Rest that actually restores

Rest works best when you properly switch off from work, relax, learn something or choose how to spend the time. Short breaks help energy. Holiday benefits are real but may fade within weeks.

• Evidence: Some

The idea

Plenty of “rest” doesn’t feel restful. An evening half-watching TV while checking work email can leave you as tired as you started. Researchers who study recovery from work have found that what you experience during time off matters more than how much time you have.

Work psychologists Sabine Sonnentag and Charlotte Fritz identified four recovery experiences, using questionnaire samples totalling 930 people [1]:

• Detachment: not thinking about work, mentally as well as physically.
• Relaxation: low effort, calm, nothing demanded of you.
• Mastery: something that challenges you or teaches you something, outside work. See Learning skills and flow.
• Control: deciding for yourself what to do with your time.

People who reported more of these experiences tended to report better wellbeing [1]. Detachment can be learned. A meta-analysis of 30 studies found that programs designed to help people switch off from work improved detachment by a small-to-moderate amount, and longer programs worked better [2].

Short breaks. A meta-analysis of 22 study samples found that short breaks taken between work tasks gave a small boost to energy and reduced tiredness. They did not clearly improve performance overall, except on less demanding tasks. The longer the break, the more it helped performance, and the authors suggest that very draining work may need breaks longer than 10 minutes [3].

Holidays. An early meta-analysis of seven studies found holidays had a small positive effect on health and wellbeing that faded soon after people went back to work [4]. A 2025 meta-analysis with 32 studies was more positive: it found a large effect that faded more slowly than previously thought. Holiday length made a difference, and switching off and being physically active during the holiday looked most helpful [5].

Leisure in general. Across studies of more than 11,000 people, taking part in leisure activities was moderately linked with wellbeing. How often people did leisure activities, and how varied they were, mattered more than total hours of free time [6].

How to use it

1. Mark the end of the working day. Close the laptop, write tomorrow’s first task on a note, and turn off work notifications. A clear stopping point makes detachment easier.
2. Take short breaks. Every hour or two, stand up, step away from the screen, get a drink or walk for a few minutes [3].
3. Mix restful and active. Some evenings, do nothing demanding. On others, do something that absorbs you: a sport, a class, cooking something new. Both count as recovery [1].
4. Choose, don’t drift. Decide in advance what you’ll do with a free evening or weekend morning. Drifting into the default (usually a screen) gives you less sense of control.
5. On holiday, switch off properly. Leave work email off your phone if you can. If you can’t, set one short check-in time. Do something physical [5].
6. Protect your sleep. Sleep is the biggest recovery period you have. For more, see sleepgood.now.

Common mistakes

• Treating screen time as rest by default. It can be, but if it involves work email or endless scrolling, you may not be detaching or choosing.
• Saving all your rest for holidays. Holiday benefits may fade within weeks of returning [4]. Regular evenings and weekends that actually restore you matter more over a year.
• Thinking rest means doing nothing. For many people an active hobby restores them better than lying on the sofa. Mastery is one of the four recovery experiences [1].
• Skipping breaks to get more done. Short breaks didn’t hurt performance in the meta-analysis, and they helped energy [3].

Evidence

The four recovery experiences come from a well-validated questionnaire study, which shows associations rather than cause [1]. The detachment and micro-break findings come from meta-analyses of intervention studies, with small-to-moderate effects [2][3]. The holiday findings conflict: an older, smaller meta-analysis found quick fade-out [4], a newer, larger one found larger and longer-lasting benefits [5]. The leisure link is moderate and mostly correlational [6].

Rated Some. The direction is consistent, and intervention studies show switching off and taking breaks help a little. How long the benefits last is less clear.

Topics: Rest, Recovery, Breaks, Holidays, Leisure, Work

Sources checked 4 October 2026. Spot a mistake? Tell us.