Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less is a book that absolutely changed my life in a very profound way. 

What I like about it is that it’s one of those books that you could read once and take something away from it and then reread it at a different time in your life and get something completely different out of it. I also like that unlike a lot of business and self-help books, it isn’t prescriptive. 

This book starts out talking about studies concerning productivity, output, and the best way to plan out your work week. The author states that if Darwin had been a corporate employee, he would have been fired after two weeks! 

A New Way To Structure Your Workday

One of the biggest takeaways for me was the suggestion to do an hour and a half of work first thing in the morning.

I like to get up early. I work from home and I have small humans in my house, so getting an hour and a half of focused quiet work done in the mornings has helped me make progress on things that just weren’t getting done. 

We have a video course called The Content Block System that shows people how we help our clients and how they can set the same business model up for themselves.

I had the task of creating many videos for this course, and even though I was excited about the content, I was having a hard time getting the videos done. If I waited until my hair was dry and my house was quiet, I would have never made any progress. 

So, I did a screen share video instead of showing my face and recorded those videos first thing in the morning.

Once I started doing that, I got the videos done much more quickly.

So now, as soon as I get up, I work until my five-year-old gets up, and then I switch gears. After that, I take a big break and help get breakfast ready and everyone out the door. Then I sit back down for another hour and a half session. 

Rest recommends three or four hour and a half sessions of focused work to get a ton done. 

Building Breaks Into Your Day

Once I implemented this system, I was able to start prioritizing yoga. Instead of feeling like I needed to go first thing in the morning, I go in the middle of the day between work periods. After lunch and a rest, I come back in the late afternoon for another focused work period. 

I began to see a huge change in how much I could get done when I structured my workday this way.

Rest Increases Capacity

Unlike many of the sound bites or quotes I’ve heard about the need for breaks, this book considers the very real problem of being an entrepreneur or freelancer – if you’re not working, you’re not making money. That can be stressful.

But, by prioritizing rest, you’re actually making sure you have the capacity to get more done. 

Exercise, long walks, or other forms of rest don’t have to come at the expense of being an entrepreneur or a business owner. On the contrary, those things actually enable us to do creative work for the rest of our lives instead of working toward some magical income level and then burning out before we get there. 

Let Us Know What You Think!

If you’ve read Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less, leave a comment and tell me what you learned from the book. I’d love to hear from you!

And, if you want to learn more about what we do, head to Doing Marketing Differently You can watch a quick video to learn how to double your income without doubling your workload, leaving you plenty of time for rest.