In 1963, Randy Gardner set a world record for staying awake. He didn’t sleep for 11 days and 24 minutes (264.4 hours). He engaged in the experiment at just 17 years of age, was monitored by Stanford sleep researchers. Though he said he suffered no ill effects, the monitors reported serious cognitive and behavioral changes, including lack of concentration, no short-term memory, paranoia and hallucinations. On the final day, he was asked to do subtraction starting at 100 and working down. He stopped at 65. When asked why he replied that he had forgotten what he was doing.
Many years later, Gardner reported suffering from severe insomnia as an adult. He believed his participation in the sleep study, decades earlier, was to blame. The Guinness Book of World Records stopped allowing others to attempt to break the record, fearing they would suffer ill effects. In fact, recent editions of Guinnessdon’t provide any record of Gardner’s sleep deprivation experiment. This is but one example of our culture coming to understand the value of rest and relaxation.
Just like an engine needs maintenance, a leader needs to relax on a regular basis, lest he cease to function. The body and mind were not meant to run at 100% day-in and day-out without a break. Leaders can force themselves, at times, to function for too long a period, eventually impacting their health and wellbeing. The Bible teaches us to have rest at regular intervals Psalm 127:2 reminds us, “It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.” Thousands of years before modern medicine, Scripture clearly tells us lack of rest make us anxious and to stop staying up late at night!
Rest is more than just stopping to sleep. We also need to relax—to become less tense or irritable. This means not only giving the mind sleep, but taking time to distract the mind with pleasurable thoughts and activities that are leisurely, unhurried and not demanding. What are some ways that a leader can build in relaxation into their schedule?
Slow down. Relaxation begins with adjusting your pace. Some leaders live life at 100 miles per hour. They work fast, eat fast, walk fast. Their minds are constantly looking to the next thing. The antidote to this is to purposefully slow down. Psalm 46:10 says, “Be still, and know that I am God.” The idea is that we meet God and know God best when we’re not rushing past everything He is doing in His creation and by extension in our own lives.
A practical way to slow down is to schedule relaxation each day. Have a few times during the day to just stop what you’re doing and relax. Play a relaxation track, close your eyes and daydream. Use the breathing app on your smartwatch. Get away from your desk or workspace and find a pleasant view. Have a conversation with a friend about family, fun hobbies or what’s coming up for the weekend. Intentionally adjusting your pace can bring you to a state of relaxation.
Sit down. Many businesspeople swear by stand-up desks, which often reduce back pain and even blood sugar. But they also promote constant movement. For many, motion gives momentum to the day. When you get tired, you might stand to keep yourself from drifting off to sleep. If you’re addicted to constant motion and activity, just taking a seat can boost creativity and reduce stress, as it’s a signal to your mind to take a break from concentrated effort.
Genesis 2:2 recounts, “By the seventh day God had finished the work He had been doing; so on the seventh day He rested from all His work.” The picture of rest here is not one of God being exhausted and needing a break. The work of creation was effortless and joyful for Him. Instead picture a painter who completes a masterpiece, and then steps back, sits down in a chair, and surveys his work as a whole to enjoy it. Sitting down is relaxing because we might be changing our viewpoint—surveying the world from a different angle, and taking a break from our line of thought.
Shut down. Finally, relaxing is knowing when to call it a day. Don’t experiment like Guinness record holder Randy Gardner. Adult men need seven to eight hours of sleep out of every 24. Lack of sleep affects you physically and mentally, from less sex drive to weight gain to emotional swings, lack of clear judgment, and a weakened immune system. Recent research even links insomnia to certain cancers.[1] Relaxing doesn’t always mean sleeping, but it should include sleep.
Many business leaders push themselves to late nights and unhealthy schedules, and then when the project is over and the deal is sealed, the “crash”. The reality is that you can’t really “catch up” on sleep. The body needs regular intervals of sleep, punctuated by an occasional nap or mental break. The challenge for a leader is to, as is commonly said, “know when to call it a day.” That is, to know when, even though a deadline or commitment presses, that stopping for rest is more important because it will actually lead to greater mental and physical productivity.
In Spain, workers are known to practice the siesta, taking a nap or break after lunch. Siesta comes from the Latin word sexta, meaning the sixth-hour of the day. In many Spanish towns you’ll find businesses closed between 2:00 and 4:00 p.m. Restaurants close after lunch and then reopen later for dinner, which many Spaniards eat between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m. The tradition started in the days of the Roman empire, when citizens practiced a rest period during the hottest part of the day, called a riposo.
When visiting Spain, you’ll probably be struck by the somewhat leisurely pace of life. Compare this to the frantic pace in US cities, who boast of 24-hours services and nonstop activity. A number of years ago the Spanish Prime Minister introduced a plan to do away with the siesta, which would make the workday end earlier. After study, though, they found that workers actually worked more hours overall, and slept fewer minutes each might, on average, than their other European counterparts. Learning to relax, it seemed, had benefitted the culture of the entire country.
[1] https://www.dallas-sleep.com/blog/men-heres-how-sleep-deprivation-can-mess-with-your-health
Cover photo: Shutterstock
Just like an engine needs maintenance, a leader needs to relax on a regular basis, lest he cease to function. The body and mind were not meant to run at 100% day-in and day-out without a break.