point our culture decided busy is admirable and exhaustion is a badge of honor. 

And here's the part that should concern us: this isn't just a story we tell ourselves; it's a pattern we’re building into our work cultures. Think about the last few people your organization promoted or celebrated— now think about their calendar the month before it happened. How many of them were running on fumes? Everyone around them knew it, and nobody said a word, because the results were good and the results are what got attention, not their humanity. Nobody designs a culture that punishes rest. It happens automatically if we keep rewarding the person who is responding to emails at 11 pm.

You can’t run 24/7 and be a great marathon runner. We know rest days are key to making you a great runner. So what's underneath our constant running?

The Lie We Believe

What if we’ve accepted a story that isn't true? A story that says rest comes later — after the work is done, after the busy season, after the promotion, after the kids are older. If I can just make it through this next stretch, then I'll rest. Except there's always another sprint. Another deadline. It's as if rest has become a reward we have to earn, and the finish line keeps moving.

I've come to call that the Myth of Earned Rest. It whispers that we have to earn rest – that everything has to be perfect before we can rest. That rest is a reward. That it’s optional – that we can keep functioning without it if we will ourselves to.  

I don't think we were born believing the Myth of Earned Rest. I think we inherited it. 

For most of human history, we were an agrarian society, and we were better at rest, because we followed the natural rhythms of the year. The soil needed rest, so people rested too. But over the past couple of hundred years, we've been shaped by the rhythms of production. The Industrial Revolution quietly taught us that value comes from production and that resting is falling behind. 

Living things don't move endlessly like machines. They move in rhythms. Your heart contracts, and then it rests. Muscles lift and then recover. Farmers have understood this for thousands of years. You don't plant every season. You don't harvest every season. Even the soil has to rest; if it doesn't, eventually nothing grows there.

Dead Batteries

I don't actually think most of us have forgotten how to rest. I think we've forgotten something much more important: what we believe a human being is. Because if you believe people are machines, the goal is optimization, efficiency, and no downtime. But if we believe humans are more like orchards than engines — if there are seasons, if the fruit only comes after dormancy — then rest isn't laziness. Rest is a key part of productivity.

Somewhere in there, we started treating ourselves like machines. Even our language betrays that we believe we are machines - “I'm running out of gas.” “My battery's dead.” Here's the problem: we make terrible machines. 

So the myth our culture tells us is that rest is earned or optional. That leads us to forget we are human, and that leads to something much deeper - we see ourselves like any other machine: that our value is determined by our productivity. Let me be clear: Work matters. Productivity matters. I’m not “anti-work”. But when work becomes the place where we prove our worth, we've asked it to carry something it was never intended to.

I've started to wonder if that’s why so many of us feel exhausted — not because we're working hard, but because our work is handed questions it can never answer. “Have I done enough?” Becomes “Am I enough?”  They're not productivity questions. They're identity questions. 

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that never shows up on your annual physical. Something inside you is running on fumes, but it won’t show in your blood work. You aren't tired. You're weary. And those are not the same thing. Tired people need rest. Weary people need to uncouple work from identity.

Story-Formed

Somewhere along the way, productivity stopped being something we do, and quietly became who we think we are. And once that happens, we don't just need rest from our workload. We need rest from the voice underneath it — the one that tells us we're never quite doing enough. That voice while you're falling asleep, running through everything left undone; on a Sunday afternoon, telling you resting today means falling behind tomorrow. Most of us have listened to it so long we've stopped noticing it's a voice at all — we just think it's true.

We are being formed by that story. The most important thing about our lives is not what we accomplish; it is who we are becoming while we're accomplishing it. How did we become people who feel guilty when we rest? Who apologize for taking vacation? Who answer emails from the sidelines of our kids' soccer games, or from the beach, or the hospital waiting room? 

Nobody sat us down and taught us that. So where does it come from? 

Maybe you've been treating rest like another achievement. Take vacation — check. Get more sleep — check. But that's not rest. That's just another list. You can carry a restless heart anywhere — you can bring hurry to a beach, anxiety on a vacation, striving into a day off. Your location changes. Your formation doesn't. I didn't need a better vacation strategy. I needed to change the story I'd built my life around.

Because eventually, every promotion, every accomplishment, every full calendar leads back to the same place. Who am I becoming? I used to think rest was what happened after the important work was finished. Now I think rest is part of what makes the important work possible in the first place — not because it makes us more productive, but because it helps us become more fully human. 

I hope you do meaningful work. I hope you build things that matter. I hope you serve people well. I hope you lead with courage. I hope you laugh often. I hope you spend time with people who remind you who you are. I hope you find places that quiet your soul. I hope your work becomes an expression of your humanity, instead of a substitute for it.

And when people who love you think about your life, I hope the first thing they remember isn't how busy you were, or how much you accomplished, or how quickly you answered email.

I hope they remember that they felt more alive when they were with you. Because in the end, I don't think the goal is simply to become someone who knows how to rest. I think the goal is to become the kind of person who no longer needs to earn the right to.