237: Rest Easy with Ximena Vengoechea

Free Time with Jenny Blake

What is your relationship to rest? How about your caretakers’ relationship to rest while you were young? What examples did they set? What attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors did they hold, and how does that still influence you today?

Today I’m talking with Ximena Vengoechea about the five rest profiles, productivity dysmorphia, “tiny transition time,” why paid work (no matter how much you love it) doesn’t count as pure play, and how she designed the book to deliver a restful experience beyond just the words themselves.

Listen to our previous conversation on the Pivot podcast, 263: Conduct a Relationship Audit with Ximena Vengoechea.

More About Ximena: Ximena Vengoechea is a researcher, writer, and illustrator. She previously worked at Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and currently advises select startups and executives on user research, executive communication, and resting well. She is the author of Listen Like You Mean it: Reclaiming the Lost Art of True Connection, and today we’re talking about her new book, Rest Easy: Discover Calm and Abundance through the Radical Power of Rest.

🌟 3 Key Takeaways

• Leisure time used to be a highly coveted status symbol in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The wealthy used their time to entertain and be entertained—not work themselves to the bone. Leisure was the status symbol, not busyness.
• The five rest profiles (on a spectrum of embracing rest to rejecting rest): intuitive resters, functional resters, gold-star resters, anti-resters, deprived resters
• There are many flavors of rest: active, passive, solo, social, calming, energizing. Ximena defines rest as “a state of being in which nothing is required of us. It is a time where we can just be.”

📝 Permission

Play! Try an activity you loved as a kid, and do something for no reason other than pure enjoyment.

✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next

Honor Tiny Transition Time by leaving your phone in another room when you take mini-breaks throughout the day (getting a snack, taking your dog out, going to the bathroom). Resist the urge to check notifications as you walk from one room to the next, and be present instead. Let your thoughts and observations emerge.

🔗 Resources Mentioned

• Ximena on the web, IG, LinkedIn
• Articles: Refinery29—Do I have productivity dysmorphia?
• Newsletter: Rob Walker’s The Art of Noticing

📚 Books Mentioned

• Rest Easy: Discover Calm and Abundance through the Radical Power of Rest
• Listen Like You Mean it: Reclaiming the Lost Art of True Connection
• The Art of Noticing by Rob Walker
• Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business
• Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One
• Life After College

🎧 Related Episodes

• Podcast: Rest Easy with Ximena Vengoechea — coming soon!
• Free Time: 193: Sabbatical Planning with DJ DiDonna, 199: Creating Happier Hours and the Diminishing Returns of Too Much Free Time With Cassie Holmes, 169: Running a Goal-Free Business with Stephen Shapiro
• Pivot: 263: Conduct a Relationship Audit with Ximena Vengoechea

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