Why Do We Think We Have to Earn Rest?

Have you ever sat down to relax and immediately started thinking about everything you should be doing instead? 

I have.

Somewhere along the way, many of us learned that rest comes after the work is finished. The problem is—the work is never really finished.

I started wondering why some of us feel like we have to earn the right to enjoy our own free time. That question sent me down a rabbit hole into something researchers actually call “leisure guilt.”

And it made me question one of the little rules I've apparently been following for years:

What exactly am I trying to earn?

In this episode of I Have Plans, I dig into why rest can make us feel guilty, what research says about productivity and leisure, and what happened when I decided to experiment with taking time for myself before everything was done.

Because maybe the goal isn't to stop being productive.

Maybe it's learning that not everything we do has to accomplish something.