Why You Feel Guilty When You Rest

You sit down to rest and something in you starts keeping score. There is laundry. There is a message you should have sent on Friday. There are four hours you could have spent on the thing that matters. So you do not rest — you lie still and negotiate, and by the time the light goes orange you have had neither the rest nor the work. This video is about that ledger: where it comes from, why no amount of output ever closes it, and what actually changes the behaviour. What is inside: Hsee, Yang & Wang (2010) on idleness aversion: why most people chose a pointless walk over fifteen minutes of waiting, and why the busy people were happier even when the busywork was forced on them Wilson et al. (2014) on the disengaged mind: 67% of the men and 25% of the women gave themselves an electric shock rather than sit alone with their thoughts Killingsworth & Gilbert (2010): 250,000 random samples, 47% of the time the mind is not where the body is Sonnentag & Fritz on psychological detachment — the difference between a break and a pause de Bloom et al. (2010) on why a vacation's benefit fades within weeks, and why rest is a battery, not a bank balance Six practical changes, starting with the smallest unit you can defend Chapters 0:00 The couch at 4:40 0:51 Fifteen minutes of nothing 1:54 Justified rest, unjustified rest 2:42 A button on the table 3:35 47% of the time 4:00 Break or pause 4:45 The vacation that fades 5:19 The audit that never closes 6:52 Six things that work 8:26 No creditor Sources Hsee, C. K., Yang, A. X., & Wang, L. (2010). Idleness aversion and the need for justifiable busyness. Psychological Science, 21(7). Wilson, T. D., et al. (2014). Just think: The challenges of the disengaged mind. Science, 345(6192). Killingsworth, M. A., & Gilbert, D. T. (2010). A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Science, 330(6006). Sonnentag, S., & Fritz, C. (2007). The Recovery Experience Questionnaire. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 12(3). de Bloom, J., et al. (2010). Effects of vacation from work on health and well-being. Work & Stress, 24(2). #psychology #rest #burnout #productivityguilt #humandefault CHAPTERS 0:00 4:40 p.m 0:20 Four hours 0:40 A debt nobody issued 0:59 Almost rude 1:20 Most chose the walk 1:39 Busier, happier 2:01 Falling 2:25 A receipt 2:46 No phone. No book. No music 3:09 67% 3:33 250,000 4:01 Psychological detachment 4:26 Pause 4:48 Rise 5:11 Plug in, it drains 5:31 The morning was not enough 5:57 Employee, manager, auditor 6:23 The condition never arrives 6:45 A calculator for the ledger 7:09 2 · A physical transition 7:33 Nothing produced 7:53 Defend the twenty minutes 8:16 The ledger can be ignored 8:39 Stop arguing