Theory On Rest

21 Aug 2025

TLDR

• To rest is to about restoring balance.
• To rest is not doing nothing.

Phew….

August 1st, 2025 - my thesis defense day. In the true spirits of trying till the last minutes, I was still fixing the presentation slides at 1:30AM (We have to be at school at 8:00 and I live about 1 hour away from school). I slept for 4 hours, wake up, get to school, have some slide projecting problems and finally, gave the talks.

Long story short, it went alright. It was very dissapointing that the teachers only ask 2 questions about our work (it seems our research topic is rather niche - it’s causality btw) but my sister who was there said I presented better than last time. Which was good enough for me.

After the presentation, we took some pictures, said thanks to our teachers and went home.

… now, I have nothing to do.

The beginning of the sludge

I mostly sleep the day after, and after that. I thought it was for restoration, but slowly realize it wasn’t. I can’t think of anything to do, and was really sleepy, for days. I can do things, but I didn’t have the motivation that I’ve had before. I was tired.

I begin to question the state of the situation. One big question stand out:
Was I resting wrong? How do you even rest again?

Rethink resting

I pulled out a piece of paper and start drafting my hypothesis. I was sure I did what I was imagine resting would be - limiting of work, thinking and overall moving, as much as possible. It seemed right. If you search online, that what shows up. Here’s a random pics:

So, what could be the problem?

I wrote out all the things I was doing to rest to see what was not working, and… staying still seems like a wrong synonym to resting. (It a shame I lost the doodle paper but I remember writing about thinking about running all day. If so, what my body needed was not stillness, but movement.)

The theory of rest

This is my current drafts on my theory of rest:

• To rest is to restore balance to the mind and the body. I find that usually when I was doing data analysis or drawing (mind work), I don’t move my body much. When I run or swim, I don’t think much (or I just let my mind drifts). Mostly, I choose to focus on one or the other.
  • There are types of focus too: reading is me consuming stuff and writing is me producing stuff. And just a reminder, there are no focus too. So it seems like there are 3 alternating modes: consuming, producing and downtime.
• To rest is not about doing nothing or not doing work.

I can’t think of any clever closing remarks for this session so I guess I’ll end it here. More observation is needed. Same goes for sleep.

Why does this matter?

Updated on 2025/09/11

This thought process has help me explain to myself why I’m tired. I know now to keep my balance, for example:

• When I work on the farm with my parents, I know I work with my body a lot, so after that I rested by sitting or lying around - as I feel comfortable.
• When I work on the computer a lot, I know I work my brain a lot, so after that I try to do exercise to work out my body and give my brain a rest.

This can be extended further - like if I use my arm too much I after instead (for work out). Or if I draw too much I will switch to more computation stuff (different region of the brain?)… Can I reach a perfect algorithm of rest? Probably not. But I will know now that when I feel tired, I’m probably overdoing something, and it’s time to do something else.