Work Hard at Rest

This post will apply to only half of you.

I’m task-oriented. I tend to focus on tasks more than people when planning my day. If that’s not you, you can stop reading now. Someone’s probably calling your name right now. You should check just in case.

The problem for those of us who are task-oriented is that it can be hard to rest.

When I began a sabbatical in 2010, I benefited from a wise mentor. He gave me an assessment to measure my capacity to rest. He explained that not everyone has that capacity. It needs to be nurtured and developed. Thankfully, my assessment showed that I was capable of resting well.

My mentor, though, knew that I’d struggle to rest well for three months. My task orientation would get in the way. He solved this by giving me an assignment: make rest my task every day.

It worked. Every day I structured my schedule around the task of pursuing rest. If I had fought my task orientation, I’m sure that I would have had a frustrating sabbatical. When I leveraged my task orientation to facilitate rest, I found myself refreshed.

If you’re task-oriented, figure out what brings you rest. Add those to your task list. And then check off those items as you accomplish them. It sounds stupid, but it works.

I write this now because I’m preparing for vacation next week. I have a mountain of tasks to complete before then. But next week I’ll have an entirely different set of tasks meant to accomplish only one thing: I’ll be working hard at getting rest.