Mastery is something that engages your mind intellectually outside of work, like painting, taking photographs, playing an instrument, building model airplanes, playing chess. Mastery is a more active form of recovery. Relaxation alone, however, tends to be passive recovery. Relaxation doesn’t happen until I tune into a psychological thriller with a juicy who-dunnit twist. So nowadays when I read a business book I firmly count it as ’work’. A few years ago, however, I noticed that reading business books did not relax me anymore – it was too close to my work. I’m a big reader and have always devoured both fiction and business books. Just doing a relaxing activity is not enough though, it needs to feel relaxing. It can be measured with agreement to statements like “ I do relaxing things in my free time”. Crashing on the couch to watch Netflix, going to the spa, reading a book, meditating, taking a mindful walk. Relaxation is what most would associate with recovery – kicking back and doing calming things. All four are required for high quality recovery. So what is mental recovery? In academic research, mental recovery has four distinct elements: Relaxation, Mastery, Downtime, and Control. Better recovery has been associated with, e.g., lower fatigue, lower stress, better work activation, more proactive initiative and learning at work, higher psychological wellbeing, and happiness. Mental recovery is especially important for knowledge workers – those of us who work primarily with our brain. Recovery can occur during the workday, after the workday, and during extended time off (weekends, holidays, sabbaticals) – and it needs to occur daily, weekly, and long term. Just like physical exercise requires a balance of training and rest, our brain works and develops best when we balance performance and recovery. Recovery is your mind’s ability to unwind, restore your resources, and get up and perform again tomorrow. But sleep is not the only time our brain unwinds. Sleep is crucial for health, performance, longevity, … you name it. Arianna Huffington dubbed herself a ”sleep evangelist”, sleep researcher Matthew Walker achieved near-celebrity status, and executives keep asking Hintsa for ”The Lewis Hamilton Jetlag Plan”. Over the past decade, popular science has been touting the importance of sleep. Until I found one framework that made me go “Ahaa!” This framework, the 4 elements of mental recovery, is the focus of this post: What is recovery, and how can we practically make it happen? The importance of recovery Yet, for the longest time, I felt unable to do much about it. I know that being “always on” is unproductive and gets in the way of my recovery. After the workday has ended, my brain keeps buzzing with tasks, priorities, schedules, unwritten emails. To my utter embarrassment (even writing this now makes me feel ashamed) I realise why: I feel an urge to speed up my kids’ bedtime story to go check my work email.įor as long as I can remember, I’ve struggled to detach. I’ve been skipping parts of her bedtime story. “ Mommy, that’s not how the book goes! The bunny says much more!” My 6-year-old’s objections catch me off guard, but I don’t correct her.
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