166. Work Harder at Resting

Welcome to another episode of at the Table with Patrick Lencioni, where everything we talk about is related to organizational health and the world of work. I'm your host, Pat Lyncione. Joined by the full crew here today, Cody Thompson and Bo Johnson from Utah. How you guys doing?

Swell. I'm going to go with swell.

I'm doing really well. I am excited about this topic today, Pat.

All right. Bo is doing well. One letter less than swell, but very similar. Thank you, guys. Tracy, how are you today?

I'm fantastic.

By the way. For a while we said we were going to stop asking people how they were, but then people said, you know, we like it because we get to put the voices and the names together so we know who's talking. So that's why we do it. And we love to check in with one another. I also have Karen and Matt here today. How are you guys doing? You're behind the scenes? Swell. Matt has the thumbs up. All right, that's good to know. Hey, I want to say something else before we get started. I'm going to talk faster because I listen to the podcast sometimes to see if it's good, and I annoy the heck out of myself when I talk too slow. So I speed it up and I think, hey, if I'm speeding up my own voice, I might as well talk a little faster. People can hear things, so maybe you're listening to it two speed or one and a half speed, but I'm going to try to talk a little faster. Hey, Cody, what are we going to talk about today?

Boy, I'm going to say this real fast. Work harder at resting. No, that's the topic.

Work harder at resting. That's right. And I'm going to tell everybody a little behind the scenes news. We're re recording this because we finished the last one and we said, gosh, we didn't cover the right things in that there's more things that we need to talk about that we think are important. So we're going to do that. This is our second recording, and here's what I want to say to get it kicked off. No one would deny the importance of resting. Nobody would say, oh, you don't need rest. We all know that. Yet so many of us don't do it very well, myself included. And I think a big part of it is that we don't really understand what rest is. Or maybe worse yet, we confuse it for other important but separate things that aren't rest. For instance, it's not vacation. That's not Rest, it's not sleep. That's not rest. Those can be related, but this is a very different thing. Probably though, the most frequent and I think dangerous thing that we do is we mistake rest for distraction. And that leads us frustrated as leaders and as people and leads to some very serious consequences. And that's what we're gonna talk about today. The importance of real rest and avoiding those serious consequences.

Okay, now it's worth just double clicking a little bit into that. What rest is not. Because that's somewhat surprising because if you say, hey, Pat, I think you just, you look tired. You should go home and get some rest. What probably we would mean is, oh, you should go take a nap, or you should have a mini vacation, or you should watch tv or you should do something that doesn't require responsibility. So say more about that. What is it? What do you mean? What. What else is rest?

Not so we did some research and looked up the definition of rest. And it's about being, what we'd call it kind of inactive, like off duty. You're not doing something too overly intense, like. Like active. You're not engaged. Like, for me, golf is fun, but it wouldn't be rest per se. There are some people that could find golf very resting, but it's not like a hobby that I'm really actively engaged in. It's more downtime where I'm not asleep, but I'm. I'm just doing something that restores me and makes me feel ready to go.

Yeah, it's so good. Even on the first try, when we tried to record this, I said, yeah, going on a long run can be resting. And you said, well, wait, wait, wait, maybe. But actually, if going on a long run is like to train for something, or if you're talking about the feeling afterwards that you felt good, that's different than it intentionally being a restful activity.

Yeah, well.

And Pat, I like that what you said is like, the goal is restorative. Something that actually fills your battery up. Like, the idea of needing rest, the reason we need it is because we feel empty, or there's a deficiency in some way. And the identifying the difference between actual restorative rest and distraction is huge. Because it's sort of like the difference of, hey, I'm going to either eat vegetables and nutrient rich foods or just pop a multivitamin and say, I'm good. The idea of thinking that this distraction is the thing that's going to restore me. If you go through long periods of your life like that, it can be hugely detrimental. To you? Yeah.

And I'm not sure that distraction as a replacement for rest doesn't lead to addiction in many cases. But I want to debunk one other thing. People think vacation is like, hey, you.

Know what you need?

A vacation is what you need. And if you were to take Cody, you with a broken leg and three kids under the age of five and go on vacation right now, you're definitely coming back more tired than when you left.

I'm gonna need some rest after that.

Yeah, exactly. And if you just go sleep, I mean, you can get eight hours of sleep and say, okay, I'm not sleep deprived, but I'm not. I don't feel restful. I don't feel restored. Because you're working really hard and you're busy all the time. Rest is something in between there. And so often we come home from work and we know we need rest, but we do something very reflexive, and it usually involves turning on a screen.

So I can't wait to talk about what rest actually is. But first, let's talk a little bit about that. What are some distractions, maybe for each of us, that are kind of like artificial rest? Like, you talked about coming home and being tired. For me, I know that that looks like either listening to a sports podcast or turning on YouTube is my kind of reflexive activity, especially on a Monday. I'm tired after a day full of zoom or a day full of meetings. And so that's what I do, even though it's really not that replenishing for me.

Right, right. Like, oftentimes for me, it's turning on the television. And for young people out there who don't know what that is, it's that thing other than the computer and the phone where your parents watch moving pictures, like my wife and I watch a rerun of Seinfeld or some TV show. Well, then we watch another one, and we watch another one, and that's becoming just a distraction. It's not even just entertainment. It's like, I just don't want to think about work. Why don't I just do something that shuts me down? And at the end of it, the third episode or the second episode, I'm not feeling better. I'm feeling kind of. Kind of yucky.

Yeah.

Yeah, Pat, I would say that's exactly what I do. When I'm exhausted, when I think I need rest, I will turn on the TV and I'll watch a series on Netflix. And I know at the end of. At the end of those. Those binges essentially I'm feeling really icky. I do not feel rested at all.

I even go on and play spider solitaire, and I'll be into my 25th game of it, and I feel like I'm hungover. When I'm done, it doesn't feel like I'm rested. It feels like I'm just kind of a malaise a little bit. People can relate to that, probably.

That's why I think this topic is so interesting, Pat. And, you know, mine is like comedy. I'll turn it on either on Netflix or in, you know, through my AirPods or whatever and do the dishes. But the idea that so many people. I actually love that we're having this conversation on the at the Table podcast where we talk about work, because this is very much. If you. If you don't realize or figure out or identify ways that you restore yourself when you get home, it leads to you being a less effective, less joyful, less like, amiable person at work. Like, this is very much tied to our work lives and the way we interact with each other.

And I would say, yes, of course it can lead to being burned out. It also can lead to me feeling bitter. I don't know about this resonates with you all, but if I'm not rested, I tend to kind of find somebody to blame for that, that I. That I. I'm like, oh, I either feel bad about myself that I'm not feeling physically great, or feeling sharp, but I tend to look around and be like, I start getting bitter about that. Does that resonate with any of you? We didn't. I didn't have this insight last time we tried this, but tell me about that.

Absolutely. And the hard thing is, it's.

We.

We have only ourselves to blame oftentimes because we. We're using the time that we would usually need rest in on distractions. I mean, if I read the newspaper, which, again, kids, that's this thing in the olden days. But if I go online and I read the news when I think I'm resting, that does not restore me. And then I think, okay, I just wasted the time. I was supposed to be restoring myself on something that actually either winds me up or makes me just feel kind of like I've. I don't know, it just. It doesn't restore me at all.

Yeah. And I love that you already brought this up, Cody. I think that there's a lot of people, and maybe if those listening would resonate with this, there's a lot of people that just feel like they're just hanging on. And this started as it's an easy subject to talk about, but for all of us that are on the screen, we're all still learning how to do this. And it can feel kind of heavy. All of us have had seasons where we've not done this well and felt the consequences of it. And like you said, Cody, it impacts our work, it impacts our life, it impacts our families. And so let's do this together. I'd love to hear from some of you. What are you learning about how you rest? What are you learning about what is actually restful for you?

So I went online and I looked at a definition of rest and it talked about being inactive in a way that restores you. And then it had one of those sentences in it like Margaret finds rest when she's drinks tea and reads a book. And I thought, oh my gosh, I'm Margaret. Because that's about the closest thing to rest that I can relate to. And yet I never do that. And so that's one of those like simple activities. Tracy, you had something like that too that Matt teased you about, right?

Yes, he called me an 80 year old woman. I love to wake up early in the morning. I love waking up early, having alone time, curling up on the couch in front of the fire with my coffee and I do wordle and it's just, it's a one and done. It's just a quick little puzzle. It's good for my brain. TV off. I have silence and it's great. It sets the tone for the rest of my day.

Right. How about you, Cody? What do you do, Beau?

I'll just admit that we've had this very conversation in our home because we have been choosing distraction over restoration, you know, regularly in the evenings. Like we have a four year old, a two year old and a five month old. And after you've had dinner and cleaned up dinner and now that I have a broken leg, my wife has one other child to care for. So she has four total children. But very regularly, you know that when we get to that point of well, now the house feels peaceful, we get into that pattern of well, let's just pour a glass of wine and watch something on Netflix. And that will be the thing that we'll will give us enough gumption for the next day. And we recently had a whole conversation about how this is not restorative at all in nature. And so we kind of did like a little bit of an audit, like what night felt the best for you and it was, it boiled down to a couple things. It was when the TV was off and we were just talking, like debriefing our day or planning the week or planning a family vacation or when we do some, like, you know, this will sound weird, but like a small card game or like a dice game that we play, like when we just sit at the table. And it's not really competitive in nature. It's just more of, you know, like you said, somewhere between contemplative and sleeping, we are just sort of engaging in an activity where conversation is more paramount, but we're doing an activity.

You know, Karen mentioned something to me just now, and it was about differentiating between, like, prayer and meditation, like meditative, contemplative, prayer and rest. And it was interesting because if you told somebody, you have to go sit down and pray, and prayer is the most important activity, I think. But even that can be. That's not necessarily rest. And like she said, well, I like to pray and contemplate when I'm out walking in the woods. And I said, well, walking in the woods might be rest, but if somebody told you you had to come back with an answer to a question or you had to contemplate something, then it would feel like a duty. And I think a big part of rest is being off duty duty and having no musts. I don't have to do something. I'm doing it purely to be in the present. I'm largely inactive. I can feel and do what I want right now. And that is where. And there's often silence. Bo, you mentioned this before. Silence, stillness and solitude in that. But it's not a forced kind where you have to get something done. Does that make sense?

Oh, I so resonate with it. And a simple little distinction that I'm thinking about is we walk up and down our hill here in our neighborhood, and we do try to do it every day. Well, I have this watch that tracks all of my exercise for me. And the difference between doing that as exercise and doing that as rest is turning on the watch to get credit for it. Right. Like, I could go on a walk with my daughter and just talk and enjoy it. Or I can go on a walk to be like, I'm going to burn 100 calories on this walk. And they might be this. They might have the same benefit at the end, but one might be restful and one might be activity.

Yes. Which is why running it might make you feel really happy after you're done. I know after I exercise, I feel great because I feel like I've accomplished something. I've done something that's good for my body. But the act of exercising isn't really the rest. And I think rest, because many of us here work hard, we sleep well, we're busy, we're serving our families and we exercise, but we're not rested. And even when you're doing all those things, you're like, what. What is wrong with me? And like you said, Beau, you could be bitter. You can blame people. You need to take the time to.

Restore something that, as we're talking about this, that I think is really restful for me is a fire pit. I just love sitting outside by a fire pit. And it might be that it's something to look at. Like, looking at fire is kind of captivating. You can't look away. I tend to not have my phone when I'm out there, and I just enjoy it. I just love sitting out by a fire.

I do too. I love making the fire. It's not a huge activity, but putting the logs in there and putting some newspapers and then sitting out there, it feels like I'm doing something, barely, but it feels like there's nothing required of me. That's interesting. I wonder what that's about.

You know, as we're having this conversation, it's. It's. I'm not trying to age shame anyone here, but the idea that almost all the things that we're mentioning were way more frequent and available and, like, activities a generation ago. Like, you talk about reading a book and drinking tea or sitting by a fire or, you know, going on a walk in nature. Like, all of those things seem like they were a generation ago. These were very common.

And.

And I'm curious, like, part of why we talked about this is, like, there does feel like a restoration crisis, you know, like, people just don't even know now, how do I actually restore myself? And. And so they do all of these things that are distracting and there are severe consequences for this. So. And there is something about this idea of, like, obviously it's harder now because of the amount of distractions that we face. But when you talk about silence and solitude, and those were all very easier to come by. And now I think we're having to be much more intentional about them.

And, you know, those are all S words. The S word that prevents silence, stillness, solitude and rest, I think is our screens. I think there are screens, and I think it's our TVs, I think it's our computers, I think it's our phones. And that's not to Say that those are bad things completely, but it's so easy to use those things as distractions. And I think so much of the depression in our kids and in adults and the funny. I talked to James Clear recently. I got to know him, the author of Atomic Habits, and I said something to him which was interesting. I said, you know, I want my kids to read that book, but really I think I need to read it. And he goes, that's so funny, because most people are focused on getting their kids to do things. And he said, if you did it, they would learn from you. And I think my kids would say that I am just as much in front of screens as they are. It might be just the TV on in the room and me looking over at it or me being in on my computer working when I'm at home. But screens are really, really bad when it comes to rest. Generally speaking. Generally speaking, screens often prevent rest and they lead us to distraction, which is a very different thing. So I think the more time, I just wonder how much time we spend when there's no screens around and how much that correlates to our rest time.

As I'm listening to this conversation, I'm thinking, cody, you made this connection that so much of rest depends on the individual. Because when I say having a fire pit is very restful for me, that is the least stressful thing for my wife. She often is like, do I need to come and sit out there with you? Is it okay if you just do this by yourself? And the answer is yes. But what's restful for one person might be work for somebody else. And I love the idea of pausing to say what has really been rejuvenating or restoring. That's so interesting, Cody, how you said that rest and then restoration is kind of the long version of that word. Not just when did I get a good nap, but what really helped replenish me. Otherwise, we're just making a new to do list, right? We're just making another list of things. I was supposed to go on a walk and do wordle and do a fire pit and pray and have stillness and silence. And my whole day is full and I'm going to be exhausted from trying to rest.

You know, one of the things I would say is like if somebody said, hey, you have all day off. This past weekend my wife was on a retreat with some friends and my son was busy and my other sons live away, and I had the whole day to myself on Saturday, essentially. And it was kind of freaky because I didn't know what to do. And I was so excited for it. But after all these years, I've almost. I've lost the ability to have that restful activity. I finally found some moments for that. But I think we get out of the habit of that. And I think it's a discipline. I hate to say this. It's a discipline to make ourselves rest. And then while we're resting, there should be no discipline, but we have to force ourselves. And I think everybody listening to this should say, how do I rest? Where do I get my rest? And how am I going to make sure that I do that with the same level of duty as I do my work or that I serve my family?

And maybe also, Pat, to start that and say I don't have to feel guilty for resting. I know for me that's really real. I feel some sense of guilt if I should be doing something, accomplishing something. And just to be able to receive that restful activity as a gift, I think will allow us to better participate in it.

And we haven't even mentioned the Sabbath, you know, the Sabbath. God intends us to rest, but we do kind of lose our way on that. Yeah, Cody?

Well, I was going to say a very similar point, Pat, which is we're designed to need this, you know, and the idea that we won't do the first bit of work, which is a self audit of, hey, where? When have I last felt restored? And the sad answer to that question, probably for many people is like, I don't remember or I don't know, or I haven't felt that in a long time. And, you know, it's sort of a weird analogy, but like, I just, I recently got this wireless charger that's on my bed frame, right? And. Or that's on my, the side of my nightstand or whatever. And like last night I put my phone on it, and you're supposed to just be able to put your phone on it and it charges all night. And then I woke up this morning only to find that my phone was not charged. And like, so it's got, it's in the red. And the idea that we are doing things that we think are going to restore us, and then waking up realizing we're in the red is just a we, we. This is necessary for people as human beings to figure out what is it, what, what, what activity, what thing actually makes me walk away feeling restored. And even as I say that, I'm like, you know, the, the three half answers I gave you earlier about conversations and a card game with my wife, probably not enough for me, and. And certainly not enough discipline for me to say, like, I'm going to commit to resting well so that I can give my best self at my job, at my work, you know, with my family and with my kids.

What an oxymoron. And. And quite a challenge to get disciplined about not having discipline. Like, I need to be disciplined about giving myself time to be off duty. And it is critical for our families and for our companies and for the people we work with and live with.

You know what? One other thing I wanted to mention, Pat, you mentioned screens. That that's part of the problem, but there's also this other thing that we have in our society, and it's this culture of busyness. I think we're all addicted to being busy. And rest is almost embarrassing. It's almost embarrassing to say, oh, I. You know, I had. I was. I had a restful weekend. Talk about that a little bit, because I think it's a huge problem.

That's so good.

Yeah, it is. And it's part of the culture, I think, that goes along with social media, which is like, what did you do? It's like, oh, look at. I went to a concert, and then I did this and then I did that. But. But, you know, secretly, I think all of us yearn for, like, what do they say? Like, someone canceling plans with you is, like, the happiest thing in the world. You know, you were supposed to go someplace, it rained, and they canceled it, and you're like, oh, that's wonderful. And so I do think we're trying to impress other people by all the things we do. And, you know, and I feel like a grumpy old man, but, like, somebody would have to pay me an awful lot of money to go to certain events. Like, hey, do you want to go to this event? You can fly, and it'll be exciting. And I'm like, no, I think I'd rather be home and have nothing on my plate so that I can play spider solitaire all day. You know, that's the bad part. But, yeah, so it's interesting, Tracy, I think you're right that we feel like we have to justify doing something exciting on the weekend or else we're boring people.

Yeah.

You know, oh, I'm a loser because I rested.

When somebody says, how are you? That's a fine question. But when somebody says, what's new? The implication. I'm always like, screw you. You know, like, do I need to have something new that. Something new and exciting going on like nothing has changed, and that's okay. But there is this thing going on in society where it's like, boy, did you not spend your weekend getting ahead? Are you not working on a side hustle? Do you not have something else going on? Even outside of all the busyness that you do that there is this, you know, like. Like you said, pat, what a loser. If you're not. If you're actually spending time caring for your, you know, the restoration of your. Your emotions, your inner being, you know, and that is. That's going to be problematic. That's already problematic for people, and it does. Unless we're doing the hard work of figuring this out. I think it would just do more.

All right, so the message we want to say to people is this. Take the time to ask yourself, what do you do that. That is restful? It's not sleep. It's not vacation. It's not a really, really active thing. That's fun. That's great to do that too. But what do you do that feeds you, restores? You talk to your spouse, talk to your coworkers about that, and then really start to do that more. It makes a lot of difference. Now we have an unpaid ad today that we've kind of almost alluded to. Matt, what's our unpaid ad for? I think Tracy mentioned it when she was talking about what she likes to do in the mornings. But our unpaid ad today is octortal. Octortal. Now, that's not the same as wordle. Explain what it is. So wordle, for those who don't know, is a game where you have six tries to guess a five letter word. Whenever you guess a word, it tells you what letters you got right. And where they are in the word and all that. Octortal is that. But there's eight boards at the same time, and you get 13 guesses. So somebody might say, it sounds like you're telling people to do a distraction game on a podcast where you're talking about rest and the beauty. You know what I think the beauty of this is, Tracy, because you and me and Matt do this, is that you can only do it once a day. Really?

Yes.

And I have to do connection.

We have connection around it too, right?

And we talk about it. It's joyful. I'll tell you what, though, if I could do it all day to try to get better, that would be. It would turn into an addiction.

I know that.

So I love the fact that it's a little activity that we can do in between things. And it does give me some rest.

An unpaid ad for screens. You know, right at the end of the. We should have done a 30 seconds of silence where just let nobody talk for 30 seconds and then we just let the podcast end. But screens. Let's do it.

You know, I played, I played wordle with Tracy once on an airplane where without screens where I would just, it was just like a word game. I would make one up and she would, I'd give her the paste paper and she would put it in and it was so much fun. You don't need screens to have fun, kids. Go out there and pretend you're a block of wood is a car and play race car. Grumpy old man. Okay. Hey, everybody, thanks for joining us. I hope you find a way to get more rest in your life. Important for you and your organization. We appreciate you as listeners and we'll talk to you next time on at the Table. God bless.