Small Wins For High Performers Who Struggle To Rest
Recovering after hiking up a volcano on Ometepe Island, Nicaragua
Imagine an athlete preparing for an important competition. Their training plan includes demanding sessions designed to challenge strength, endurance, speed, or skill. It also includes lighter days, sleep, nutrition, mobility work, and time away from training. Those recovery periods are not separate from the plan. They are part of the plan.
That is the ideal, anyway. In practice, athletes at every level can struggle with recovery. A novice may assume that more training will produce faster results. An experienced athlete may know better but still find it difficult to reduce intensity, take a rest day, or respond to signs of fatigue. Knowledge does not always make rest emotionally easy.
The same is often true at work. High performers usually know how to act. They focus, solve problems, tolerate discomfort, and keep moving when the path is unclear. These abilities help them succeed. They can also make recovery surprisingly difficult.
Resistance training is a great way to illustrate why recovery matters. Resistance exercise places stress on muscle tissue and can create microscopic tears in muscle fibers. After the workout, the body begins repairing and remodeling that tissue. Over repeated cycles of training and recovery, increased muscle protein synthesis and adaptation can contribute to greater strength and muscle size. In other words, the workout provides the stimulus. The adaptation depends on what happens afterward.
Muscle growth is more complex than simply damaging a muscle and letting it heal, and more damage does not necessarily create more growth. Still, the broader point holds: the body needs time and resources to repair, adapt, and prepare for the next demand. Without enough recovery, more training does not automatically produce more progress. It may temporarily reduce performance and increase the risk of illness, injury, or burnout. Balancing training stress with recovery really matters to sustain high-level performance.
Most people understand this idea in sport. Applying it to work can be more difficult. At work, effort is visible. Recovery often is not. The person who answers one more email, takes on another project, or solves a problem after hours appears committed. The person who protects an unscheduled afternoon, takes a real lunch break, or closes the laptop on time may worry that they appear less driven. That creates an odd standard. We expect an athlete to plan for recovery, but often expect a high performer at work to keep producing until their body or attention forces them to stop.
The parallels are worth noticing. A hard training session creates physical fatigue. A difficult workday can create cognitive and emotional fatigue (often some physical fatigue too, if we’re honest). An athlete who repeats intense sessions without enough recovery may see performance plateau, or even decline. A leader who moves from deadline to deadline without resetting may become less patient, less flexible, and more likely to treat every problem as urgent. An athlete monitors changes in soreness, sleep, motivation, and performance. A high performer at work can learn to notice signals, too: difficulty concentrating, irritability, shallow breathing, disrupted sleep, or the sense that even small requests feel unusually demanding. While these signals do not all mean the same thing for everyone, they are information.
There is an important difference between the two settings: Work is not a sport, employees are not athletes hired to sacrifice everything for the team, and not every workload is freely chosen. Working conditions, caregiving responsibilities, financial pressure, health, and access to rest all shape what recovery is possible. Still, the athlete comparison gives us a useful question: What if recovery were treated as part of performance rather than the reward for completing everything?
Recovery does not have to mean waiting for a vacation, taking an entire day off, or creating an elaborate evening routine. It can begin with small, sustainable daily moments of transition from work to non-work that help your body and attention recognize that one type of demand has ended. It could be:
Walking around the block, or jumping jacks, after closing your laptop
Sitting outside or meditating for ten minutes
Stretching, breathing, or listening to music
Playing!
Cooking, gardening, or spending time with someone you care about
Completing a workout or another physically demanding activity
The question is what kind of recovery you need. Distance from work? Physical rest? Movement? Sleep? Connection? Less stimulation? A chance to do something challenging that has nothing to do with your job? Try approaching recovery as an athlete might approach a training plan. Look at the full cycle, not just the hardest effort. Where are the demanding periods? Where are the lighter ones? What signs suggest that your current pace is costing more than it is producing? What small transition could help you move from work into the rest of your life today? Recovery is not the opposite of high performance. For athletes and leaders alike, building small, consistent sustainable practices is part of how the next strong effort becomes possible.
What does a sustainable transition practice look like for you?
