Being “busy” is not synonymous with being productive.
In these times, there has been a growing stigma around rest and leisure, considering them as a lack of personality and basically as a problem or competitive disadvantage. It is increasingly believed that being “busy” is synonymous with being more productive, but this is far from true. In fact, being busy works against our productivity and performance.
“Rest” is a fundamental part, not only for development, but also for creating the ideal scenario in which our capacity manifests to its maximum potential when we need it the most, such as in competition.
Thanks to this idea of having to be busy all the time, of having to be in some kind of “production,” “training,” or “preparation,” and being bombarded by the results seen on social media, we are actually moving further away from that coveted space where we can perform at our best and be in the “zone.”
The reason is very simple. First, human beings are not structurally designed or equipped to maintain our attention on something all the time. We are designed to spend periods of time doing “nothing,” or rather, to spend moments of “boredom.” This is actually an important space for creativity, reflection, self-awareness, and personal development. In these moments, natural cognitive processes are activated in which our mind can perceive what is clouded by our selective attention to the nearest and most immediate stimulus.
On the other hand, the constant bombardment of stimuli of immediate satisfaction that we find on social media and the media in general diminishes our ability to create. At the moment we receive a stimulus that inspires us to take action and motivates us to put it into motion, another stimulus comes along that diverts our energy in another direction or project. This is what happens on a larger scale when we don’t have regularized and previously planned spaces for rest. Naturally, after a period of recovery, we can reach this state we are talking about, where creativity and inspiration can flow.
In high-performance sports…
In sports, this mistake is one of the most common, even among professionals and high-level competitors. Furthermore, it produces a vicious cycle effect that works as follows.
The athlete has become accustomed to the idea that their hard work, effort, and sacrifice are key to achieving physical and technical improvement goals in their sport. This gives them an advantage in competition and rewards their preparation and effort, especially at the initial levels of competition. It is not uncommon to see in amateur and professional circuits, at the beginning, competitors who achieve positive results due to a better physique, more hours of skill practice, greater muscle mass, height, etc.
However, at the professional level, it has become somewhat standardized. At this point, everyone understands and knows the sport, everyone trains a significant number of hours, and they have elite physical conditioning. Improvements and changes make the difference, but at a detailed level. The difference between first and second place is often a matter of milliseconds, millimeters, etc.
So, in that line of thinking, it is normal to find athletes who build their foundation of competitive confidence through the hard work that led them to where they are (which is fine). However, sometimes they interpret this as “more is better,” believing that more time, more effort, and more strength will make them better. But this is not necessarily how it works. The body has its limits, and that is where performance in competition can be affected by possible overtraining. Excessive systematic training can lead to accumulation and cognitive fatigue, which means that the athlete may think after achieving an adverse result in competition: “If I lost in this competition, now I will double my efforts.” However, this can lead to learning to do things wrong twice.
That is to say, let us remember that when we talk about high performance, we are talking about executing the task at least 100%. So, where do you think “now I will double my efforts” will lead you? Why didn’t you give your full effort from the beginning? What difference will it really make to “try harder” now? There are reasons that deserve to be reviewed with a sports psychologist, where we can find the reasons why this did not happen from the start.
Time to rest!!
Rest plays a primordial role in this process, as it allows the body and mind to absorb and assimilate all the effort made. Sports and actions that lead to improvement require experience and repetition. However, if we also focus on improving different areas, such as selective attention to various stimuli, techniques and instructions, the body will not have enough time to internalize what was learned in one practice session before a new stimulus arrives. This causes short-term memory to displace what was previously learned, or a new instruction or teaching to not reach its mastery. Therefore, only when we double or triple the repetition time, and still the learning is not significant, it means that by changing some of the variables of the context or circumstances in which it is presented, the effectiveness of what was learned will decrease. We learn what to do in practical terms, but we do not understand the concept of how to do it or when its greatest effectiveness is generated. Therefore, it is important to implement the necessary adjustments for it to work, including circumstantial changes.
Rest should be considered as an important component of training and preparation for optimal performance. When planning our activities, we must include time for rest and recovery. Active, proactive, and beneficial rest for our action plan. It is not just about distancing ourselves from stimuli that can overshadow what we have trained or learned, but also about providing vital balance to keep our organism functioning. Resting and reflecting on a single piece of knowledge allows us to achieve much more than overloading the brain, body, and senses with information.
This should be seen as the use of an elevator; you decide where to get on (start your development process) and choose where to get off (goal setting). But if you get impatient and start jumping or pressing buttons to make it go faster and take you to your goal faster (overtraining and overstimulating myself), it is likely that the elevator will get stuck and malfunction, actually setting you back even more. This is where we often find ourselves forced to ask for someone or something to “rescue” us, when in reality what we should do is trust the work we have done and let it do its job to find our own rhythm and presence within ourselves in terms of acquiring and improving what has been acquired to use it competently. It is about resting, but that doesn’t mean standing still (trusting that we have achieved the maximum of our performance and skill acquisition), because if we stay still for too long… the elevator will take us back to the starting point.
Remember that it is important to understand and see the path that others have already traveled to reach the top. However, if you limit yourself to following in their footsteps, you will always be in second place, or you could even be number 584, depending on when you start following them. It is better to find your own path after understanding how the game is played and how to get there.
