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Areas › Your body › Rest and pacing
Working more efficiently buys hours back, and that is the easier half. The harder half is the belief that rest is only for people who have finished everything, which nobody ever has. Do only the practical half and you end up with an empty evening you cannot settle into, which is its own quiet misery. The second half usually takes longer and is worth the longer time.
There is no blame attached to the weak, the sick, and those who have no means to spend (Quran 9:91). Exemption is granted here without any stain on the person who takes it.
التوبة
لَّيۡسَ عَلَى ٱلضُّعَفَآءِ وَلَا عَلَى ٱلۡمَرۡضَىٰ وَلَا عَلَى ٱلَّذِينَ لَا يَجِدُونَ مَا يُنفِقُونَ حَرَجٌ إِذَا نَصَحُواْ لِلَّهِ وَرَسُولِهِۦۚ مَا عَلَى ٱلۡمُحۡسِنِينَ مِن سَبِيلࣲۚ وَٱللَّهُ غَفُورࣱ رَّحِيمࣱ
but there is no blame attached to the weak, the sick, and those who have no means to spend, provided they are true to God and His Messenger- there is no reason to reproach those who do good: God is most forgiving and merciful
Qur’an 9:91read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A meta-review of workplace mental health interventions found moderate evidence for approaches that give people more control over their own work, alongside training in individual coping. An overview of reviews on burnout in doctors and nurses found both individual and organisational changes helped, with the organisational ones lasting better. Taken together, personal effort counts and it is not the whole picture, so if your hours are not yours to shape, that limit is real and not an excuse.
Joyce S, Modini M, Christensen H, Mykletun A, Bryant R, Mitchell PB, Harvey SB. (2016). Workplace interventions for common mental disorders: a systematic meta-review.. Psychological medicine doi
Zhang XJ, Song Y, Jiang T, Ding N, Shi TY. (2020). Interventions to reduce burnout of physicians and nurses: An overview of systematic reviews and meta-analyses.. Medicine doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Free time you spend feeling guilty inside is not really free time.
Rest is not the prize waiting at the end of the work. It is part of what makes the work possible, and it does not have to be earned first.
When you are already behind, rest feels like the one thing you cannot afford. That feeling is usually what keeps you behind.
Say it, out loud if you can manage it: I am done for the day. A decision, rather than a slow guilty drift away from the desk.