First & Jenn

June in the NFL is mandatory minicamp month. Every player — veterans, rookies, the guys with the massive contracts — has to show up. It’s not optional. It’s written into the collective bargaining agreement. And then, when those three days are done, the entire league goes home and doesn’t have to report again until training camp in July.

The NFL mandates rest. For the most competitive athletes in the world. It’s in the rulebook.

So why are you treating your need for it like a character flaw?

We have constructed an entire cultural identity around busyness. Around output. Around the idea that your value is directly proportional to how much you are producing at any given moment. And it has made a lot of us chronically exhausted, quietly resentful, and significantly less effective than we would be if we just. Stopped. Sometimes.

Here’s the performance science version: rest is not the absence of work. Rest is when the work consolidates. It’s when the reps you put in become muscle memory. When the decisions you’ve been wrestling with quietly resolve. When your nervous system resets so that tomorrow you can actually bring something to the table instead of dragging yesterday’s depletion into a new day.

The NFL knows this. Elite coaches know this. The athletes who last — who have fifteen-year careers while their peers flame out — know this. Recovery isn’t a reward for finishing. It’s a requirement for continuing.

So here’s your permission slip, if you need one: rest this week. Actually rest. Not “scrolling on the couch while half-thinking about your to-do list” rest. The kind where you genuinely put it down. Take the afternoon. Sleep in. Cancel the thing that was never really necessary.

You are not behind. You are not lazy. You are a high-performing person who requires maintenance.

Schedule the rest like you schedule the work. Because it is the work.