Have you thought about how important rest is?  Maybe you are too busy to think about rest.  Maybe you think that you have too much to do.  Maybe you think you’ll rest when you die.

But if you never rest, you’ll never actually accomplish as much as if you worked non-stop.

That’s because as we fatigue, we get sloppy and our decision-making process slows down.  And we make poorer decisions.  And when we make bad decisions we have to spend even more time correcting mistakes.

Even more than that – when we go non-stop, we have a false sense of time and energy.  When time and energy seems unlimited, we squander it and are wasteful.  Mostly because we don’t respect those things for what they are – limited.

When something is limited, it takes on more value.  That means what we do with our time and our energy matters.  Make the most of them and use those resources wisely.

This also means that we have to give up the idea that we will accomplish a ton in a short period of time.  All those life hack articles that are being published theses day – yeah, they are full of it.  You might be able to hack your way to some kind of short term success, but I’m willing to bet $20 that you can’t life hack your way to long-term success.

Putting success aside, why would you want to life hack your way to anything?  A big part of advancing in anything is the process.  If you short change the process then you really aren’t interested in the end result all that much.  You aren’t interested in being able to learn from the process and reproduce it when you need to.

The same goes for rest.  You can’t short change rest.  You can’t life hack your way to rest.  You either embrace rest fully, or you aren’t resting.

This past weekend, our family when camping.  We didn’t realize that where we were staying would have terrible cell phone reception – meaning there was none.  By the end of the weekend, we were grateful for that.  Disconnecting for a while is an important part of rest.

Here’s my recipe for rest – no phone, no internet, no digital anything, no TV, no electronics, no politics, no work.  This also means no writing or reading either – just rest.  For us that meant sitting around a camp fire, going for a hike, cooking, and being with family.  The messages can wait.  The texts can wait.  The e-mails can wait.

Our electronic devices are there to serve our needs and make our lives easier and better.  Remember that when it feels like you exist to answer every notification, text, and call.

Rest.  There is no shortcut.  And that’s a good thing.