Life in the United States revolves around the clock. Our workdays are measured in hours. Appointments have beginning and ending times. We calculate how long it will take to drive somewhere, how many minutes we have before the next meeting, and how much time remains before a deadline. We set alarms to wake ourselves and wear watches that remind us to move, stand, sleep, breathe, and hurry to the next appointment. When running late to appointments, there is a phrase: “I’m coming in hot.” It means the person is rushing from one meeting to the next, and they do not have a lot of time in between meetings. Our days are constantly measured into time increments, and we find ourselves asking: What time is the next thing? How much time do I have? How long will this take? Am I going to be late?

We have collectively agreed to live by the clock. Twice a year, most of the United States even collectively changes that clock. Daylight Saving Time has a complicated history in this country. Congress federally adopted the concept of Daylight Saving Time during World War I to save money on resources. Once the war was over, the nation repealed it. It was reinstated during World War II, and eventually standardized through the Uniform Time Act of 1966 (USAFacts Team, 2026). Legislation in 2005 extended the period in which we observe it. In 48 states, most Americans continue the ritual of moving their clocks forward and backward each year.

During the industrialization of the United States, millions of people collectively agreed on time and the length of the workday. Our bodies are expected to adjust and to bow to time to complete certain tasks in an 8-hour day. Time may be something we measure, but the way we organize our lives around it is something we have created. There is a heaviness of industrialization on our bodies about what we are to do with all of that time: be productive.

We have been taught that the harder we work, the more we will achieve. We have a meritocracy of the harder you work, the more you have, is connected to the American Dream. Work hard enough, and you will get the promotion. The more you work, the more money you will have. People who have busy schedules are seen as more important. We keep telling ourselves we need to be productive to accomplish more.

For many of us, there is no finish line. Each accomplishment simply moves the line a little farther away. We earn the degree and pursue the next credential. We get the promotion and take on more responsibility. We make more money but have less time to enjoy it. The promise is that hard work will eventually buy us freedom, yet sometimes the thing we sacrifice most in pursuit of that freedom is our time.

Our workplaces can reinforce this scarcity. Researchers Giurge, Whillans, and West describe a “winner-take-all” model of promotion in which the concept of an “ideal worker” is someone who demonstrates “loyalty, devotion, and productivity through long work hours” (2020). To be successful, you have to forgo your family and passions and ignore your body’s needs, all in the desire to get that next promotion. Those who do not conform to this expectation can be “marginalized or perceived as failed workers” or could be labeled as lazy (Giurge et al., 2020). The increased work expectations create an “acceleration of time,” which increases time poverty.

Time poverty is more than having a busy calendar. It is having too little discretionary time after the demands of paid work, caregiving, household responsibilities, and the other necessities of life. It is the persistent feeling, and often the reality, that there is never enough time.

The more we work, the less time we have to rest. The less we rest, the more it feels as though we are always running out of time. There is not enough time to sleep, sit with someone we love, read, create, cook, walk, think, pray, laugh, or simply do nothing. We become so accustomed to rushing that even moments without something to accomplish can make us sick both mentally and physically.

Busyness then becomes its own measure of success. We admire the person with the packed calendar. We apologize for having an open afternoon. We describe ourselves as lazy when we sleep late or spend a day doing nothing. We ask one another, “What did you get done today?” as though the value of a day can be calculated by the number of tasks crossed off a list.

Even rest gets pulled into the productivity machine. Get some sleep so you can be productive tomorrow. Take a vacation so you can come back refreshed. Practice self-care so you don’t burn out. We turn rest into another tool for producing more.

I have been fortunate to participate in something called the Nap Concert. The concept is beautifully simple: we rest. About 30 people gather in a room while a live musician plays classical music on their instrument in the background. Inflatable boats become our beds. We find our places, lie down, and for 45 minutes, we collectively agree to stop.

There is no assignment, nothing to accomplish, and nothing to produce. For 45 minutes, there is power in our collective decision to rest.

For those 45 minutes, we silently and metaphorically link arms. In a world that tells us to keep moving, we agree to be still. In a culture that asks what we have produced, we produce nothing. In a society that measures so much of our lives in minutes, we reclaim 45 of them. This is where the phrase rest as resistance has begun to make sense to me.

But there is another question to ask: Who actually has access to rest?

Time poverty is not experienced equally. The ability to close a laptop, take a vacation, sleep an extra hour, hire someone to clean the house, order dinner instead of cooking it, or spend an afternoon doing nothing is connected to resources and privilege. For someone working multiple jobs, raising children, caring for an aging parent, managing a household, or navigating economic insecurity, being told to “make time for self-care” can sound disingenuous.

Rest is also about systems. If we tell exhausted people that they simply need to practice better self-care while leaving untouched the conditions that consume their time, we have turned another structural problem into an individual responsibility. We have continued to prioritize the project over the person.

A deeper history underlies our relationship with rest. Ideas about work, productivity, worthiness, and laziness have been shaped by industrialization, capitalism, colonialism, race, gender, and class. A cultural notion exists about who is deemed to earn rest and who must keep toiling. Rest has been seen as a luxury and not a radical act of justice.

Tricia Hersey writes in Rest Is Resistance, “Rest can save, sustain, and prop us up when we feel weak and our backs against the wall” (p. 89). Her critique of our culture of exhaustion is even more direct: “Grind culture is violence” and “violence creates trauma” (p. 113).

Grind culture can feel like the perpetual hamster wheel. It keeps spinning and spinning, and yet the wheel never moves anywhere. We keep moving through our work patterns and cycles of progress, yet we never really stop to make sure we are doing well. It causes harm to the body. The wheel keeps moving round and round, yet the body can’t step off. We believe the lies we tell ourselves that next week will be better, that once we meet this deadline, life will be better.

In a month when we are encouraged to think about gratitude, perhaps gratitude does not always require us to add another practice, another journal entry, another task, or another obligation to our lives. That can feel like getting back on the hamster wheel or having another task to complete, but perhaps rest as resistance has our bodies stop.  

We spend so much of our lives watching the clock, trying to squeeze more productivity into the hours we have been given. Maybe resistance begins when we stop asking, How much more can I accomplish with the time I have left? And begin asking something different:

Who has been given the freedom to rest, who has been denied it, and what would it take for all of us to believe that rest is something we deserve simply because we are human?

References

Giurge, L. M., Whillans, A. V., & West, C. (2020). Why time poverty matters for individuals, organisations and nations. Nature Human Behaviour, 4(10), 993–1003. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-0920-z

Hersey, T. (2022). Rest is resistance: A manifesto. Little, Brown Spark.

USAFacts Team. (2026, July 15). Why does daylight saving time exist? USAFacts. https://usafacts.org/articles/why-does-daylight-saving-time-exist/