Recovery as a skill. Not a reward.

Picture this. Our last day of work before vacation. We finally close the laptop, utterly exhausted because we’ve been running on fumes to get it all done. We collapse into holiday mode like we just crossed a marathon finish line.

Sound familiar? Somewhere along the way, we were sold the idea that rest is something we have to earn. That we’ll sleep when the work is done. That taking a break is weakness.

Look, I’m all for hard work and showing up every day, but it’s total rubbish to believe that recovery is something we should only get at the end. The science, the scorecard, and the bottom line all confirm it doesn’t work. The greatest performers in sport, business, and life don't see recovery as a luxury after the hard work. They see it as the hard work. They sprint. They rest. They sprint again.

Look at Arianna Huffington. After collapsing from exhaustion in 2007, breaking her cheekbone on her desk, she rebuilt her entire approach to performance around sleep. She wrote The Sleep Revolution, installed nap rooms at her head office, and became one of the most vocal advocates for rest as a competitive advantage. Her message was that sleep deprivation is not a badge of honour but rather a tax on performance, decision-making, and health. She bounced forward by understanding the power of recovering properly.

But it’s not just sleep.

The same principle plays out in elite sport. The All Blacks (New Zealand’s men’s rugby team) built recovery into their culture with the same focus they applied to training. Ice baths, sleep monitoring, controlled sprint and rest cycles. And they win a lot. A lot! They have the highest win rate of any professional sports team in history.

These are just two small examples that, when we start seeing recovery as part of the work (rather than the absence of work) our results improve.

So how do we actually build recovery as a skill? Here are five tools to start with.

1. Adopt a "Health Over Everything" mindset. Ask any sick person what the most important thing is and the answer is clear. If we don’t have our health, we have nothing. For some reason, we tend to forget that until we're sick, run down, and unable to function. That moment of clarity (ie - “I would give anything to feel normal right now”) is the truth we need to carry into our healthy days, not just our sick ones. Health is the foundation everything else is built on: when it cracks, the whole structure suffers. Make the decision that health comes first. It’s a strategic imperative, for both individuals and businesses.

2. Clear is kind. These days we seem to take better care of our smartphones than ourselves. We know when our phone battery is low and quickly plug it in. But we tend to ignore our own battery. Crazy right? The truth is that we can’t set boundaries we haven't communicated. The people around us (colleagues, family, friends) can’t support our recovery if they don't know we need it. We need to get comfortable saying, "I'm running at about 40% today. I need fewer decisions and one clear priority." That’s also leadership: it creates psychological safety for others to do the same while stopping us from white-knuckling through days we should be protecting.

3. Keep the phone away. Checking our work phones within the first few minutes of waking up is not good for us. We’re instantly drawn into someone else's agenda (emails, news, notifications) and it hijacks our morning before we've even had a thought of our own. We should protect that window! It’s the same with bedtime. There’s plenty of research out there to confirm that avoiding phone use for just 30 minutes before bed significantly improves sleep quality, reduces the time it takes to fall asleep, and improves working memory and mood. Blue light exposure through screens will suppress melatonin and stimulate our brains. We’re essentially telling our brain to stay alert right before asking it to shut down. Take a bath, read a paperback, or get cozy with a partner instead.

4. The most important meeting is with ourselves. We wouldn't cancel on our best client. And we’d never blow off a meeting with our CEO. So why do we cancel on ourselves? Whether it's a five-minute breathing exercise, a lunchtime walk, or an hour at the gym, we need to schedule recovery time like it’s important. Because it is! Put it in the calendar, and give it a title. Treat it with the same commitment we give to other serious obligations. The irony is that this meeting makes every other meeting better. We show up clearer, calmer, and more capable. It's not selfish because we’re better for everyone around us.

5. Daily energy audit. This is the hardest one of the lot because it takes 5 mins (isn’t that ridiculous?!). Anyway, at the end of each day, spend a few mins asking two questions: What gave me energy today? What drained it? It’s time we run our lives like a business that optimizes for efficiency. If a meeting consistently depletes us, how do we restructure it? If a certain type of work lights us up, how do we do more of it? If a person leaves us exhausted after every interaction, how do we manage that interaction differently? And if we can’t control it, how do we plan some form of recovery either before or after that interaction? When we do this enough, patterns will emerge. That’ll be the data to make real change.

Recovery should not be a reward. It should be a discipline for people and businesses that are serious about performance. The sprint matters. But so does the recovery that comes throughout.

Remember friends….health over everything. That’s how we all go further.

Until next time, stay resilient.

Carré at Resilient Minds

PS - I’ve had too many conversations recently with people struggling to manage energy and find balance these days. Please pass this along to someone you think might benefit from these tools. I can confirm that they’ve worked for me, so they can work for you too.