Nobody Has Time to Rest Anymore. We’re Too Busy.

There’s a line often attributed to Yogi Berra about a popular restaurant:

“No one goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”

Whether he really said this or not is anyone’s guess. I mean, the title of his book is “I Really

Didn’t Say Everything I Said!” so...

Either way, it’s a great quote and also perfectly adaptable in our world of as Helping Professionals:

Nobody has time to rest anymore. We’re too busy.

I can't take lunch today. Too much going on.

I don't have time to exercise this week.

I can't take PTO. We're short-staffed.

Next thing you know we're trying to navigate complicated human problems fueled only by caffeine, professional responsibility, and Clif Bar crumbs we found in a desk drawer.

There’s another saying I like:

“If you don't have time for five minutes of meditation, meditate for ten.”

Again, completely bass ackwards.

And that's the point.

The moment five quiet minutes feels impossible is the exact moment when five quiet minutes would do the most good.

Too Busy to Recover

We have a bad habit treating rest as something that happens after the work is finished.

The problem in social is services is that the work is never finished.

There will always be another client.

Another email.

Another crisis.

Another report.

Another perfectly reasonable thing that deserves attention.

If everything must be finished before we allow ourselves to recover, we've created a wellness strategy with no opportunity for wellness.

Worse, being depleted makes us less effective.

Scattered attention.

Short fuse.

Poor decisions making.

Small setbacks seem enormous.

Tasks take longer.

Which then makes us even busier.

So we don't recover because we're overwhelmed...

and staying depleted makes us easier to overwhelm.

There's the Yogi Berra logic again.

Five Minutes Counts

Self care doesn't have to mean disappearing to a mountain retreat for two weeks and returning smelling like eucalyptus.

It's much less impressive.

Eat lunch.

Take a meeting while walking outside.

Close the office door.

Leave on time.

Put the phone down.

The goal isn't to eliminate demanding days.

We’ll always have those.

The goal is to stop treating constant depletion as proof that we're doing important work. Martyr complex is real.

Sometimes the most productive thing we can do is recover enough to be useful again tomorrow.

So if you're thinking:

I don't have time for that today.

That's worth the self examination.

Because being too busy for self care is the clearest sign that self care needs a bump up the priority list.

Maybe even for ten minutes.

What am I telling myself I'm too busy to do that might actually help me handle the busyness better?