Productive Rest. What it is and How it Applies to MECFS.

An Example

Consider you have a big exam coming up. You want to get an A.

What productive things do you have to do in order to achieve your goal?

A.) Answer over 94% of the questions correctly.

B.) Study for the test, rest well and eat a good breakfast the day of the test, and then answer over 94% correctly.

We can clearly see that even though both answers achieve our goal, the second lists much more of the productive steps necessary.

Productivity is anything that helps you achieve yoir goal. Not just the last step.

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Everyone Has Productive Rest

Since anything that helps you achieve your goal can be considered productive, resting that is necessary for you to be productive later is itself productive.

For healthy people this is common sense things like sleeping well each night.

for disabled and chronically ill people, the amount of rest required to be productive is higher. Therefore the amount of productive rest is also higher.

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Society Does Not Respect Individual Resting Needs

The amount of productive rest you need depends how much rest your body needs to operate productively.

Labor rights movements fought tooth and nail for the right to an 8 hour work day on the basis of 8 hours work, 8 hours rest, and 8 hours of free time.

But only some people require 8 hours of sleep. Many people with chronic illness require much more.

Some people simply naturally require less.

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Is All Rest Productive?

Not all rest has to be productive. Sometimes you might be well rested and just want some time to relax. Testing out exactly when it is absolutely necessary really doesn't matter. Not everything we do has to be productive.

You can think of productive rest as the rest necessary to maximize productivity. In other words, if you do not rest during your productive rest, you will actually do less overall despite "working" for more hours.

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Maximizing Productivity Over What Timespan?

It is important to remember that as a human being whatever importance you place on productivity should be over your lifespan. Being really productive one year and burning yourself out for 3 is not a good long term strategy.

Therefore, productive rest can still be productive even if it is not maximizing what you can do that week or that month. If it is helping protect your mental and physical health from burnout and worsening chronic illnesses, it is still productive.

This is important to remember because under capitalism short-profits are places above the long-term wellbeing of workers.

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Your Value Is Not Your Productivity

Additionally, it must be remembered that your value is not your productivity. While productive rest is necessary for maximizing productivity, maximizing productivity is not the end goal of life.

Therefore it is perfectly fine to rest more than your "productive" rest requires. You can do this because it makes you happy, because you don"t feel like you have something worth being productive on at the moment, or just because you're comfy in bed and want to sleep in.

Not everything we do in life has to be about maximizing productivity.

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Why Does Productive Rest Matter

The reason the concept of productive rest is important is to understand why some resting is so different for people with energy limiting disabilities.

There is a massive misconception that disabled people resting more is the same as abled people choosing to rest more. Ie. non-productive rest.

But this ignores the fact that different people have different ideal amounts or productive rest. For disabled people, even if all they care about is maximizing productivity, resting more than a healthy person would still be the smart decision.

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Resting More Productively

You can rest in any way you want. Your value is not your productivity and just as not all work must be maximally productive, not all rest must be either.

However, just as work can be more or less efficient depending on whether you are totally focused or checking social media every few minutes, so can rest.

For people with MECFS who require large amounts of productive rest to have any shot at productivity on the projects that matter to us, it is worth considering the productivity of our rest.

Prioritizing resting that uses less brain engagement and less heart strain can help to maximize how much rest you get in an hour of productive resting.

Making sure you are lying down in a low light and noise room is the most important part of resting more productively.

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Productive Rest Summary

Anything that helps you achieve your goals can be considered a productive action.

Resting is required to achieve goals therefore productive rest is the rest necessary to maximize what you can do.

Disabled people require more rest to maximize what they can do. Therefore they have higher productive rest than able bodied people.

Not all rest is productive rest. That is okay. Your value is not your productivity.

If you do want to maximize productivity you should treat your rest as a productive period and maximize its efficiency the same way you would care about working efficiently.

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Your value is not your productivity. But if you're like me you might still care about being maximally productive, and to do that you need to know about Productive Rest.

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Productivity is the process of achieving your goals. If something helps you achieve a goal it is productive.

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Our goals should not be determined just by what society wants of us. We should create our own based on what we want out of society. For example: my goals are Disability Justice and ME Advocacy as well as supporting my community and health. Self Care can be a goal too!

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But regardless of what your goals are, you need to know that just working as many hours as you can muster is NOT maximally productive. You will get more done by protecting your long term and short term health through productive rest.

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For spoonies aka people with limited energy due to Chronic Fatigue and/or Chronic Pain the amount of rest we need to maximize our productivity is higher.

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When someone with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis rests 16 hours a day they are not making the same choice in relationship to productivity as a healthy person who rests this same number of hours.

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Slogans like Rest Is Productive aim to convey this message, and certainly our society should prioritize rest for everyone more than we do.

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But not all rest is productive rest and that is okay. There is a sweet spot between rest and work and while that sweet spot is different for everyone it is possible to be both above or below it.

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Pacing is in many ways the art of finding that sweet spot. That perfect balance between doing as much as you can without doing so much your total ability actually drops.

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Because that is what healthy people need to understand. For chronically ill people, our ability to do anything productive drops if we do not get our productive rest.

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It's great that more people are valuing rest. Your rest doesn't have to be productive towards outwards societal goals. Sometimes rest is just rest.

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But for those with ME / CFS and Long Covid and post Viral Illness productive rest is a key concept. So let's understand it.