We Redefined Work. Now We Need to Redefine Rest—and Play

Why exhaustion feels mysterious—and how to cultivate rest with the same intention we give to productivity

By this point in February, winter has been going on for what feels like a very long time. Here in Scotland, it's still notably cold, and there's something about this particular stretch of the season that makes me want to talk about something we've collectively failed to address: we've spent 30 years redefining work, but we haven't redefined rest.

We're running on our parents' and grandparents' belief systems about work and rest—but their labour was often more visible, repetitive, and physical. We don't feel entitled to rest because we don't recognise the impact of constant mental labour, of living so much in our heads, of the deluge of stimuli from the internet and urban environments.

It's a low-key, insidious exhaustion that sneaks up on us. And we're mystified when it arrives.

Why Burnout Still Mystifies Us

Let's start with burnout, because giving it credence and definition is essential—especially when people are still mystified by why it's happening and gaslit for feeling exhausted.

We often think of burnout as something that happens to people working 80-hour weeks or doing physically demanding labour. But burnout can also happen from mental activity—and this is the version that sneaks up on people because it doesn't fit the old paradigm of what "real work" looks like.

If you lack clarity of structure, positive rhythms and routines, or you're living with ongoing uncertainty—something ambiguous hanging over your life—that creates a kind of mental burnout that's just as real. People who are neurodivergent might be particularly inclined to experience this, because burnout doesn't just happen to people with visible, physical labour. It happens in the mind, in the constant churn of thinking, planning, worrying.

But here's the problem: we can't only talk about rest in the context of severe depletion and illness, as if we need to justify the need for rest. We've created a culture where illness has to emerge to enforce rest, where we need a doctor's note to prove we're "tired enough" to deserve it.

When Rest Feels Impossible

Some people struggle to rest. They struggle to sleep, or during waking hours, they struggle to switch off. Even during designated time off—the weekend, a holiday—they can't disengage.

Interestingly, this can come from a love of what you're doing. If you have a vocation, the burnout becomes insidious because you spend so much time doing what you enjoy, thinking about what you enjoy, to the point where there's a lack of balance. Burnout isn't always directly imposed.

I see this constantly in clients who are self-employed. For them, it's not just the doing of the work—it's thinking about the work, communicating the work, marketing, strategising. If there's a love of what you do and it's a vocation, this sense of not being able to switch off becomes relentless.

In corporate life, someone tells you it's the end of the working week because it's Friday evening. Those boundaries exist, even if some people choose to override them. But burnout can come from a lack of boundaries we create for ourselves.

Tiredness Isn't Unwellness

Burnout is a pronounced experience that needs exploration and validation. But sometimes we're just tired—and tiredness is not necessarily exhaustion. It's not a state of unwellness.

In modern life, we talk about tiredness as if it's automatically a problem, something unnatural. And there are loads of solutions marketed to combat this. Of course, if someone experiences chronic fatigue that isn't resolving itself, that needs special attention. But our need to "cure tiredness" comes from a culture where we're supposed to be endlessly productive.

Our routines don't necessarily sync up with the natural world and the hibernatory impulses of winter. We have this whole culture about curing tiredness—even with supposedly natural means like vitamins or particular drinks—but what if we honoured tiredness as a signal to rest and normalised that without framing it as unwellness?

Tiredness of itself, those occasional slower energies—they don't have to be cured or overridden.

Defining Rest With Intention

Here's what we've missed: as work has changed, rest has changed too—but we haven't examined it.

Rest isn't just the negative space around work, the leftover hours after you've clocked out. It includes creativity, hobbies, and play—and these need to be cultivated with the same intention we give to productivity.

A lot of people I work with have inquisitive minds. They use creative, emotional, and intellectual labour in their work, and then their hobbies often look like vocation or study. Study can be rejuvenating and empowering, but it's also important to do things that don't require us to live so much from our heads.

Rest can be contrast—doing something completely different from what we usually do. If we're using a lot of brain power with work or study, we need hobbies or interests that have nothing to do with that. Maybe it's about getting more into our physical body. Maybe it's about play—that thing we've forgotten how to do without an agenda attached to it.

Yes, we've introduced flexible working—but usually as a means to make time for other commitments. Valid commitments, absolutely—parenting, caregiving, education. But rarely do we frame flexibility as a way to create space for rest itself, for play, for creative exploration that has no productive outcome. Even our "flexibility" is still tethered to justification, to making ourselves useful in other domains. What if we could be flexible simply to rest?

The Identity Trap

Tiredness and rest can also relate to identity. It's okay to give particular aspects of our identity—the different archetypes that live within us—the ability to rest, whether that's weekly or through sabbaticals.

People who are very service-oriented, whether through work, caregiving duties, or family responsibilities, might be residing too much in one archetype. If that archetype gives them a sense of identity, they're unlikely to disrupt it, delegate it, or surrender it in any way. This is why we sometimes become control freaks who can't shut off—we get too much of a sense of worth and value from one particular aspect of our identity.

We're allowed to have several interests, to morph into several energies and archetypes.

Your Calling Isn't Rest Either

Here's something I need to say clearly, especially as someone who specializes in supporting people through career pivots and callings: a calling or vocation isn't rest either.

Callings and career pivots can absolutely be routes to empowerment and authentic self-expression. When you've spent years in corporate life feeling like you're suppressing something essential, following a vocation can feel like coming home to yourself. That's real, and it matters.

But we have to make sure we're not carrying over outmoded work paradigms into these new callings.

This happens repeatedly: people leave restrictive corporate structures, only to recreate the same dynamics in their vocational work. The same overwork. The same lack of boundaries. The same inability to switch off. Sometimes it's even worse, because now there's no HR department, no manager telling you to take time off, no clear end to the working day.

And because it's a calling—because it feels meaningful—we tell ourselves it's different. "This isn't work, this is my purpose." But your nervous system doesn't know the difference between passionate overwork and corporate overwork. Burnout from a calling is still burnout.

This is where rest and play become essential, not optional. If you're following a vocation, you need clear boundaries around when you're "in" that calling and when you're not. You need hobbies that have nothing to do with your purpose. You need play that serves no larger mission.

Otherwise, your calling becomes just another version of the corporate structure you left—except now there's no one to blame but yourself.

The Missing Piece: Play

As adults, we call this recreation or hobbies. But something I've noticed across years of supporting clients who want to leave corporate life and pivot their careers, following vocations.

They put too much weight on these vocations—as sources of meaning and identity, or to be a full-time income. Especially if they've had several years that felt like suppressing a deeper calling, the success of these callings becomes a sign of everything going okay in their life (or not). Something to make up for wasted years.

There's often a missing jigsaw puzzle piece. And ironically, these callings often had a corporate structure—in as much as they were supposed to pay the bills and consume a lot of time and energy.

That missing piece was the lack of clarity about what you do for fun—especially when vocations felt like fun in contrast to restrictive elements like a corporate job. A lot of these clients didn't have hobbies that were very different and distinct from their day job or their vocation.

Hobbies, play, and recreation help us step outside the intensity of work and vocation for a while. They don't need to have aims or targets. They don't have to be markers of success. This is often an underdeveloped muscle with people who have callings, or those pivoting careers.

From a manifesting point of view, this kind of "vacating" is essential—I call it making room for Spirit. Creating space in your energy and lives for things to manifest and for the divine to do its part. Because you're not standing over the flower willing it to grow, blocking the sunlight with your shadow.

And crucially, this is about being receptive. In manifesting, we're asking to receive—yet our lives are filled with active exertions and attempts to control.

So as well as normalising healthy tiredness and becoming more specific about how we rest and receive and mentally shut off, there's also a need for play. That can take any form you wish, but what defines play is that it doesn't have to have an end product. It's literally about getting into a flow state. You might regard exercise or going to the gym as play, with the results being a happy by-product.

Changing the Structures, Not Just Our Mindsets

Individual awareness about rest and play matters. But we also need to collectively change the structures around work itself.

It's time to question the five-day work week. This structure was built for a different era, a different kind of labour. Does it still serve us? Or are we just defaulting to it because it's what we know?

It's time to question retirement as a singular occurrence in later life where we supposedly cease to work. Why is rest and deep reflection something we're only "allowed" at 65 or 70? What if we normalised multiple retirements throughout a working life—sabbaticals, extended breaks, seasons of stepping back?

For the younger generation, we need to normalise career zigzagging. Taking years out. Career pivots that aren't just once at midlife, but multiple times across a lifetime. Not only for the privileged, but as a financial management and goal-setting experience that empowers people later on.

This means creating the structures and savings models that allow someone to leave a toxic work environment without the pressure of having to go straight to another similar, ill-fitting role. Or maybe just to get a break from a mindful place—not because they've burned out, but because they're choosing rest, play, and exploration as part of a healthy working life.

These aren't luxuries. They're necessities for supporting rest, play, and vocations in a sustainable way.

If we introduced these ideas from an earlier age—normalised the financial planning for sabbaticals, celebrated career zigzagging as wisdom rather than instability, framed extended breaks as strategic rather than suspicious—the resources and cultural support would follow.

The Invitation

What would your life look like if rest had the same status as productivity?

If you gave yourself permission to play without purpose, what would you choose?

What if tiredness wasn't something to fix, but wisdom to follow?

And what would become possible if you made room for Spirit instead of standing over your life, willing it to grow?

If you want to explore how intentional rest and play can support your calling and ability to manifest, then reach out for an Intuitive Energy Review.