#83: March Madness
Why I'm re-sharing some thoughts on rest
Have you heard of March Madness? It’s the US’s biggest college basketball tournament, run by the NCAA. Every year, anywhere between 60 and 100 million people complete their ‘brackets’ trying to predict the outcome of each game. And it’s no easy challenge: the odds of guessing a perfect bracket are 1 in 120.2 billion. This is because the tournament is designed to allow for unexpected outcomes and underdog victories.
I’m not into American basketball, but I know about March Madness. It’s the nickname my company gives to the inevitable wild weeks that are the last month of Q1. With most buyers delaying their purchasing decisions to align with budget cycles and investors awaiting quarterly sales performance updates, there’s always an urgent sprint to the finish line. Virtually all enterprise software companies are bound to these commercial cycles.
The March Madness analogy is a powerful identity ritual for a startup like ours. It transforms a big challenge into a collective opportunity—something to rally around. We’re a young company competing in two product categories against big incumbents: the odds are against us. March Madness symbolises our opportunity to succeed as the underdog.
This is a slightly long-winded way of saying that it’s busy times right now! So instead of writing a new piece, I’m resharing a popular one from last June. I hope it can provide some comfort for anyone else trying to sprint over the Q1 finish line.
Originally published on June 28, 2023
Today’s issue contains some thoughts on rest.
The reason being: I’m about to take a month’s holiday. In Sweden, where I live, this is a common summer behaviour. But in the UK, where I’m from, it would be unusual.
Still, I recognise how fortunate I am to have the possibility and permission to take this much time off. According to a 2013 research paper, it takes time to wind down on holiday, with health and wellbeing only peaking after eight days. Despite the benefits, many of us are not using the vacation time we’ve been given. A 2022 British Airways & YouGov survey revealed that 50% of UK working adults do not take their full annual leave allocation, with 42% feeling stressed about work while on holiday. If the purpose of holiday is rest, then these numbers show we’re struggling to get it.
But what exactly is rest?
We often associate it with doing nothing. I struggle with that. (32 years of internalised capitalism probably has something to do with it.) Doing nothing is really really hard.
If not careful, doing nothing can quickly become a source of stress in itself—another thing to do in the pursuit of self-improvement.
So how do we ensure rest remains, well, restful?
Last winter I stumbled on an article called The Riddle of Rest by Lawrence Yeo. Its premise has stuck with me ever since:
Whenever you’re thinking of something you have to do next, you are no longer resting. And chances are, whatever you have to do next is either to fulfill a responsibility to another or to prove to yourself that you’re competent. […]
That’s why rest is ultimately about doing things that have nothing to do with the furthering of your place in society. Rest can take the form of reading a book, but only if that book serves no purpose to your professional or personal goals. For example, I’ve realized that my mind is truly at rest when I read fiction, and I have zero desire to highlight anything. That’s because I’m fully present with the words on the page, with no desire to collect or retain information that I later use for my writing.
I also consider swimming to be a form of rest. Even though my workout is rather strenuous, I find that my mind is quiet while I’m swimming, with no thought being given to what I have to get done. There’s something about the feeling of water on my skin and the rhythmic movement of my limbs that cultivates this sense of peace.
Resting doesn’t have to mean doing nothing. Rest can be whatever brings you peace. Internalising that thought for the first time was like taking a mental sigh of relief. In Lawrence’s swimming example, I recognised myself playing squash. The rhythmic dance around the other player and movement of my swing; the sound of the ball as it makes contact with my racket. That’s peace to me.
Reframing rest as peace has helped me create new forms of rest and appreciate the ones I didn’t know I had. In the case of squash, I saw the impact of my sustained shoulder injury in a whole new light. (Going from 3 sessions per week to barely 3 times per month wasn’t only hindering my fitness; it was hindering my ability to rest.) So I started taking rehab more seriously. I took up indoor rowing to strengthen the muscles around my shoulder blades and discovered how much peace that brought me as well.
Is rest still hard? Absolutely. But I’m no longer hard on myself about that. And that’s how it should be.
Thanks so much for reading,
Lauren
Relates a lot to this great post from Anu - https://www.workingtheorys.com/p/pursuits-that-cant-scale. Doing things that scale (like startups), leaves you craving doing things that don't scale (like swimming, dancing, writing, etc.). I've recently discovered how important it is to do the latter to energize, rest, and do the former better. Great post :)