The Productivity Lie: Why Resting Might Be Your Best Move All Week
Remember the banana bread era?
When we were all baking it (mostly for the compost bin), on top of learning Japanese, perfecting the Single Ladies choreography and reading self-help books by the dozen?
A few weeks in, realising everyone else was at it too, you started to wonder why? Why weren't we thriving in this productivity bootcamp? Why were we exhausted, lost (and still locked in)? Yet the trap had been set: productivity = worth.
That pressure to always do more never really went away.
But we might finally be making a breakthrough. Wellbeing gurus now question: what if the thing that actually makes us more productive… is rest?
The Guilt Gremlin
Do you ever feel guilty watching Netflix when the dishwasher is calling your name? Or doom-scrolling when you “should” be filling out proposals? That sneaky little voice tells us we’re lazy if we pause.
But pause is where the magic happens.
Studies show that our best ideas often come not when we’re grafting, but when we’re zoning out - walking, showering, doodling. Your brain’s “default mode network” (DMN) lights up in rest. Your DMN is a bunch of regions in the brain that are highly active when you focus inward.
You don’t know it, but you’re stitching together memories and sparking creativity. Basically: your brain gets busy when you stop.
My Lightbulb Moment
I’m a serial self-nagger. I tell myself I don’t do enough in the hours I have. But when I take my notebook to the park and just… sit? That’s when ideas tumble in. The overwhelm dissolves, creativity flows, and I leave feeling lighter, sharper, and - ironically - ready to work again.
Rest isn’t indulgence. It’s self-love. It’s fuel.
I discovered this at the start of this year when I completed a ten week programme that merges mindfulness with understanding your inner gremlins. Positive Intelligence gets you to pause, refocus and clock that devil on your shoulder so you can build resilience and accept that you’re not always meant to be operating at turbo speed.
Why Your Brain Needs “Unfocus” Training
We spend so much energy training our minds to focus harder, longer, faster. But what about training it to unfocus?
When you let your focus brain switch off, your DMN doesn’t just make you creative - it helps you reflect, connect dots, even (according to Harvard research) predict what might happen next.
Some call it mind-reading. I call it business-boss superpowers.
A quick win to channelling unfocus mode: Box breathing. You’ve probably heard of it, but maybe not the sciencey bit: it activates your parasympathetic nervous system, calms the mind and clears away the cobwebs. Just typing that made me calm.
Why not try this one now, and drop a comment below if you notice any changes!
ADHD and the Tricky Side of Rest
Here’s where it gets interesting. In people with ADHD (hi!), the DMN doesn’t switch off properly when it’s focus time. Which explains why resting - or rather toggling between rest and focus - can feel extra challenging, giving us our ‘restless’ or ‘fidgety’ reputation.
The good news? Simple techniques like box breathing, grounding exercises, or even a quick walk can help bring you back into focus when your brain feels stuck in “always-on” mode.
A book I highly recommend if you’re also diagnosed (or have your suspicions) and identify as female, is A Radical Guide for Women with ADHD, a workbook to owning your mind and donning your powers.
Rest ≠ Laziness
Let’s reframe this: resting is not doing nothing. Procrastinating is not avoidance. Resting is where your ideas bake, your body restores, your sense of self returns.
Rest doesn’t have to mean face-planting after lunch by the way. It could be any time you ‘switch off’:
Going for a screen-free walk
Taking a shower
Mini mindfulness practices
Dancing in your kitchen to old school bangers
Little resets create bigger leaps into juicy ideas and fresh trajectories.
Finding Your Rhythm
Another game-changer for me was - brace yourself - planning. I dumped every task (work, life, admin) onto a big sheet of paper, then mapped them towards my bigger goals. Suddenly I wasn’t just spinning plates; I had a path.
And if you’re a woman, cycle-syncing your work can be a next-level power move. Since I did mine, I try to stick to: Pitching and networking during ovulation, reflect and plan during menstruation, and ideate in the follicular phase. Biohacking your cycle isn’t woo by the way - it’s science-meets-productivity.
If you haven’t read all about it, I’d recommend this book for a deep dive into working with your inner schedule.
Tech Boundaries and Cheeky Hacks
Before I knew I had ADHD, I seeked professional guidance to overcome the crushing overwhelm and anxiety I felt when I said yes to way too much. I went every week to a lovely therapist who showed me the gratifying techniques of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT). It was like a flickering beacon finally flooded the room. When we can’t see the wood for the trees, we miss these little practical hacks.
My takeaways, which I still practice today, were as simple as:
Time-blocking in chunks (one-two hours max per task)
Limiting priorities to three a day
Putting on Do Not Disturb mode - especially sacred for writing or deep work
Physically banishing your phone to another room
Because let’s be real: the “just one more email” spiral never ends. Work will always expand to fill the space you give it. But you get to decide when to press pause.
The Pause That Powers You Forward
Here’s the truth no hustle culture guru wants you to hear: you could tick every single item on your to-do list and still feel “behind.”
If you’re ending a ten hour day and still feeling like a hamster on a wheel, I’m gonna break it to you: Productivity without rest is counter-productive.
Rest isn’t falling behind - it’s the shortcut your competitors wish they knew about.
When you pause - whether for ten minutes or an entire day - you return with sharper focus, fresher ideas, and a stronger sense of self.
So go ahead and take that digital detox, or impromptu nap, or power walk. Because resting isn’t stepping away from success - it’s the secret to reaching it.
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