The Power of Rest

Rest is a game-changer in life and work. In this episode of The Game Changers podcast  featuring Eric Boles and Dale Dixon,  Eric discusses the challenges of practicing rest and the importance of recovery. The conversation highlights how busyness can hinder productivity and decision-making, leading to short-term focus rather than long-term perspective. Lack of rest can diminish energy, resulting in compromised choices. Rest is defined as individualized and can take various forms, such as reading or engaging in activities that recharge one's energy. The episode encourages listeners to prioritize rest and create rituals around it to become better leaders.

Transcript

Dale:
busy is a bad word. Welcome to the game changers. We are here to unleash your best in life and work. And I am your host, Dale Dixon, I help leaders be their best on stage and in front of the camera. And I'm the chief innovation officer for a better business bureau. Eric Bowles coaches trains and inspires leaders to unleash their potential and the potential of those around them. Eric, great to be with you. Hopefully we're coming off of a restful weekend since that's the topic of the conversation.

eric boles:
Definitely good seeing you again my friend. Glad to be back.

Dale:
So let's dive right in.

eric boles:
I'm

Dale:
What

eric boles:
gonna go.

Dale:
is the genesis for this idea of the importance of rest?

eric boles:
We hear about it all the time how important rest is. I find myself talking about it more than practicing it. Okay? And this, we've been on a break, and Dale, you and I, we have been going pretty hard. And so we tried to, not only tried, we actually applied what we talk about. So we went through a period of rest. Two things that I found out about rest. One is rest is hard. If you haven't trained yourself to rest, you realize that even in your attempt to rest, I may not be physically active, but mentally I was. Like, you know, really being able to recharge. And then also just understanding the importance of recovery. And for those who are listening right now, we like to go on breaks. We say we need a vacation. We need to get away. And we do. But I don't know how intentional. we use that time to truly recover and restore. So it's like, recover, restore, reset. In some cases, remind ourselves of the importance of recovery, right? And so I kind of viewed it the same way in terms of my exercise. I know I've heard about it and I've been told about it for years. I've been working out for years, all the stuff I do. And when I talk about working out, it's not because I'm super disciplined, it's because back in the day I got paid to exercise. So it kind of helped establish certain habits. But it would be fascinating to me how important recovery would be after workouts. My most important time of muscle development or muscle growth was actually when I was asleep. It just doesn't feel like that. Right? Like it feels like if I just grind even harder, I even get a greater return on it. But there is a fine line that, you know, there's what, I believe the other term that we use is the law of diminishing returns. There is a place or a point where you cross over the other side where you're not getting a return on it, actually you're doing more damage. And I'm finding this, not only myself, but many of the leaders I coach and work with, that because what, you know, they're making decisions right now. that they probably would make if rest was included into the equation. And what I mean by rest, I mean there's a temporary break. Some people are making permanent decisions because they're exhausted when all they needed was just a short break and they may have made a different decision.

Dale:
So before we jump into all of the, of what we're losing because we're not resting, I started by saying, you know, this idea of busy is a bad word. You talk when you, how are you doing? Oh, I'm busy. And it's almost as though we have conditioned ourselves to use busy as a badge

eric boles:
Yeah,

Dale:
of honor.

eric boles:
yeah, that's right.

Dale:
And

eric boles:
Well, it...

Dale:
it's not necessarily a good thing. And so I've really mentally tried to stop myself from being busy and focus on being productive because I think there's a big

eric boles:
Yeah.

Dale:
difference, busy for busy sake. But just this idea that I need to stay busy can keep us from getting the rest we need.

eric boles:
Yeah, I actually learned this from a mentor. I don't practice it enough, but it's a great reminder. If you ask him, hey, how are you doing? Instead of saying busy, you say, hey, how are you doing? Effective, wow, that catches you by surprise,

Dale:
Mm-hmm.

eric boles:
right? I mean, who says that, right? How are you doing? Oh, effective, how are you doing? Productive, right. Well, it does cause you to, that's a different answer than busy. I learned this, being busy sometimes is even worse than doing nothing at all. There's times you can be so busy that because you're busy, you don't assess or evaluate what you're actually doing, whether or not it's having impact. And it's a dangerous thing to be a hard worker without direction, because you can actually create a greater set that than if you did nothing at all. I laughed, I heard this said once that the military officer who simply said, give me somebody lazy and stupid. I know as crazy as that sounds, he said, you give me lazy and stupid? I'm not concerned about that. You give me hardworking and stupid? Now that's a problem, right? Because

Dale:
Thanks for watching.

eric boles:
they're going to create problems for everybody. And when he said stupid, he didn't mean like from an IQ standpoint. He means you're just doing stuff without evaluating what it is that you're doing in your busy work. One leader I work with is that, Eric, my problem is that I'm just too busy. And he's like, no, your problem isn't that you're too busy. Your pattern is that you're too busy. because you were also too busy a few months ago and then a few months before that and then a few months before that. And so what you've created is a pattern of busyness. What you haven't accepted at a deep level is that most things don't matter. You've gotten so busy that you can't sit back and evaluate what actually matters and what doesn't because the reality is, I've said this many times, the majority of things we do don't matter at all. The problem is... We just don't sit back and evaluate that enough because the majority of the things we do are done so habitually, right? That they're more just patterns, they're habits. We haven't really sat down and assessed, you know, what's really most critical?

Dale:
So you started going down this road of one of the impacts of lack of rest being felt, seen, experienced around decision making. Let's dive deeper into the problems we see in decision making, why we see those when somebody is operating out of an out of a lack of rest.

eric boles:
Yeah, yeah, so many times because of the lack of rest and we're just exhausted, I think it was the great Vince Lombardi who once said, exhaustion makes cowards of us all, right? And it does, sometimes our shortness, our anger, our frustration, our reaction to people sometimes is not because we have character flaws. Many times it's just a lack of energy. We haven't had time to think. And so digging deeper into a deal around the impact of not having time to rest or not using rest, one of the most effective tools that a leader can do is allowing their decision making to be influenced by a longer time perspective. So when I make decisions that have a longer time perspective to them. That's basically what strategic decision making is. So when I think or decide, make decisions strategically, that's simply saying I have a longer time horizon in mind when I make this current decision. Now, in order to do that, I have to be a little more thoughtful. Rarely can I hurry myself into that. I have to be able to think to to process, right? But in the absence of rest, when everything's back to back, when I'm really exhausted, when I'm, not only, it's not even managing time, I can't even manage my energy, because my energy's going so many places. All of a sudden, the long-term goal of these decisions starts to diminish, and the short-term goal of just making the decision, getting past it, becomes a greater priority. And so all of a sudden things get missed. One way is to view it even as parents sometimes our kids can have us going, especially when my girl were young, my wife and I we talked like, it can be so chaotic that we had no thought of, is this in the best interest of our child long-term? And we were just trying to, Our goal was just a little bit of peace, however little that peace is of mind that we can get, we just want to stop them from complaining or stop them. So even if what we put in their hands is creating a longer term problem, we know that logically, anytime we're sitting down with time to think, of course, but in the moment, right? Who's thinking that, right? And I'm finding with so many of us business, just in life, we've gotten so busy that some of our decisions aren't having a long-term perspective connected to it. And that's not because we're not smart. That's not because there's not a high level of competency. That's just not a high level of energy.

Dale:
Would you call it the ability to tap into one's cumulative intelligence, being able to assess all of that life experience that leads up to and can have an impact on the decision when we're tired, we just don't see it, we rush through it, and we make compromises and accept things we shouldn't accept and make assumptions we shouldn't, where we shouldn't make assumptions, just because I'm tired. I don't want

eric boles:
Yeah.

Dale:
to devote the mental bandwidth to what needs

eric boles:
it.

Dale:
to be done.

eric boles:
Yeah, because they'll beneath everything we're saying about breast, this is just another way of saying how important it is to manage our energy. Right? That's that. I mean, and so many people right now they say, oh I got so much to do. I need more time. No, you don't need more time. You need more rest. Because if you get some rest, you'll be amazed how you come back and look at the time that you have. Right? Like, because more time isn't about to show up. Let's just realize that. Like, so, but at the time where I can't take the time to rest right now. That might be the time you need it most. And I know sometimes you don't have, somebody doesn't have a week or somebody has, but there's somebody out there right now who needs to go on holiday and you haven't done it yet. There's somebody right now, when I use holiday in the terms, especially when I work with so many internationally, their definition of holiday is have a lot to do with going on vacation. But you have vacation time that you haven't used. You have breaks that you haven't used. It is amazing, there are... times when you're working on a problem and the greatest thing that you can do is leave the problem alone. You've thought about it, you've worked on it, go do something. Go grab your significant other. Grab your spouse. Grab your kid. Grab some friends. Go for a drive. Go out in nature. Go do something that allows you to recharge your batteries, recharge your energy. Why? Because when you come back into the same problem, the problem hasn't changed but you have. It to shape or to shift your perspective. And now I say this because when I talk about the importance of rest, that's the importance of rest. Rest isn't just to escape a problem. Rest is to be able to sit back and then reset and then you will come back into the same circumstance. Not as a thermometer where the circumstances dictates what your reading is, but you come back in more as a thermostat. Now I can influence that circumstance and situation differently because I've stepped back and re- covered. This is why we watch it all the time in sports. Like, you know, the competitors, the rules, nothing's changed. But man, it's amazing what happens when somebody comes out into the second half or when a team calls time out or they got just a short brief moment to reset and rest. Rest their minds, rest their energy, reflect on what's going on, and then when they come back, they're better for it. It always concerns me when I find out that people do not use their vacation time. Or when people do not, when I ask, when's the last time you've been on vacation? And they almost talk about it like it's a badge of honor. Like there's some great honor of not taking... And I'm like... And I appreciate your work ethic. But what's more important is I don't think you've really, truly understood... the importance of like Stephen Covey called it, sharpening your saw. I mean, you're just hacking at trees, man. And not only you're hacking, you're actually hacking at branches. And

Dale:
I'm gonna

eric boles:
unfortunately

Dale:
go.

eric boles:
branches grow back. But if you rest, shift perspective, come back with different energy, you may realize instead of hacking at branches, I can start striking at roots. I can start looking at different areas. And so, I actually gain time, not lose time, and I gained it when I stepped away because it helped change the way I'm looking at stuff.

Dale:
For the thousands, hopefully millions of people who are going to be listening to this conversation, I'm guessing there is an equal number of definitions of rest.

eric boles:
Yeah.

Dale:
So let's define what rest is and then go into how do we create a ritual around

eric boles:
So

Dale:
building rest in so that we can be better leaders.

eric boles:
let's define what rest is and then go into how do we create a ritual around building rest in so that we can be better leaders. Yeah, yeah. So first, I tell, I remind individuals, does it look the same for all of us? Absolutely not. I mean, what rest looks like for each one of us is very different. Like I remember my wife said to me once, she was like, Eric, you're supposed to be on vacation. And you're just reading. Yeah, but the books I'm reading, I'm really interested in, right? And I like books like that. I like some fiction ones, but I like non-fiction. I like stories. I like biographies. Like, I'm resting in that. That is what I do. I know it's kind of connected to what I do for a living, but for me, that's rest, right? For me, the little things that are completely over here that caused me to look at my same situation in a way I wouldn't have looked at it before, that's part of my recovery. Now for someone else, it's completely disengaged. I mean, disconnecting all the way. Like I want to be out where I can't receive an email or... Fantastic. What I am saying though is whatever it is that you're doing that you allow for recovery, there's two big parts of why rest is so important. One is, I think it's part of our DNA, even God rested, right? Like, right? On that seventh day, celebrated and rested. I think part of our rest is a way of not celebrating just what we accomplished, but what it does is it kind of helps, allows us to reflect on where we've been. Right. And so even in our rest, we want to do some reflection. I, I heard one person tell me recently and say, well, Eric, you know, we don't got time to rest because, you know, and they've heard me use the quote, how, you know, yesterday's home runs don't win today's games. Yeah, I know that, but Yesterday's home runs does give me confidence in today's games. And then today's home runs, you know, may not help me tomorrow, but they do help me today. Okay. So I'm going to celebrate them today. We're going to enjoy it today and then we're going to move on. But rest and celebration is many times the reset button we got to push to take on the next thing. We usually go to the next thing without any rest and without any celebration. So we don't even get the psychic reward of what we've accomplished. and we don't take the time to get re-energized either. And so we're losing twice. So we don't recognize how much we have done and we don't take the time to not only celebrate it, to recover to take on what's next. So there are a lot of us functioning right now on, I don't know, 30, 40% of our actual capacity from an energy standpoint. I'm not talking about just five, but I mean literally from an energy standpoint. So... If I'm only functioning on 30% and rest will help restore it, at least 80, 85%, if not 100, yet I feel like I'm too busy to do that, we all know logically that makes no sense. There's nothing about that can possibly make sense, but we can almost rationalize it in our head that I can't leave this because. Well, here's the reality. We completely overestimate. how valuable the little, whatever we're working on right now is to our energy investing in it, right? So if we step away, refocus that, we may come back and realize, man, I can make the same progress in a third of the time, actually, even in less than that. What's the few things that make the biggest difference? I got time to think about it, come back, review the whole thing. One of the things that I tell people is the reason rest is so important. It's managing energy. And I really believe this. I believe we need to be more, we need to be even more serious about managing our energy than we do even managing our finances.

Dale:
Mm.

eric boles:
And we will look at our finances like crazy, but we don't necessarily look at how well we're managing our energy and are we getting a return on that. And so sometimes when we say, hey, you got to rest, you need to sit back and do it. Now, Do you need giant seven day, 10 day, 14 day, two day? I don't know. I've been on a vacation for, well somewhat a vacation for a couple weeks. I will tell you, I am not really good at it. I am training myself on how to rest. I'm training myself on how to allow my mind to slow down. So I have to intentionally drive my attention to things. Why? Because where my focus goes, my energy flows. So I have to direct my energy to things that can help me recover. but I will say this, there is a such thing as not enough rest and then there is a such thing as too much rest. So there isn't, this isn't like, oh, you can't rest. No, there's a balance here and too much of anything isn't a good thing. So we need to find out where that equilibrium is. For me, I would rather do little momentary rest of interruption. So playing a game without taking a time out during the day is probably not a good idea. You know, running without. You know, taking a break or having a good drink is not a good idea. Lifting weights without taking a break in between sets is not a good idea. Well, I'm telling people work is the same way. It's not okay for your brain not to give a little moment of rest in between as you're going. Now to get a little deeper, sorry for this long diatribe. But what we confuse sometimes is just because we're resting our mind consciously, doesn't mean our subconscious isn't still working. This is why sometimes you can wake up in the middle of the night with an idea and you're like, wow, where did that come from? This is why sometimes you're in the shower and boom, this comes to you. Well what rest does in redirecting your focus somewhere else, it doesn't mean your subconscious, your creative subconscious mind still isn't working on that problem. You're just not having to do it consciously. There's a point where once you hit a wall consciously, let it go. Move on to something else. Go do something that takes you out of that environment. And then you'll be amazed by the inspiration or the ideas or the creativity that comes to you at a later time. But rest facilitates that. Grinding doesn't. Rest facilitates that. Right? And so we need rest to help design or guide where we are going to put our efforts. And then once we decide where efforts is, okay, grind. Okay? But the creative process of coming up where that grind should be. always requires rest.

Dale:
It's been several years since I heard the information. So it's sketchy and definitely don't take this to the bank, but it was as simple as setting a timer and breaking down your day at work by the hour. And 45 minutes of uninterrupted focused work followed by a 15 minute break shows much higher levels of productivity over the long haul. It's like. We underestimate what we can get done over the course of a long period of time. And we overestimate what we can get done in the short period. So it's this idea that it was literally if you want to get down at the micro level and dissect this, it was 45 minutes on, 15 minutes off, and then right back in and basically use the clock as your guide. The key though in that was the lack of interruption. during that 45 minutes of productivity to keep people, you know, you've got to stay focused in that, which is really difficult.

eric boles:
Yeah, it is, and this is why when we talk about managing your energy and why even when I said practicing rest, you gotta train yourself for it. But even daily, because you were right on, it takes 15 to 20 minutes to get into flow. And a flow is a special place. When you're in flow, I mean it, phew, I mean there's nothing like it. You are opening up a door to possibilities that you can't get there if you can't function without distraction or interruption. It takes 20 minutes to get there. It takes two seconds to be pulled out of it. Okay, okay. So, you know, turning off your phone, turning off your email alerts, turning off that stuff. And I'm not saying you can do that all day long, but there's stuff to do. But here's what I will tell the thing that can help with our rest, is also how we define it, right? There's certain things I call my everyday drills. And if I'm gonna win my morning, or win my day, I gotta win my morning. And part of me winning my morning is how I start my day. If I start my day in a hurry, I'm already in trouble. But if I can start my day, if I can win the beginning of my day with a pace, with a sense of thinking, I'm actually resting. It's active rest, but I am resting at the beginning of my day, teeing up what my day's gonna be like, because I had time to think. I've had time to be uninterrupted. Many people say, well, unfortunately, I just can't do that. No, you just haven't done it. Don't say you can't. I mean, you're functioning off very little information. But in order to maximize the rest of that time, to not do that, it's expensive. It's such a cost. So what you just talked about, about getting into flow, that there's nothing like flow. But it's amazing how easy it is to be pulled out of that flow. And then when you're pulled out, a corner in research. it takes the same amount of time to get back into it again. And who has an additional 20 or 30 minutes to get back into it again? And so what happens is that's why, how do you win your day? Win it early. And then once you win it early, you can then design the rest of it.

Dale:
So understanding that we all have a different style way to rest, the importance of it, and we all have to arrive there from that uniquely personal place, take

eric boles:
trial

Dale:
us through

eric boles:
in it.

Dale:
what your ritual looks like. If we want to create a ritual of rest to be our best, hopefully we can glean some ideas for what your ritual looks like.

eric boles:
Yeah, so, you know, some people call it, some people only have 30 minutes and I get it and I'm gonna use this in reference to using the clock. I call it my everyday drills. I am now, based on how early I get up, for me it's an hour, but I'm a super early riser and so I don't wanna put that expectation on anybody, but I get up early. For others it might be 30 minutes, for others it might be even less than that. but it's breaking down in sections. So the first 10 minutes of my day, the first 10 minutes of my, or excuse me, first 20 minutes, is for me, is my devotion. Some other people use it for meditation, other use it for, but it allows me to, that's how my brain starts to rest. In my devotion, my meditation time, it's gratitude. I really like to start my day with gratitude. I am, I am, thinking of others, praying for others, I'm thinking about things I'm grateful for before any request of any kind. That's how my day begins, because I wanna work from the inside out. It allows me to deal with my authentic self, right? In whatever pattern. And then for the next 20 minutes, in my daily ritual and how I go through the, then I journal, like, you know, and so I'm a journaler, right? But really, my form of journaling is really a combination between what I'm reading and then what I'm journaling. So, you know, I read for 20 minutes and I kinda combine my reading and journaling together. So every book that I have in my library, and just like you, Dale, my library is my most valuable thing. I can't tell you how many books I have, but in my journaling process or in my reading process, I use every author as if they're talking directly to me. So I read books as if the author is sitting right in front of me. So, you know, not a lot. I, I sit back and I said, man, I have been personally mentored by, you know, um, you know, Marcus Aurelius, I've been personally mentored by Booker T. Washington. I've been personally mentored by some of the great minds in history. Right? Like I, wow. I have why? Because everything I read, I write it out as if it was talking to me. I look about how can I recognize a principle, relate it to my world? How do I assimilate it? How do I apply it? And I'm writing in all the margins and everything. So that process feels like I just went through a 20 minute one-on-one coaching session, like developing session. And then the last 20 minutes of my day, of my time, now I'm thinking about my day. I'm thinking about what's most important to me Today, I still have in mind my big goals. Like I'm a visualizer, I use affirmative reminders, I pitchers, all those different things. But specifically, I start thinking about how do I, what are the most important things today that lead me to my most important goals that I'm going after? That is not the same as my to-do list. That is not the same as my calendar of appointment. That stuff is already there. But what it does do, it helps frame how I go about those appointments and how I go into those things. Because now I look at those things that are already on my calendar and I start asking questions like, what do I want the outcome of that to be? What do I want that to look like? And then I always end with, what's my vision today in terms of how I'm going to go through the day? So one of the things, if there's some things, I say stuff like it today, I'm going to be calm, cool, and collected in every precious situation. Another day is... Today is a day of where I'm gonna learn from listening. I'm gonna give people my undivided attention and I'm gonna listen with my eyes. Another day, I just pick something like that helps thematically give me something to go through the day. Now, does every day end up that way? No, I mean, that's life, right? But to be able to reset every morning and make this part of my everyday drills, what a difference that makes. I will also tell you how powerful this works. I even use it when I'm literally on vacation. That's how I do it. And what's made my vacation even better, and I'm still working on it more, I tell you, but I'm calm, cool, and precious situations. Because I know when our family goes on vacation, it's those transition moments that determine how good the vacation is. Did we make the trip enjoyable? On the plane. Right? Okay. Where we, when we got off the plane, when my wife like, oh, can we stop here? And instead of going, oh, I'm like, sure. Why? Because I understand for her, that what makes the experience better. Like these kinds of things, if I have not taken the time to rest and think of, my reaction in the moment ruins these experiences. Because I start making short term, like I said at the beginning, short-term goal, which is just get to our next spot. A greater priority than the long-term perspective is we can look back at the vacation and talk about how amazing a time we had as a family. So this is why these kind of actions matter so much.

Dale:
So what are some of the other benefits that you see? You've sprinkled benefits throughout the conversation, but as we bring this to a close, what are some of the specific benefits that we should be watching for in our lives as we build out a ritual of rest, whether that's how we start the day, it's how we break up the work a day, or how we focus on vacation.

eric boles:
Yeah, yeah, well, probably the biggest, the overarching goal that you're gonna get from this is just a greater sense of control. I say it this way, stress and a sense of control have this inverse relationship. So my stress level goes up the more out of control I feel, and my stress level goes down the more in control that I feel, right? And so doing what we're talking about these everyday drills, It gives you control over what you have control over. It doesn't mean you have a sense of control over things you can't control, but for the things that you can, it equips you better. It's like, it allows me to not be thrown off by every whim or every wind that's blown. My anchor, or I like to say the kill of my boat, is strong enough to handle the waves that happen every single day better than I have before. The other thing that is... It allows you to keep the main thing the main thing. That's what it does, man. And so, and not only for those of you who are listening, who hear what I'm saying, even a bigger benefit is the impact that it has on other people. Like it just, you get to share and practice something that they can then turn around and look at and go, wow. I mean, and the more of us doing this, it starts changing outcomes. Like we, I don't think we really measure the impact of a slight little shift in decision making and the positive consequence of that because we just had enough rest to think about it in the right way. So even though we're talking about rest, we aren't talking about the daily application of rest that is done actively. So we're not just talking about escapes or two week getaways or whatever. Those things are great. But I evaluate daily rest the same way I evaluate a daily time with my wife. A two week vacation with my wife is great, but two weeks getting away doesn't make up for missed daily engagements all the way. I can't make up for it with a two week vacation. And you can't make up the energy that you need by just a two week vacation escaping. You need that daily so you can be at your.

Dale:
fantastic reminder. Talk about the importance of rest to unleash your best in life and work. There you have it right there. Thank you so much for the weekly charge and the weekly charge to rest and recharge is what this is all about. While folks are listening to this before you walk into work, if you were on the drive in, if you would just take a moment to rate and hopefully review this podcast, we hope we've earned a five star rating and a few kind words as a review, we would be most grateful if you do that in your favorite podcast listening app. While you're there, make sure you're subscribed to the podcast that helps you be aware when a new episode drops and word doing our best to get these out on a weekly basis when they release on Monday mornings. It's our commitment to you. And then the if you just engage in those two simple areas of reading and review, it makes it easier for other folks to find who are out looking for this type of leadership development content on the podcast scene. So we definitely appreciate that. You can find Eric at the game changers Inc. calm. He's also active on LinkedIn. He would love to connect with you there. Find me at Dale Dixon media.com. I'm also on LinkedIn and would love to hear from you. And if you've got an idea for a podcast episode, please send it our way we're watching the socials and watching our websites closely. So thank you much, Eric, you have a fantastic

eric boles:
Uh,

Dale:
week.

eric boles:
thank you my friend, you as well. Make it

Dale:
Stay,

eric boles:
a phenomenal week.

Dale:
stay rested my friend and we will talk to you again next week.