It doesn’t take Jack Nicholson tap, tap, tapping away in an empty hotel to tell you that rest is important to our well-being. Physiologically, humans need to rest and sleep. When we don’t, we lose some of our ability to concentrate, calculate, remember, and even perceive the world accurately. Our muscles cannot repair, our energy stores deplete, and our hearts beat faster.

On a psychological level, things aren’t much better. When we feel we’re always on — working too long and working too hard — life can start to feel hopeless. Waking up tired and slavishly trudging along to an office with colleagues we barely tolerate is a sure step to burnout, depression, and a breakdown. “Eat, sleep, work, repeat” makes Jack a dull boy.

So, we need to treat rest seriously. We need to be more intentional about our holidaying and our “time off” because if we don’t, we’ll wither away. And, according to the German philosopher Josef Pieper, we’ll miss the only things that matter about living in the first place.

The philosophical case for rest

Using the weekend to recharge your batteries or seeing time off as a breather before more time on is a sign of how bad things have become.

In his 1948 work, Leisure: The Basis of Culture, Pieper argued that we shouldn’t see leisure simply as the absence of work. It is not confined to two days at the weekend or a few hours at the end of the day. It is not a lie-in, a spa day, or even self-care. Pieper argued that leisure is when we are receptive to the deeper parts of life: meaning, beauty, truth, friendship, and even God.

Writing in the 1940s, Pieper argued that people were suffering from a dearth of leisure, partly because they didn’t see value in rest. If you’re not working, you’re wasting time. Relaxation is merely something to aid future productivity. We loaf on the sofa so we can be at our desk first thing on Monday morning, and rest on the weekend to be more productive in the working week.

For Pieper, a culture that loses a sense of leisure loses something essential. Because when we deny ourselves the opportunity of genuine rest, we miss things like meaning, connection, and genuine friendships. A world that suffocates leisure and denies rest without an excuse or a reason is denying us access to the most important parts of being human.

Three ways to holiday well

Philosophy is often very good at diagnosing a problem, but then leaves the messy business of resolving that problem to other disciplines. Philosophy does the triage, but psychology, economics, and sociology provide the empirical remedy. In this case, we can look to a study from 2025 that explores the factors behind a good recovery period. In other words, these are the things that make leisure and “time off” actually matter.

Holiday little and often: The researchers found that having shorter breaks every two months or so is better than having a longer one- or two-week break once or twice a year. So, get on a train and visit your friend for just one night. Book a cheap flight to that city you’ve always wanted to see. Turn weekends into mini breaks. Whatever happens, try not to bunch your work and bunch your rest. Don’t ever go long without a holiday.

Turn off work entirely: In the brilliant movie, Green Book, Viggo Mortensen’s character Tony says something that I try to live my life by: “You know, my father used to say, ‘Whatever you do, do it 100%. When you work, work. When you laugh, laugh. When you eat, eat like it’s your last meal.’”

When you go on holiday, treat it as a holiday. Notifications off, auto-replies on — it’s time to focus on some serious relaxing. As Pieper pointed out, getting away from work is an opportunity to reacquaint ourselves with the bigger things in life. It’s the space that allows us to appreciate the things that give meaning and true depth to our lives.

Be active: In this week’s Mini Philosophy newsletter, I’ll explore the concept of “wasting time.” But according to Giridharan et al., there is such a thing as better or worse holiday time. If you sit on the beach all day, drink all night, and idle the time away, you’ll come back home little rested for it. Either be physically active (walk around, book activities, mix it up) or use your mind a bit (have good conversations, explore the local culture, try something new).

We all look forward to holidays, and it’s common to bemoan how ineffective they are. We sit at our desks on the Monday after a week away and say, “It feels like I’ve never been away.” It turns out it might just be because we’re holidaying wrong.