A common assessment question is: What strategies do you use to manage your fatigue?
Often, the main answer is sleep or taking a nap. That can absolutely be helpful. Sleep can be a powerful and restorative form of rest.
People then often go on to describe the challenges of relying on sleep as their main way of managing fatigue:
- “I can’t find time during the day to nap with all of my responsibilities.”
- “I don’t like napping.”
- “Even after I sleep, I still feel fatigued.”
When sleep feels like the only way to manage fatigue, it can lead to frustration, overwhelm, and sometimes hopelessness, particularly when there isn’t enough opportunity to sleep, or when sleep doesn’t actually leave you feeling restored.
This blog explores a more personalised and flexible approach to rest. We’ll look at what rest actually means, the different kinds of energy we use throughout the day, and how understanding those demands can help guide the kind of rest you may need.
What Rest Means
I like this definition of rest from the Journal of Applied Philosophy, which describes it as:
“The temporary suspension of active involvement in projects for the sake of rejuvenation.” (Scripter, 2025)
This definition suggests that, in order to rest, we need to make a conscious decision to pause to rejuvenate. That can be difficult to do when we do not notice that we are feeling drained, feel pressure to keep going, or find it hard to recognise the body signals that tell us rest would be helpful.
Part of the challenge is learning to notice when we need rest and exploring how to grant ourselves permission to pause.
The second important idea is that the purpose of rest is rejuvenation. What feels rejuvenating is individual and can also change depending on context. For one person, baking might feel nourishing; for another, it may feel like another task requiring effort and energy. Even the same activity can feel restorative one day and draining the next.
Another piece of the puzzle, therefore, is identifying what you personally find restful and building a “menu” of restorative options that you can choose from depending on what you need in that moment.
Choosing to Rest
It can be difficult to choose rest if we do not notice that we need it in the first place. Many people describe only realising how exhausted they are once they finally stop.
Developing awareness of our body signals such as tension, irritability, difficulty concentrating, sensory overwhelm can help us recognise earlier signs that rest may be needed. This is a skill that often takes practice, particularly for people who often push through fatigue, are feeling stressed, or find tuning into body sensations difficult.
Noticing body sensations can sometimes bring up difficult thoughts and feelings, such as self-judgement or sadness. Choosing to pause and rest in response is an act of self-kindness and wisdom. These ideas are explored further in the blog on traffic lights and body signals: Traffic Light Systems: Mapping Body Signals
Types of Rest and Understanding What You Need
If rest is about rejuvenation after a given activity, then part of the process is identifying what will actually feel restorative. A helpful step in this is understanding the different types of energy we are using in everyday activities, so we can identify what needs replenishing and what types of rest are most likely to support that recovery.
All activities require energy. This is part of engaging in meaningful and necessary tasks. There are many different types of energy, including cognitive, physical, social, sensory, and emotional. Most activities use more than one type of energy at the same time.
For example, right now writing this blog involves:
• Cognitive energy - attending to and organising my ideas
• Sensory energy - using the screen and processing visual information
• Emotional energy - considering how this might feel for the reader
When we can identify the types of energy we are using, it gives us useful information about what kind of rest might be restorative afterwards. For example, after writing this blog, I might take a break by sitting in the garden or going for a walk while listening to music, in order to replenish my cognitive and sensory systems.
This idea is echoed in the work of Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith, who describes different types of rest, including physical, mental, emotional, sensory, creative, social, and spiritual rest. Her work reflects a similar idea: that rest can take different forms depending on what systems need replenishing
As it can be difficult to identify what feels restful in the moment, particularly when fatigued, it can be helpful to have a personalised, diverse “menu” of rest options at hand. For example, after a social-emotional activity, you might draw on a menu of options ranging from a short walk, to watching TV, to reading a book on the sofa, or doing something repetitive knitting. You can choose those options depending upon the context and what feels most nourishing at the time
Flourish with Fatigue
At Flourish with Fatigue, we support people to build a more personal, flexible, and compassionate relationship with rest. We work with clients to explore how fatigue shows up in daily life, how different types of energy are affected by different activities, and how to integrate meaningful rest in practical, sustainable ways.
Reference
Scripter, L. (2025) ‘Meaningful Rest’, Journal of Applied Philosophy, 42(3), pp. 1016–1038. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/japp.70003.