You need to rest. Yes, you.
I don’t care who you are. You need to rest.
I’ve got friends and family who—when I offer the cursory greeting “How ya doin’?”—respond with how busy they are. They wear it like a badge of honor.
“I’m worn out. I may be dead on my feet, but my, look how wonderfully busy I am!”
That’s nothing but another form of pride.
Busyness = Productivity
Productivity = Usefulness
Usefulness = Importance
We’ve bought into the myth that busyness equals productivity and value. We fuel our feeling of productivity when we multi-task, but a study has shown that when we multi-task, we’re actually getting less done—up to fifty percent less!
This myth fuels the energy drink business. Americans drink over 1200 million gallons of energy drinks each year. For those among us who look down our noses at energy drinks, we still consume our coffee and caffeinated beverages for the same reason: we want to be awake. We don’t want to miss anything. We don’t want to sleep.
I am not against energy drinks or caffeine. Many days a coffee cup is fused to my left hand. What I am against is not resting.
It’s a sin.
The Fifth Commandment is a call to rest. It is not a command to avoid fun on Sundays. Every command from God is for our benefit. He calls us to rest because He loves us. We benefit from the physical, emotional, and spiritual restoration. We need it once a week—and we need it daily.
- “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27).
- “I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the Lord sustains me” (Ps. 3:5).
Jesus valued rest. “Because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, ‘Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest'” (Mark 6:31).
Do you really want to be productive? Slow down. Stop. Rest. Sleep. I have learned from experience that when I take a day of rest, get plenty of sleep at night, and don’t push myself from dawn to dusk, I am truly more productive. Weird, huh?
Be productive and rest.
Lynn Pryor 
Adequate sleep is necessary, but while you are sleeping, somebody else is grinding. While you are wasting time reading or quoting something unnecessary, someone else is hustling. Your competition is a step ahead.
That’s my business-like mindset, anyway.
I never got ahead by accepting eight hours of sleep at night. My success (so far) has come from those 4 hour nights, those emails at 5 in the morning, the hard work at 2 in the morning, the sketching out of plans at 2 in the afternoon when I can hardly keep my eyes open.
The best never rest.
I’m far from that category, but I strive every day to reach it.
Adequate rest is necessary. Again. But we only have 24 hours in a day to get things done. Time to hustle or be average. Forget average.
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I’m good at what I do, and I’ve become better at what I do because I take a break and rest. I don’t define success by beating the competition and earning another buck. There’s no point if I die financially rich but I failed to live a rich life. God’s standard for a rich life calls for rest and renewal, and my life is far richer by joyfully following Jesus Christ.
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