Why We Are Mandating Rest

We've been told that true innovation requires a constant, unforgiving grind. 1 year into founding a startup, I've learned that couldn't be further from the truth.

Starting today, we are taking the month of December to rest – and no, we are not considering this a vacation or paid time off. This is part of our job. Rest is work. And we are mandating it. 

Rest is not something to earn or work towards. It should be a basic human right and essential skill in order to do your best work. Doing great work has very little to do with productivity. It requires deep thinking, radical creativity and vibrant energy to solve big problems, grow businesses and lead teams. Even our favorite high performing athletes (word to Lebron) have intentional periods of rest and off seasons to let their bodies recover. We can’t develop the next great idea if there’s no room between the daily grind of tasks and to-dos for new inspiration to flow. 

I’m a workaholic in recovery.

For most of my career, I’ve prioritized being busy, working all the time, figuring out how I can get to the next thing and attaching my worth to what I’m able to produce. I was the person who posted “rise and grind” on IG with a motivational quote and blast Rick Ross “Hustlin” in the car on my commute.  As a young single mom at 19, grind culture fit my aesthetic. I could justify working myself to the ground because I had to make a better life for my daughter. It was just me and convinced myself I didn’t have another option. I was rewarded for staying late, working weekends, taking calls on vacation and generally being available at all times. I’ve had an amazing career, risen up the ranks, earned a lot of money and racked up some recognition. It was working for me until it didn’t. 

Something broke in me during the pandemic. After 17 years of hustling, I got to slow down. Although we were still working around the clock, it was a different kind of work..a less physically demanding schedule. My body started to break down. I was having panic attacks, debilitating migraines, I was deeply fatigued, gained weight, moments of vertigo, and so on. I thought it was from stress due to the pandemic, which it was. But it was also my body experiencing rest for the first time in my adult life. 

The more time I took off, the more I realized how deeply dehydrated I was from rest. It felt impossible to get up for work in the mornings. The work I was doing was ok, but it wasn’t great. I was looking for excuses to get out of meetings and completely checked out. I didn’t have the energy to lead my teams and show up in a way that they deserved and in spring 2022, I left my job to take the rest of the year to recover. I vowed to never work like that again and started asking “how have we gotten to the point where we’ve pushed ourselves to the brink of productivity?”

We are beyond burnout. 

We are a nation recovering from collective trauma. According to the APA’s 2023 report on stress, we are still measuring the lasting impacts of this era-defining crisis that included COVID-19, global conflict, racism and racial injustice, inflation, and climate-related disasters.  An inspection of pre- and post-pandemic mental and physical health reveals signs of collective trauma among all ages. 

We are not ok.  We need to stop pretending and working like nothing happened. We are in a state of post traumatic stress with 67% of people feeling like their problems are not “bad enough” to be stressed out and 62% are struggling to cope and suffering alone because they don’t want to burden others. 

The way we talk about “quiet quitting,” “bare minimum mondays” and the decrease in employee engagement does a disservice and is disrespectful to what we’re experiencing. We are not entitled employees who don’t want to work anymore (stares at Kim K), we are in deep fatigue doing the best we can.

the US is literally the worst in the world at rest

There are no federal or state statutory minimum paid vacations or paid public holidays in the US. In fact, we are the second-worst country in the world when it comes to the number of paid vacation days given, ahead of only Micronesia.

Paid leave is at the discretion of the employers to their employees.  While 77% of employers offer some kind of time off, nearly half of all U.S. workers fail to use all their allotted vacation days. More than 125 million Americans don’t have access to any paid leave. Overall, that means the U.S. workforce left 212 million days unused, or $62.2 billion in lost benefits that amount to an average of $561 donated by each worker to their employer last year. The cited reasons for not taking the time –  too much to do, worried about falling behind, and not wanting to ask their leader or coworkers for support (aka, I don’t want to burden anyone). 

Ironically, our most progressive views on paid vacation came over 100 years ago. In 1910, more than 30 years after conservationist John Muir called for a national “law of rest,” President William Taft suggested that vacations should no longer be reserved for the wealthy, and proposed that everyone should have a right to three months away from work every year so that they could continue on “with energy and effectiveness.” Of course, the legislation went nowhere. A Paid Vacation Act went back to legislation in 1943, 2009 and 2015, each time dying in Congress.

We are obsessed with being busy. We celebrate our commitment to work as a status symbol and are wildly uncomfortable with leisure and rest. The majority of leaders we revere, promote and celebrate as business icons have an unhealthy relationship to work. Today, CEO’s are doubling down on hardwork culture, calling employees “arrogant” for lower productivity and generally creating one of the biggest crises in trust the workplace has ever experienced. 

We only have three options: 

1. We keep working ourselves to death, literally.  This is very likely. The unprecedented levels of stress and fatigue are leading to a wild increase in inflammation, chronic disease, strokes and heart attacks. If left to our own devices, we will keep working ourselves to the ground.

2. The government intervenes and makes a federal mandate on our behalf. Given the massive list of problems to solve in the world and the dysfunctional nature of our government today, I’m gonna guess this is pretty unlikely.

3. Companies recognize the importance of rest, mandate it and build a culture around it.  This is our only viable solution to some relief and why we are making it a priority as a company.

Manual’s values around rest

We are intentional about building a rhythm of rest. We are making a decision that rest is an essential skill for our best work. Consistent, excellent work doesn’t equate to working constantly. 

We chose December because it’s the time when everyone starts to check out – processes start to slip, meetings get canceled and rescheduled, anxiety is high due to the holidays, people are traveling, figuring out gifts for loved ones, we are exhausted from the year and naturally starting to get in a space of reflection. It just doesn’t make sense to keep running at full speed during this time.

We define it as eliminating any external delivery deadlines and removing all scheduled gatherings (like meetings, taskforces, 1:1s).  We are attempting to create space to breathe.  We’ve spent the last few weeks preparing for this and these are our ground rules we shared with our team:

1. Really use this time to unplug, rest, recover, restore, foster your creativity and be present with the people you love. We will be running hard when we return in January. 

2. You are free to work on items in your domain on your own, but please don’t include others or try to schedule time for collaboration. We are canceling all scheduled meetings. Our next team meeting will be Wednesday, January 3. 

3. If something comes up where you need to contact someone or need their support, text them or message them privately (check their Manual for their preference). See if you can try to solve it on your own first. 

4. You are free to send updates, ideas or things you find interesting in Slack but don’t have an expectation for people to respond. We recommend everyone put Slack on silent so you can check on your time table.  

5. Notify your partners of your intention. We know other people don’t work the way we do, but do your best to set clear expectations and intentions about this time. 

It might seem counterintuitive that a startup at our stage would intentionally take this kind of rest. We did this in July and it worked really well. We came back refreshed, rejuvenated, reenergized and with better, more impactful ideas. We’re hitting our milestones and accomplishing more than we hoped to so far. 

   

How we can all improve our relationship to rest

1. Recognize it's not your fault that you don’t know how to rest – we are awful as a society. We don’t prioritize it, teach it or celebrate people who have a healthy relationship with rest. 

2. Educate yourself on the power of rest – there are so many benefits to rest, especially in relation to creativity and productivity. Here’s a starter kit of resources to check out:

   1. The Power of Time off, The Nap Ministry, Sacred Rest: Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore Your Sanity, The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working 

3. Understand your unique rest style – take our assessment and find out what kind of rest works best for you.

4. Schedule it – don’t leave it up to chance. As you’re thinking about 2024, make it a priority to put scheduled days off on your calendar. Don’t let PTO go to waste!

5. Leaders, enforce your teams to take the time – one of the reasons your teams aren’t taking time off is because they don’t think they can. Take the burden off of them and remind them constantly to take the time. 

6. CEOs + HR, change it from a benefit to a mandate – if you want to be a company on the cutting edge, attract top talent and lower attrition, make rest a mandate. 

I think John Muir, the founder and father of our National Parks system, had it right in 1876 with a message for those that felt that free time was a luxury; he says: “We work too much and rest too little. Cannot leave your business? Well you will leave it. Killed by overwork you will end up in the hearse of the jolly undertaker.”

Wishing you deep rest, meaningful reflections and joyful relaxation this holiday. 

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