Health & Medical

No, You Can’t Just ‘Bank’ All Your Rest During Vacations and Breaks

December 22, 2024

No, You Can’t Just ‘Bank’ All Your Rest During Vacations and Breaks

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This article is part of SELF’s third annual Rest Week, an editorial package dedicated to doing less. Taking care of yourself, physically and emotionally, is impossible without genuine downtime. With that in mind, we’ll be publishing articles up until the new year to help you make a habit of taking breaks, chilling out, and slowing down. (And we’re taking our own advice: The SELF staff will be OOO during this time!) We hope to inspire you to take it easy and get some rest, whatever that looks like for you.

It’s a fact of capitalism and hustle culture that rest usually takes a backseat to work—that it’s something to cram into any rare moment of downtime we’re lucky to get. Take the holidays, for example. In that blissful blip between Christmas and New Year’s, things tend to finally slow the hell down. (Case in point: We schedule the pieces in this Rest Week package in advance so our team can be off then.) But the trouble is, if you put off all semblance of rest in the weeks or months leading up to that time off (or any other break), then suddenly, it becomes…not actually restful at all.

Even if you know, intuitively, that condensing all your rest into sporadic chunks is fruitless, it’s hard to shake the constant grind. “As a culture, we believe that rest is earned [by hard work],” Israa Nasir, MHC-LP, a psychotherapist and author of Toxic Productivity: Reclaim Your Time and Emotional Energy in a World That Always Demands More, tells SELF. It’s an idea that’s often ingrained at a young age. “Parents will say stuff like, ‘Do your chores, then you can watch TV.’ Or, ‘Finish your homework, then you can play,’” Nasir says. “So what happens is, rest and joy and creativity become these transactional things for us.”

In this context, there’s relentless pressure to put your time to good use and be productive—which can ironically make you feel like you have to “maximize” rest too, Natalie Dattilo-Ryan, PhD, a clinical psychologist and instructor of psychology at Harvard Medical School, tells SELF. So when you finally lock down that rare and coveted period of time off, the pressure to make it count can defeat the purpose of taking a break in the first place, she says. Womp womp.

Here’s why trying to get all your rest in condensed chunks is actually counterproductive, plus how to make both your breaks and your everyday life more restorative.

Saving up your rest for a single break or vacation can backfire.

If your life is constantly go-go-go, chances are you’ll run yourself ragged in the lead-up to a vacation too—and that can doom the break itself to be less restful than you’d hoped. Perhaps you’re cranking out additional work to cover for the period when you’re OOO or to “earn the right to relax,” Dr. Dattilo-Ryan says. Or maybe you’re just rushing to get child or pet care arranged for your absence, or pack and get to the airport. In these scenarios, it’s easy to skimp on your normal healthy habits, Nasir says; for instance, not hydrating or sleeping as you typically do, which could leave you feeling lousy or sick on vacation.

The pre-break scramble itself can also create a ton of stress—and over time, your nervous system may adjust or adapt to that level of overstimulation, Dr. Dattilo-Ryan says. So when you finally reach your time off, it could take a couple days (or more) to rebalance and feel calm, she explains. “You might be doing things to replenish yourself, but if you were so drained to begin with, you may not have enough time off to make it back to even.”

Setting realistic expectations for your time off can make it more restful.

There’s a natural tendency to put vacations on some sort of pedestal, particularly if you haven’t had one in forever. “When you’re postponing joy and rest, it starts to become mythical in your mind,” Nasir says. But the more you build up the power of the break, the less likely it is to live up to the hype. Not to mention, your wish list of downtime activities could inadvertently turn into a to-do list (e.g., visit the holiday market and go skiing and do a spa day, and and and…), which can cause more stress than it alleviates—yes, even if it’s filled with things you enjoy.

So it’s important to be honest with yourself about what any given break can do for you and how you’re going to feel during and after it, Dr. Dattilo-Ryan says. Chances are, a week of downtime around the holidays will not undo months of burnout, for instance. Nor will you have enough energy to see every friend or do all the fun activities you’ve spotted on social media. Simply reminding yourself of that reality can lower your expectations—and help you avoid disappointment. Nasir also suggests picking one restorative “anchor” activity for any week off (say, taking a trip to the local botanical garden or seeing a play or musical) so you don’t wind up with either too big a wish list or stumped about where to start.

As can easing yourself into and out of it.

To smooth your transition into vacation mode—and avoid whittling away the first few days simply decompressing—Nasir also recommends reducing your pre-break load as much as possible. That means figuring out where and how you can delegate: Can you tap a coworker for one of your work tasks versus hammering through it in advance, or recruit a partner to handle the laundry and dry cleaning in the week before a trip? The less tension you pile on ahead of time, the less you’ll be relying on your vacation to undo. And the same principle applies on the tail end of a break too. In those first few days back, when you’re busy catching up, see if you can lean on others more than usual, Nasir says.

It’s also a good idea to have a low-key restorative activity planned for shortly after you return from your break, even if it’s literally just a day reserved for bed rotting (which, BTW, is a legit form of rest). This way, you have something on your calendar that you can look forward to (so the end of your vacation doesn’t hit with such a thud) and another reminder that this one break can’t—and shouldn’t be—your only opportunity to chill.

Ultimately, it’s important to fit rest into your everyday life, rather than reserving it for official time off.

When you try to bank all your rest in concentrated periods, it doesn’t just make those breaks less rejuvenating. It leaves you at a rest deficit: You’re simply not getting enough of it to recover your energy. Instead, you want to prevent yourself from ever getting so overdrawn in the first place by resting early and often, Dr. Dattilo-Ryan says. That requires shifting into a mindset in which you view rest as a right—something that you’re entitled to on a daily basis—versus as a reward reserved for special occasions, she explains.

It might sound trite, but that starts with pausing for a few moments every day to check in with yourself (How do you feel physically? What’s your mood like?) and really listening. As a default, “we often take cues about how we’re doing from what we’re doing and where we’re spending our energy and time,” Dr. Dattilo-Ryan says. But when we take a moment to turn inward and assess and tend to our needs, “we’re sending an important message to ourselves that we are just as worthy of our own attention as everything else.”

From there, it’s about creating time for a little ESCAPE—an acronym that Dr. Dattilo-Ryan uses to help her clients remember tried-and-true recovery methods. It stands for: Exercise, Sleep, Connection, Appreciation, Pleasure/Play, and Exhale. The first two are self-explanatory: Both moving and physically resting can be deeply restorative. The third involves filling your cup by connecting to others or to things that are important to you, she says, while the fourth and fifth focus on “cultivating positive emotions on purpose,” or finding a sense of “gratitude, optimism, hope, joy, or delight.” And the last is simply taking a beat to breathe.

Finding ways to sprinkle these restorative acts into your everyday life might just require a bit of intentionality: Perhaps you spend a few extra minutes chatting with your partner or kids or savoring something mundane (like a cup of coffee or a sunset). By a similar token, Nasir suggests embracing small doses of creative “affection time” each day—two to three minutes spent doing something that just feels good in your brain or body, like doodling, playing with a fidget spinner, or molding a piece of clay.

Beyond such additions, there are the things you might strip away from your daily activities to similar effect. Maybe you go for a podcast-free walk, eat without scrolling, or take yourself on a solo date versus going out with a partner or friends, Nasir suggests. Doing fewer things at once can lighten the load on your brain, as can simply slowing everything down—including your rate of thought, speech, and breath, Dr. Dattilo-Ryan says. Where urgency signals stress, moving leisurely is a measure of calmness. And there’s no rule saying you have to be on vacation to embrace a little island time every now and then.