Why to Work Less
I beat the drum around working less all the damn time. Here’s why:
I want you to discover sustaining ways to grow into and share your gifts with the world. Intentionality around work is foundational. So is rest.
However, these are privileges that not everyone enjoys freely. I worry about this aspect of my field. If I am coaching leaders and professionals into MORE success, should that be the whole story?
I don’t think so—but I don’t see it as an either/or problem. I reject the idea that, for you or me to have success (however we define it), someone else must lose out.
The alternative is to connect personal success into broader streams of repair. Following women like Tricia Hersey at the Nap Ministry, whose theory of rest draws from Womanism, Black Liberation Theology, and Reparations Theory, as well as theories of interconnection that span diverse faiths and philosophies, I believe it is possible to align and advance both personal and collective thriving.
Consider this:
There is a social cost to extreme busyness.
Rest is how we keep showing up. Burnout serves no one.
Individual health is interconnected with both community health and ecological health.
As a physiological and psycho-spiritual need, rest should be a human right.
Rest can be subversive in an economy and institutions that reinforce toxic patterns of commodification and consumption.
Learn more:
Why busyness is so damaging. Our economic and political order fuels a state of constant activity which harms both individual and community well-being.
It’s a right, not a privilege: the napping resistance movement. Who is allowed to rest in American society?
+ Explore my work on a reparative framework for leadership and success👇🏼
