Why rest is key to healing from burnout — and how to get it

It might not always look like a hammock in the sun — still, rest is key to healing from burnout. Here’s how to get it.

Sally Clarke
5 min readJun 27, 2022
woman lying in a hammock in the sun
If you needed a sign to go buy a hammock, this is it.

For many of us, sleep is characterized as the enemy. It lurks at the bottom of our to do lists:

“I’ll sleep once this deadline has passed.”

“I’ll take a weekend off when this project finishes.”

The idea prevails that sleeping less makes you more productive. In the mid to long term, the opposite is true. Healthy sleep and rest are key to ongoing health and sustainable growth. By avoiding sleep and rest, you do yourself severe damage and move further away from your goals.

After burnout, when you are looking to heal your body and relight your Spark, you need to rest and restore your physical and physiological systems to allow your parasympathetic nervous system to restore optimal functioning. This means building rest into daily life, so it’s not a once-off, but a continual, ongoing practice.

Let’s look at two ways to get more rest: Prioritizing Sleep, and Building Restful Habits.

Make Sleep Your Priority

--

--

Sally Clarke

Wellbeing & burnout author, expert, writer & speaker. Global adventurer. she/her www.salcla.com