By Leo Babauta

Something I’ve noticed is that a lot of us have an ingrained belief that we can take some time off to rest if we’ve worked hard enough. Or often it’s like, “I’ll rest now so I can be more productive tomorrow.”

The mindset we have ingrained in us is that rest has to be justified by how productive it will help us to be.

This is so deeply ingrained in us that we don’t even notice it. It comes from the mindset that we need to be more productive, and that our lives have to be built around how to achieve more.

It’s the central tenet of our society.

And so in that vein, rest is only OK if it’s in service of achieving more — in service of the productivity and optimization machine.

What if we reject that?

What if rest doesn’t need to be justified?

The Internalized Manager

In his book, The Burnout Society, philosopher Byung-Chul Han talks about how we’ve internalized the managers of the industrial age. Many of us have an internal prison guard, coercing ourselves to do the work, to work harder and faster and keep up with it all.

This is self-exploitation in the guise of freedom: we have the freedom to achieve whatever we want, but to do that we have to force ourselves to be productive.

Now, I’m in favor of doing meaningful work — but I think it’s worth examining the subtle ways we coerce ourselves. And to let some of those ways go.

One of the more harmful ways we coerce ourselves is by thinking we’re slacking and lack if we’re not being productive. It’s like we have to justify any downtime.

But what if we could reclaim the capacity to not have to do stuff?

A Deeper Permission

I think we don’t go far enough if we just say, “It’s OK to rest.”

I think we need to go deeper, and say, “I don’t have to justify my existence through accomplishment.”

It’s totally valid to create because we think creating is beautiful. Or doing work because we care. Or working hard to build something that has a positive impact on others, or feels like a challenge.

But none of that makes us more worthy of existing. We don’t need any kind of justification for living.

Spending an afternoon doing nothing isn’t a fault that we need to justify. It’s just living life!

So we might challenge ourselves to experiment with doing things that need no justification at all:

• Sit somewhere quiet and drink tea

• Take a walk without needing to track the steps or listen to a self-improvement podcast

• Take an afternoon off even if we haven’t worked hard enough to “earn” it

• Look at the clouds floating by

• Get lost in conversation with someone you care about

And as you do so, notice if there’s a small voice in your head nagging you with guilt or other coercive methods. Notice what it might say, or how you might feel.

This isn’t a way to fix you — it’s a way to deepen your self-knowledge, and to start to reclaim your permission for living without a justification.

What if your life could have some territory that your achievement doesn’t own?