Rest Isn’t a Reward: Why You’re Tired All the Time (And What to Do About It)
You’re tired—but it’s not just about sleep.
If you’re someone who leads teams, carries weight at work, and moves through life with ambition, exhaustion can feel strangely inevitable. What makes it worse is the false belief that rest must be earned. You finish the project. You meet the deadline. You keep everything afloat. Then, maybe, you get a break.
But here’s the problem: when rest becomes a reward, you never get enough of it. And when you finally stop, you often don’t feel better—you feel guilty, disconnected, or like you’re falling behind.
This article explores why so many women in leadership feel chronically drained, even when they’re technically “off,” and what to do about it—starting with a more intelligent definition of rest.
Section 1: Rest Isn’t Just Sleep—It’s Multi-Dimensional Recovery
Most people treat sleep as the gold standard of rest. And while sleep is vital, it’s not the only kind of restoration your brain and body need to function at their best.
There are at least seven distinct types of rest:
Physical rest (which includes sleep and restorative movement)
Mental rest (freedom from cognitive load and decision fatigue)
Sensory rest (relief from overstimulation—lights, screens, noise)
Emotional rest (not having to manage others’ emotions or filter your own)
Social rest (spending time with people who energize you or simply being alone)
Creative rest (allowing space for inspiration rather than constant output)
Spiritual rest (a sense of meaning, connection, or belonging beyond your role)
When you're always “on,” you’re usually overdrawn in more than one of these categories. For example, you may be physically resting (sitting or even sleeping) but still mentally spinning through your to-do list, emotionally bracing for conflict, and exposed to nonstop sensory input. The result? You wake up just as tired as you went to bed.
Even leaders with sophisticated wellness habits often overlook this. A 5am workout and 10pm wind-down don’t guarantee restoration if you're using all your in-between hours to buffer crisis, absorb emotion, or carry invisible labor no one else sees.
Action Step: Conduct a Rest Inventory
Each night for one week, pause and ask yourself:
What kind of tired am I right now?
Which type(s) of rest did I get today—if any?
What kind of rest would actually feel replenishing tomorrow?
Then schedule just one 15–30 minute block to intentionally meet that need. Not in a passive, “I'll rest if I have time” way—but the same way you’d approach a critical meeting. Treat it like a non-negotiable element of your performance plan, because it is.
Section 2: Why Guilt Often Follows You Into Rest
Many high-performing women don’t just struggle to rest—they struggle to rest without guilt. You finally cancel the meeting, log off early, or turn down a last-minute request, and instead of relief, you feel a pang of unease. It doesn’t feel like you’ve reclaimed your time—it feels like you’ve dropped the ball.
This isn’t personal failure. It’s socialization.
From an early age, girls are often praised for being helpful, agreeable, and hardworking. The message is clear: you earn your value by being available, competent, and self-sacrificing. As women move into adulthood—especially into leadership roles—this mindset can mutate into a form of overfunctioning that turns rest into a moral question: Have I done enough to deserve this?
Research backs this up. Studies have found that women report higher levels of “leisure guilt” than men, especially when they engage in non-productive rest activities like napping, reading fiction, or even sitting still. In some cases, rest can be so emotionally fraught that it triggers self-reprimand, anxiety, or a compulsion to multitask even during downtime.
And in the workplace, the problem is compounded. Women are often expected to be both competent and self-effacing, ambitious but never aggressive, always on but never too assertive about needing a break. This paradox creates what social psychologists refer to as role strain: the impossible demand to be everything to everyone—without ever letting it show.
Action Step: Reframe Rest as a Strategic Advantage
To begin shifting this guilt-response, replace the question “Do I deserve to rest?” with a better one:
Would I lead better tomorrow if I rested today?
Is this guilt based on truth or a conditioned belief?
What would I say to someone I supervise if they were in my shoes?
It may help to externalize your rest as a form of leadership hygiene. Just as you wouldn’t expect a surgeon to perform well without sterilizing their tools, you can’t expect yourself to lead well without building in sustainable recovery time.
If that reframing still doesn’t land emotionally, start smaller: give yourself permission to rest in micro-doses. Ten minutes to walk. Fifteen to sit in silence. A full lunch without a screen. Build those windows in like reps at the gym—and let them accumulate into actual restoration.
Section 3: Stress Keeps You in “Go Mode”—Even When You’re Off
Many high-achieving women have trained themselves to stay in performance mode long after the workday ends. The emails are shut down. The tasks are technically done. But internally? You're still on.
This happens because the body can’t distinguish between a real threat and a psychological one. And for most women in leadership, modern workplace stressors—like chronic urgency, emotional labor, or the pressure to constantly prove worth—activate the same physiological systems as danger.
When you’re under prolonged stress, your body adapts by producing cortisol, adrenaline, and other stress hormones that keep you in a state of hypervigilance. You may feel productive and focused in the moment, but this constant readiness comes at a cost: your nervous system never fully downshifts. And without that downshift, even downtime feels like… effort.
This is why you might find yourself:
Restless on weekends
Feeling guilty for slowing down
Scrolling or numbing out instead of actually recovering
Experiencing “wired but tired” energy at night
Neurologically, this is tied to what's called sympathetic dominance—when your sympathetic nervous system (the fight-or-flight branch) stays activated for too long, and your parasympathetic system (rest-and-digest) never fully engages.
Over time, this creates what psychologists call allostatic load: the cumulative wear and tear of chronic stress on the body and brain. It’s a key predictor of burnout, memory issues, irritability, hormonal imbalance, and even long-term health outcomes like cardiovascular disease.
Action Step: Regulate Your Nervous System Before You Rest
If you want rest to land—meaning your body actually recognizes it—you must signal safety first. That doesn’t mean spa days or hours of yoga. It means short, consistent practices that teach your brain to release the internal alarm system.
Try one of the following evidence-backed techniques:
Box breathing: Inhale 4 seconds → Hold 4 → Exhale 4 → Hold 4. Repeat for 2–3 minutes.
Orienting: Slowly turn your head to notice what’s around you. Label five things you can see or hear. This brings your system into the present.
Progressive relaxation: Tense then relax muscle groups one at a time, starting with your toes and moving up.
These somatic signals cue the parasympathetic nervous system to turn on. You’re no longer just trying to rest—you’re physiologically allowing it.
Section 4: High-Functioning Burnout Disguises Itself as Ambition
Burnout doesn’t always look like collapse. In fact, for many driven women, it looks like competence.
You’re still meeting deadlines. You’re still showing up. You may even be outperforming your peers. But internally, you feel disconnected, irritable, or emotionally flat. You’ve lost your creative spark. Your energy dips faster than it used to. And yet—you keep going.
This is what researchers and clinicians increasingly refer to as high-functioning burnout: a state in which a person continues to perform at a high level externally, while slowly eroding internally. It’s particularly common among leaders and caregivers, especially women, who’ve learned to equate self-worth with output.
Here’s what high-functioning burnout might sound like:
“I just need to get through this week.”
“Everyone’s tired—it’s not just me.”
“It’s not that bad. I’m still getting everything done.”
“I’ll rest after this project/promotion/milestone.”
But burnout, like any chronic condition, isn’t waiting for a dramatic breakdown to make its presence known. It often shows up in small, consistent patterns:
Resentment toward tasks that used to energize you
Feeling emotionally numb or easily triggered
Loss of interest in personal passions or relationships
Somatic symptoms like headaches, insomnia, or digestive issues
The danger here is twofold: not only do you delay intervention because you’re still performing, but your environment often rewards you for it. You’re praised for your output without anyone asking what it costs.
Action Step: Audit Your Energy, Not Just Your Time
Traditional productivity tools focus on how you spend your time. But if you want to avoid (or reverse) high-functioning burnout, you need to assess how you spend your energy.
Each day for a week, use a 3-point scale to track key activities:
+1 = energizing
0 = neutral
–1 = depleting
Be honest. A project can be meaningful and still depleting. A conversation can be productive and still draining. After a week, look at your +1 to –1 ratio. If most of your tasks are in the negative, it’s not a time-management issue—it’s an energy crisis in motion.
This isn’t a sign to quit your job or escape your responsibilities. It’s a prompt to strategically reallocate your time toward what sustains you. That may mean delegating more, redefining success, or building new recovery rituals into your workday.
Burnout doesn’t always break you. Sometimes it just dulls you. But over time, dull becomes dangerous.
Section 5: Build Rest into Your System—Not Just Your Schedule
The women who avoid burnout don’t wait for rest to fit into their calendar—they build a life that makes rest non-negotiable. This isn’t about working less. It’s about leading smarter.
Too many high achievers treat rest as a plug-in. A weekend off here. A yoga class there. But if the rest of your system runs on urgency, guilt, and people-pleasing, even those breaks won’t make a dent. What you need is a framework—something structural and repeatable.
Start with these three pillars:
1. Recovery Rituals
These are short, low-effort practices that signal your nervous system to downshift. The goal is not productivity—it’s recalibration. Think of it as recharging your leadership battery.
Examples:
A 3-minute body scan before meetings
Screen-free lunch breaks
Daily “shutdown rituals” to transition out of work mode
You don’t need more time—you need more permission to use the time you already have differently.
2. Boundaries That Protect Energy, Not Just Time
Boundaries aren’t only about saying “no.” They’re about ensuring the “yes” doesn’t cost you more than it’s worth.
Try reframing boundaries as systems of sustainability. For example:
One-touch email policy: respond only when you have the time and energy to act
Meeting rules: block calendar time after emotionally heavy conversations
Delegation upgrades: give away full outcomes, not just tasks
The key isn’t just reducing workload—it’s protecting your internal bandwidth.
3. Rest as Leadership Hygiene
Stop thinking of rest as indulgence and start treating it like dental care: essential, preventative, and non-negotiable. Your clarity, emotional regulation, creativity, and decision-making all depend on it.
Ask yourself weekly:
What did rest look like for me this week?
What kind of leader did I show up as when I rested?
What felt better: the grind or the gain?
You’ll find that rest doesn’t slow you down. It recalibrates your drive—and makes it sustainable.
Final Thoughts
Rest isn’t a reward for good behavior. It’s the bedrock of resilient, emotionally intelligent leadership. The more you lead, the more complex your responsibilities become—and the more rest you’ll need by design, not just by desire.
The solution isn’t another vacation. It’s a new definition of success—one that includes energy, not just output.
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Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. P. (2016). Burnout: The Cost of Caring. Malor Books.
Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-regulation. Norton.
Bianchi, R., Schonfeld, I. S., & Laurent, E. (2017). “Is it time to consider the 'burnout syndrome' a distinct illness?” Frontiers in Public Health, 5, 134.
McKinsey & Company & LeanIn.org. (2023). Women in the Workplace Report.
American Psychological Association. (2021). Stress in America: Pandemic Impacts.
