Day 3 – This is a Talk for Tired People

If you’re imperfect and tired — you’re in the right place!

Barriers to rest:

The three lies…

  1. I don’t have time to rest
  2. I am what I do
  3. I will never have or be enough

A bunch of you are multitasking? Be unproductive…

As designers, we talk a lot about — Delight. It is also part of Sabbath — Rest & Delight.

March 5, 2020: burnout, a cocktail of depression, anxiety, grief, undiagnosed ADHD, bipolar disorder — cognitively impaired, chemically imbalanced.

“The Gods confound the man who first found out
How to distinguish the hours—confound him, too Who in this place set up a sundial
To cut and hack my days so wretchedly
Into small pieces”

— Plautus, a Roman playwright.

“I wish we had a word for something that has both saved us and destroyed us.”

“It’s easy just to assume this pace of life is normal. It’s not.”

A snippet from The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, John Marc Comer.

I don’t have time to rest:

    • Told to push through it, so much is asked from us
    • Crisis gives a wonderful toolkit — protecting time and energy
    • Set prioritization, plan breaks, when to stop working, etc.
    • It was the same amount of time, just slower!

 

  • Take a NAP!

 

      • Better problem-solver, creative, and present after 20-minutes sleep

 

  • Normalize a midday nap!

 

  • Blessed are intentionally unrested
    • Why are we exhausting ourselves past our limitations?

I am what I do:

    • If the measure of success is busy-ness, then hell with limitations…
      • How are you? Good, keeping ‘busy’.
      • But how much of this is the reflex of glorifying busyness?…if a full schedule guarantee success and safety
      • …if your value is measured by your being and not by your output?

 

  • If busyness is a virtue… rest is the cheap currency for the poor in spirit.

 

      • Emotional energy invested, hit to the point there’s none left after work…what’s working hard if the fruits of labor cannot be enjoyed; hoping that work would love me back.

 

  • Humanizing self! Rest is a human right…

 

SABBATICAL!

Afraid of answering the question, “What have you been doing in the sabbatical?” with “Nothing!”

I will never have or be enough:

    • Sweet buzz of hustling culture, being creatively activated, working together with a common goal, the beauty of something comes from nothing…
      • Toxic mindset of …Growth at all costs!
      • We need more mocks, more data, faster replies on slack, etc…

 

  • More is not the same as growth, isn’t the same as enough.

 

    • A scarcity mindset.

“…The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”

Thomas Merton, Conjectured of a Guilty Bystander

What is enough?

Honest take on what is a good life. Scarcity, Enough, Abundance.

“To the abundance of enough…” — toast during meals.

“Fjaka”

Wealth isn’t the goal, rest actually is. Professional invitation to rest… embracing the limitations of enough, nourish and protect the rhythms of making and resting, limits are worth honoring, take time off as often to re-energise…

Rest as resistance.