I have been coming across this word a lot lately…Will you join me in pondering its meaning?
Here is a definition from the Cambridge dictionary online:
Respite: noun:
“a pause or rest from something difficult or unpleasant”
“a useful delay before something unpleasant happens”
The word appears a couple of times in Ryan Holiday’s opinion piece called “The beauty of Labor Day” in which he writes:
“We need to insist on time away from our work and from our devices, so that we can recover and restore our minds. Culturally, we must understand that nobody succeeds when they are burned out. Bleary-eyed employees are a sign of a bad manager, not a good one. Sometimes the best way to move forward is through stillness. Sometimes the best way to rest is to do something that tires you out, as many voluntary hobbies illustrate.
It’s a paradox, but true to life.”
Ryan Holiday is currently launching a book called “Stillness is the key“
This idea reminds me of another author’s: Cal Newport, author of “Deep Work” and more recently: “Digital Minimalism – Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World“
I rarely remember the specifics of a book, but “Deep Work” certainly made an impact on me. In it, Newport describes several fascinating findings including the fact that even the highest performers can only focus for a few hours a day, no more than 4 to be exact.
I found this information to be freeing. It came to confirm what I had suspected for a while but couldn’t prove: That so many of the hours we spend doing “work” are mostly hours wasted switching from task to task, repeating, rereading, and being busy and unproductive.
If our days have so much wasted time built-in, then surely we should be able to find time for “respite”
How then do we implement “respite” without inviting its close cousin “procrastination”?
Procrastination: noun:
“the act of delaying something that must be done, often because it is unpleasant or boring”
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