Often, what we are accustomed to consider as rest, in fact, is not such. From the point of view of benefits for the body, scrolling the VKontakte feed after an 8-hour working day, also spent in front of a computer, can hardly be called “rest”. Therefore, even those people who have enough time for recreation after work still feel chronically tired. This is due to overload with the same type of activities and the inability to rest properly. In the training we briefly mentioned some rules of rest. It's time to expand on this topic in more detail and talk about how we need to rest properly so that our brain and body receive the necessary relaxation.
Why rest?
Or a short introduction for workaholics. It would seem that you can accomplish so much if you learn to keep your mind and body constantly active! In fact, it is impossible to learn this. Each person's reserve of strength is exhausted, and without the ability to switch to rest, labor productivity sooner or later falls, the ability to concentrate decreases, and the general state.
Therefore, rest is necessary component life, which must alternately replace other types of activities (work, study). But at the same time, you can relax in different ways: some prefer to watch TV or “surf” the Internet, others, after making tea, start reading interesting book, still others go to night club, fourth in Gym or play football with friends. It all depends on a person's personal preferences. But how applicable is the word “rest” to each of the above activities? Does a person rest effectively in this case? Let's figure out what rest should be like in order for our body to restore strength and not lose it even more.
Effective rest
Rest is a change of activity
This statement is heard constantly. And most often ignored. It’s only a stretch to call spending time on social networks a vacation for a person whose eyes are already glued to the computer monitor and phone display all day. Therefore, the first and main requirement is a variety of pastimes and a dilution of the usual routine. This condition of the resting process should be understood literally - if most You spend your working day sitting at the computer, the best relaxation for you would be a walk in the park, playing sports, or anything, as long as it’s not the same thing you already do for a third of your day.
Don't ignore rest
Many of us often tell ourselves something like “I’ll sleep off this weekend” or “I’ll rest after finishing the project.” Situations are different. And sometimes you have to sacrifice rest for the sake of career growth and material well-being. In this regard, each person is the architect of his own happiness. But it is important to take into account that in the matter of relaxation, as well as with health, it is easier, more productive and “cheaper” to prevent overexertion than to neutralize it later. Therefore, remember that workaholism is good only in moderation and do not exhaust yourself to the limit. You have the right to proper rest.
Cancel everything
From time to time, give yourself a “clean” day. No scheduled meetings, no important matters, no diaries - nothing that surrounds you all the time. Put your phone aside, turn off your laptop, and take a day to relax. This is very difficult, but necessary.
Try to separate your personal life and work
Another scourge modern man. Always “on call”, do you work during lunch, at home, in transport, on weekends? Take breaks at least sometimes. It is very easy to fall into the trap of total absorption of life by work, but it can be difficult to get out of it. Live with work problems 24 hours a day, burdening your environment with them and own thinking- wrong. You need to learn to deal with this. Talking about the methods is not the purpose of this article, but that the work and personal life must be separated - no doubt. No excuses or exceptions!
Take a vacation
One way or another, but again we turn to workaholics. For many people, vacation is one of the most enjoyable and anticipated parts of work. But there are also those who reluctantly, taking a work laptop, exchange an office chair for a home sofa and continue to live by work. Some people use their vacation to start renovating. Some people, as they joked in KVN, need another vacation after a vacation to really relax. To prevent this from happening to you, remember the rules that have already been described above - first of all, about a complete change of activity. Go to a place where there is no Internet and the mobile does not detect the network. And don't worry about anything!
Rest and not rest
Let’s say you had a free minute at work or at home and, sighing with relief, you began looking at new photos on Instagram or went to comment on updates to your friends’ VKontakte feeds. To what extent can this be called a vacation? Very conditional. As a method of distraction from the “routine”, a way to unload the brain for a while - yes, but nothing more. Steve Pavlina wrote that such a distraction is not a rest, because during it a person continues to be haunted by a feeling of anxiety about. Therefore, remind yourself of the saying: “If you’ve done the job, go for a walk with confidence,” otherwise such a vacation risks developing into... By this we are not saying that surfing the Internet cannot be a form of leisure, but we are only calling for it not to be the only kind.
How to relax in 10 minutes?
The techniques given will not replace good rest with sleep, but if in the middle of a busy day you have a couple of free minutes, you can use them to your advantage and get some rest.
Visualization
Breathing exercises
We wrote about some, and here we present the technique proposed by Lucy Palladino in. From a sitting position, without closing your eyes, inhale deeply through your nose and look to the right top corner room, keeping his gaze on him. As you continue to inhale, move your gaze to the upper left corner. Exhaling gradually, concentrate on the lower left corner of the room, and then look at the lower right corner. Thus, you will have four steps of the exercise (four corners of the room) and for every two steps there will be one breathing technique - inhalation or exhalation.
Take up meditation or yoga
This will clear all your thoughts from work worries and personal problems, at least for a while. On the one hand, they unload the mind and body, on the other, they discipline them. Moreover, today, with the help of training videos and literature, anyone can try to practice.
Modern life often requires intense work, as a result of which, at a certain point, fatigue accumulates, both physical and emotional. It is important to know how to rest properly so that your activities are productive and your mood is positive.
The need to restore the body
Adequate rest is a vital necessity for a person, without which the quality of work sharply decreases. To determine the optimal mode of work and rest, you need to remember a few simple rules.
To work productively, you need to restore your strength. Rest is not an escape from work, but a way to recharge with energy. It does not mean lying at home in front of the TV for many hours. In order to wake up in the morning with a fresh head and positive thoughts, I need to arrange it for myself in the evening.
A walk, a cool shower and a clean bed will provide. Each person has an individual need for sleep, but 8 hours is considered ideal. During this time, the body has time to fully recover, physically and psychologically. If a situation arises where you cannot get enough sleep at night, you need to take a short nap during the day, just as people who are usually engaged in mental activity rest.
You need to start resting when fatigue has not yet appeared and you still have the strength to organize physical activity. Optimal work week is 40 hours. Increasing this time will not increase productivity, but will lead to fatigue and depression, which may require long-term treatment.
Fractional rest is more rational. It is better to rest for 10 minutes every hour. If fatigue accumulates, it will be much more difficult to cope with it. That is why standards have been developed for office workers. People whose work involves computers are entitled to 15-minute breaks every hour. This time is worth spending on a short walk in the park or doing physical exercise. So short but leisure will significantly increase the productivity of further work.
Changing the type of activity
Also in Ancient Greece changing the type of activity was considered an example of how to rest. And for good reason! Rest implies a change in the activity of various organs:
- alternating mental work with physical work is the best option for recuperating;
- if the job involves low motor activity, rest should be associated with movement - it could be swimming, running or just a walk in the park.
A change of scenery
Changing the environment allows you to effectively restore strength:
- if the work involves being indoors, rest should be spent outdoors;
- if a person works in a team, then he will receive emotional relief by staying in solitude for a while, preferably in nature;
- people working for outdoors, going to the theater or museum will be a real pleasure;
- When doing office work, a visit to the gym, club or dance floor will allow you to relax.
Important for nervous system has a change emotional state. If during the day there are many meetings with different people, accumulates nervous tension, then how to relax after work? Emotional fatigue You can take a walk in the forest or along the river bank. With monotonous paperwork in a great way relaxation will become game types sports or, for example, a disco.
You need to be able to switch off from work after working day. You should not discuss problems related to your main activity or unfinished business at home. It is also advisable to turn off your phone even during a short rest.
A healthy lifestyle contributes to effective recovery. Alcoholic drinks can give the illusion of temporary relaxation, but later there will be an even greater loss of strength, and the next day you will have a headache.
Weekend in nature
It’s worth planning your weekend getaway in advance. It is impossible to sleep for a week in two days. Lying aimlessly on the couch in front of the TV will also not relieve fatigue. It is better to go with family or friends outside the city, to the forest or mountains, to the river. Such a vacation will recharge positive emotions for the whole week and will allow you to go to work on Monday in a good mood.
Some tips will tell you how to relax after work on the weekend:
- a person who works without rest wears out his body faster; it is important for him to realize the need to recuperate;
- reduce to a minimum the time spent at the computer or TV;
- do not set an alarm clock on the weekend morning - you can oversleep a little;
- do not run to the kitchen to prepare breakfast - there is no rush;
- do not accumulate all your tasks for the weekend and do not try to redo them;
- forget about household plans and take a walk in the park, have a family lunch in a cozy cafe, or do some kind of sport.
Vacation
Even for a person doing what he loves, vacation is necessary. It helps restore vital energy, without which the body will constantly be in a state of fatigue. A person who regularly and properly rests has more good health, reliable immunity. It is better suited for intense mental activity.
In order for the vacation to bring maximum effect, it is better to split it into several parts and rest every three to four months for one week. This is quite enough to fully restore your strength and not lose the habit of working. A long rest is too relaxing, after which it is more difficult to get back into the usual rhythm. Therefore, you need to choose the best option. The best place Where to spend your holidays are quiet, picturesque corners of nature. You can go to the sea or lake, to the mountains, to the river bank, away from the noisy city.
When leaving work, many people dream of catching up on sleep and lying on the beach. However, you also need to rest properly on vacation. Hiking, sea air and water, fresh fruits and herbs will help cleanse and restore the body.
It is necessary to draw up a vacation plan that will include active activities - visiting historical and natural attractions, museums. It's especially interesting to watch life unfamiliar city, get acquainted with local culture, participate in national holidays. The more eventful the vacation, the more vivid memories will remain. They will also be reminded of by photographs and videos that will evoke positive emotions.
When going on vacation, you should not choose night flights. After them, it takes a lot of time to adapt, sleep and recuperate; for a long time you feel not rested, but tired. In the first days, you should also not get carried away with active activities until the body has rebuilt itself. It's better to relax a little, go swimming, walk.
During vacation, you don’t need to call work, find out news, it’s better to get busy easy reading literature. Shopping should not be left until the last day. At the end of your vacation, it is better to leave two days for a relaxing holiday. As a rule, many people get very tired from shopping.
How to properly relax after work? Using these recommendations, you can effectively organize your routine. This will allow you to always be cheerful, cheerful and healthy.
The modern pace of life dictates its own rules and forces you to solve a huge number of problems at the same time. This rhythm sucks out all your vital energy, and at the end of the working day you have only one desire: to go to bed, wrap yourself in a blanket and finally get a good night’s sleep.
Have you ever thought that the quality of rest not only determines our ability to recuperate, but also the quality of life?
After all rest is not just getting away from work. Its main task is recovery vitality and energy. It is important to understand that working until you lose your pulse is absolutely pointless and is of no benefit to anyone. the right activity, since labor productivity falls without rest, and redoing it later is a waste of time and effort. Back in Soviet times, in a book on scientific organization labor, the need for timely rest was formulated in this way: “The leader who burns at work, without sparing himself, is a pest, alienating final victory communist labor." And those who might apply the word “workaholic” to themselves should remember that rest is your responsibility both to yourself and to your loved ones.
For effective rest it is necessary. According to researchers, by simply associating work with something negative, stressful and responsible, and rest with something pleasant, relaxed and free, we drive ourselves into a hole of endless fatigue, since we are initially tuned in to what we ultimately get .
But everything is relative. If you talk to a young mother who has returned from maternity leave, you will hear that for her work is relaxation, since it is limited to 8-hour working hours, and mother is a 24-hour concept.
As the saying goes, “if you can’t change a situation, change your attitude towards it.” If you feel negative about your job, try to change the way you look at it. Think about who and how you benefit during your workday. Agree, if you have it, it means someone is paying you money for it. And just like that wages don't give it to anyone. Therefore, your work is important to someone.
It's even easier to find meaning in a job for which you don't get paid. After all, if there was no need for it, no one would do it. And where there is a need, there will certainly be meaning.
It is well known that the best vacation is change of activity. So why not take this advice?
If you are human intellectual work, most of their working time is spent solving complex tasks, active recreation will be effective, small exercise stress. Sports activities, outdoor recreation, walking, going to a club or billiards are suitable. But what you definitely shouldn’t do is stay at home and spend time watching TV. If you don’t want to leave the house, you can start cleaning. Both useful and effective.
If your work involves emotional labor, you have to communicate a lot during the day with by different people, then the best rest would be to reduce communication. Walking in the park, forest, and cycling are effective. You can engage in active recreation in nature - rafting on rivers, riding a yacht, hunting or fishing. You can do physical labor in your garden.
But for people physical labor In terms of relaxation, household chores will be optimal, the solution of which will require some mental effort, which does not at all eliminate the need for active recreation. These could be walks fresh air, fishing.
Where can you find the energy for active recreation when you are so tired at work? Will help next rule: you need to rest before you feel tired. Of course, rest also requires considerable energy expenditure. But where can you get it if you are overtired? It is very important to distribute work time so that you have pauses for short breaks(follow time management rules). After all, it is much easier to relieve minor fatigue than to get rid of severe fatigue.
The most correct rest consists of alternating between relaxation and tension.. If you cannot force yourself to go in for sports after a hard day at work, first rest a little, relax, go for a massage, and only after that start physical exercise.
This rule can also be used when planning work. If you alternate periods of tension and relaxation, you will not feel tired at all at the end of the working day.
Of course, each field of activity has its own rules. To the athlete after intensive training Before competitions, you need at least 48 hours to recover. But after a strong mental stress, oddly enough, 2 times more! Therefore, evaluate your workload and do not forget about this rule.
Remember: our body is subject to the influence of biorhythms, periods of activity are sharply replaced by periods of inactivity. After hard work, recessions occur at intervals of 50–90 minutes. It follows that It’s better to take six 10-minute breaks during the day than one hour. This will not only avoid fatigue, but also increase productivity.
To timely determine the moment of rest, you need to listen to yourself. When you realize that just a little more and fatigue will set in, take a short rest. No wonder the Chinese have a tradition of taking an afternoon nap. A rested employee is more effective than his tired, exhausted colleague.
During these ten-minute breaks, changing the type of activity is effective. If you think that you can close the report and read the news on the same computer as a recreation, then you are greatly mistaken. It’s better to go outside for a while and breathe some air.
How should you spend your vacation so that after it you return fresh and rested, full of new ideas and strength to implement them? In this article I will answer these questions and tell you how to relax during vacation.
Many of you have heard that the best vacation is a change of activity. This is partly true, but in my opinion, a large number of people do not quite correctly perceive this principle. I watch how people spend their vacations and come to the conclusion that most of them do not vacation at all.
They work for months at work, overwhelmed with tasks and worries, and now, when the long-awaited vacation time comes, a rare chance to restore strength, they go on vacation and do the same thing they do during work!
No, of course, I don’t want to say that they postpone their work activities to the weekend. Rather, they completely transfer their everyday habits to their vacation, making it simply a different form of everyday life.
The first danger awaits us in the evening of a regular working day, when we no longer want anything. To avoid spending the entire evening on social networks, cut off your escape routes in advance. Buy a ticket to a concert, promise your spouse a trip to a restaurant, bet with a friend that you won’t miss a workout. And in order not to think on your tired head, right now do a simple exercise “Evening Rest Scenarios”.
Divide the sheet into two columns. On the left, write options for a typical dull evening: “scrolling through Instagram,” “sitting in front of the TV.” And on the right - remember good options: “take a walk in your favorite park,” “go to a new exhibition,” “dive into the pool after working out at the gym.”
An excellent option for those who meet Friday in a state of squeezed lemon. All you need to do is finish your work 1-2 hours early once a week, leave the office and carry out one of the evening relaxation scenarios. Do something that you don’t have enough time and energy to do on an ordinary evening: go to the cinema, to a water park or to a concert. Having a quality rest in the middle of the week, you will get a lot more done in the remaining working days. For a half-day off, Wednesday evening is ideal.
Planning a weekend getaway is a pleasant experience and rarely causes problems. But the mountain of household chores is real danger ruin everything. After all, it is on the weekend that most of us are used to shopping for groceries, cleaning, washing and cooking.
Here are a few ways to clear your weekend from household chores or significantly reduce the time spent on these activities:
a) Make to-do lists, assign responsibilities and deadlines. Everything is like at work. This will save several hours.
b) Don’t save things up for the weekend. For example, you can start the washing machine on Tuesday evening.
c) Delegate. The rest of the family, including children. Or to professionals, but for money (the windows can be washed by guys from a special office, for example).
d) Buy groceries on weekdays. Remember the terrible queues and traffic jams on Sundays.
e) Use delivery services (food, household chemicals, pet products).
Rituals are needed not only for work, but also for relaxation. Normal action It is the details that distinguish it from the ritual. Compare: fry a “ready kebab” from something unknown or choose good meat yourself, marinate it with interesting spices, fry it on the right grill, serve it in beautiful dishes.
Here are some ideas:
a) Entertainment: cinema, theater, football
b) Pleasures for the body: bath, massage, spa
c) Communication with nature: forest, river, sea
d) Sports: bicycle, badminton, skiing
e) Games: board games, cards, chess
e) Food: kebabs, cake
Dr. Elaine Eaker warns that you should not rest less than twice a year, otherwise the risk of heart attack and depression increases significantly. At the same time, it is better to rest little by little, but more often.
Options:
a) 2 weeks in summer + New Year holidays + November and May holidays
b) 2 weeks + spread one day over Fridays to make a long weekend
c) change the climate: leave winter for summer
Taking a month off at once is a bad idea.
On vacation, alternate between resting and switching. Relaxation is a passive scenario, such as lying on the beach and reading a book. Switching is an active option that gives vivid impressions: exploring architectural monuments, playing volleyball.
The most important switch must happen at the beginning of your vacation - you need to switch from work. Therefore, first we “pump up” ourselves with switches in order to knock work problems out of our heads, then we rest passively, and so we alternate until the end of the vacation.
Before going to work, passive rest is required, one or two days. Otherwise, you will go to work exhausted and unrested.
