And what happens when we buy into that lie? Maybe you’re living it right now.

We end up exhausted, making decisions with intense brain fog, taking calls from birthday parties. Vacations. Sacrificing rest for “success”.

Chronic sleep deprivation hijacks your brain’s threat detection system, making everything feel urgent. When you’re running on fumes, your prefrontal cortex (the part responsible for decision-making, emotional regulation, and strategic thinking) basically clocks out.

So yeah, we’re still sitting in front of our screens, but our brains left the building hours ago.

But when we prioritize healthy work, including rest, we get up to 11.6x ROI in productivity and retention. [Source: WEF/McKinsey Health Institute]

Not only is prioritizing rest not an expense, but it also pays for itself eleven times over.

Never, ever truly resting doesn’t prove we’re strong. The only thing it proves is how hard we’re working to do our very best robot impersonation. As we get more depleted, we make worse decisions, lose our best people, and (eventually) burn out spectacularly.

What most leaders don’t know: There are seven types of rest our bodies and brains need, and sleep is only one of them. That’s why we can sleep eight hours and still wake up exhausted. Physical rest is only part of the equation.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith identified seven distinct rest types: physical, mental, sensory, creative, emotional, social, and spiritual. Most of us are running deficits in three or four areas, but only addressing one (if that).

Your happy hour truth: when we rest, our teams perform better and are healthier people. Teams with rest-modeled leadership report 23% lower stress and 18% higher engagement [Gallup, 2025].