--- title: The Health Benefits of Relaxation description: Many people struggle to relax. But unproductive moments can boost health and happiness. canonical: https://time.com/6981061/relaxation-health-benefits/ author: Jamie Ducharme article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2024-06-10T14:14:38.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:50:27.911Z article:section: Health og:title: Do Less. It's Good for You og:description: Unproductive moments can boost health and happiness. og:url: https://time.com/6981061/relaxation-health-benefits/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt46c74b1835b63f66/698a57aa09208fed6d41d3e9/240624_WRELAX_001.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2400 og:image:height: 1350 og:image:alt: Do Less. It's Good for You og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Do Less. It's Good for You twitter:description: Unproductive moments can boost health and happiness. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt46c74b1835b63f66/698a57aa09208fed6d41d3e9/240624_WRELAX_001.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Do Less. It's Good for You > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Health Matters: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Health Matters is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. The latest health news and expert advice on living well. Health Matters makes the fast-moving world of health more useful, surprising and human, from the latest science and medical breakthroughs to practical ideas for living better. 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It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ## Video: Ambition Is Out [Watch (HLS stream): Ambition Is Out](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/oRzVU4XX.m3u8) (4:13)  _Published 2022-10-27. First came the “Great Resignation,” followed recently by the phenomenon of “quiet quitting.” Many surveys have also pointed to a sense of malaise and fatigue sweeping the American workforce, apparently culminating in a common desire to do less._  by [Jamie Ducharme](https://time.com/author/jamie-ducharme/)  ## Jamie Ducharme Ducharme is a contributor to TIME. Jun 10, 2024 2:14 PM UTC  Illustration by Visbii for Time  by [Jamie Ducharme](https://time.com/author/jamie-ducharme/)  ## Jamie Ducharme Ducharme is a contributor to TIME. Jun 10, 2024 2:14 PM UTC You take a vacation day, but [get distracted by the thought of your work](https://time.com/5599292/vacation-without-stressing-work/) inbox filling up. Or you sit down to watch a movie and immediately feel guilty about all the tasks still on your to-do list. Or perhaps you splurge on a [massage](https://time.com/5085140/massage-health-benefits/), but barely enjoy it because your thoughts are racing the entire time. If any of these sound familiar, you’re not alone. Relaxing may sound like the easiest thing in the world, but for many people it’s anything but. Erin Westgate, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Florida, learned that a decade ago, when she helped design [a study](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1250830) to test the effects of letting people do nothing but sit with their thoughts for a few minutes. “We had this idea that if we gave people a few moments in their busy days to just sit and slow down and be alone with their thoughts, that they’d find it really enjoyable and it would be relaxing and increase well-being,” Westgate says. The opposite happened: people were so uncomfortable doing nothing that many opted to give themselves small electric shocks instead. Doing nothing, as Westgate’s study illustrated, can be difficult because most of us aren’t used to thinking without turning those thoughts into actions—a disconnect that can be “incredibly cognitively intense,” she says. Researchers including Michelle Newman, a professor of psychology at the Pennsylvania State University, have also studied the concepts of “[relaxation anxiety](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31450137/)” and “[relaxation sensitivity](https://www.uc.edu/news/articles/legacy/enews/2012/11/university-of-cincinnati-research-examines-why-some-people-are-afraid-to-relax.html),” which relate to the discomfort, boredom, or unease some people feel when they slow down. For some, “There’s this view that, ‘I should always be busy doing something,’” Newman says. “Often people feel like it’s not okay to just be reading a good book or watching a good program on TV.” No wonder. [Productivity and hard work](https://time.com/6314076/case-for-mediocrity/) are nothing if not the American Way, with mainstream institutions from government to church urging people to stay busy, says Celeste Headlee, author of the book [_Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving_](https://celesteheadlee.com/do-nothing-book/)_._ “Our society has valued really, really toxic things,” she says. “We have for generations been brainwashed” to believe that productivity is morally superior to rest—so it’s no wonder relaxing sometimes feels uncomfortable or even wrong, Headlee says. [Research shows](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S157106452030004X) that people are, to varying degrees, motivated by what they feel they “should” be doing; some may feel guilty when they deviate from that. Rebecca Schaumberg, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, has [studied the positive side of work-related guilt](https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/feeling-guilty-could-be-good-thing), finding that people who are guilt-prone tend to be more productive and reliable workers. But in recent years, she says, she has come to question whether guilt is good for people, or just the organizations that employ them. “Guilt can be good in the workplace, but it doesn't always mean it’s good for the person who feels it,” she says—especially if it prevents them from ever taking time to step away and decompress. The truth is, rest and relaxation are vital to well-being. Chronic stress negatively affects nearly every aspect of mental and physical health, even contributing to [higher risks for chronic disease](https://time.com/6332877/stress-affects-heart-health/) and [premature death](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7762%2822%2900095-3/fulltext). Meanwhile, [rest may boost](https://time.com/6969761/how-to-rest-more-effectively/) your health, quality of life, and longevity. Getting better at resting and relaxing, then, isn’t frivolous; it could actually be lifesaving. Here’s how to start. ## Reframe what "counts" as rest If the [idea of meditating makes you break out in hives](https://time.com/6249527/how-to-be-mindful-hate-meditating/), that’s okay. Scientifically speaking, “relaxation” just means activating your parasympathetic nervous system—the one that handles bodily processes you don’t think about, like breathing and digestion—instead of your sympathetic nervous system, which is [in charge of your stress response](https://time.com/6917636/how-stress-affects-your-health/), says Christina Luberto, an assistant professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School who has studied relaxation. “You can elicit that physiological state in any activity that involves a single, pointed focus while setting aside intrusive or unrelated distractions,” Luberto explains. Anything from gardening to cooking to reading to your kids could fit the bill, she says. These activity-oriented forms of relaxation may be especially beneficial for people who don’t enjoy slower mindfulness practices, like meditation. Often, Luberto says, the pressure to feel zen during these sessions contributes to anxiety—so trying to push through a “relaxation” practice that isn’t working for you may do more harm than good. **Read More**: [_How to Get Real Rest_](https://time.com/6969761/how-to-rest-more-effectively/) Westgate seconds that advice. People often ruminate and get anxious if they simply sit and think about what they need to do or what happened to them that day—but find it restorative to [write those thoughts in a journal](https://time.com/6266437/journaling-routine-health-benefits/). “By actually physically doing something…we’re reducing some of the \[cognitive\] demand,” Westgate says. In other words, it can be helpful to do a little something when you’re doing nothing. ## Set boundaries When work creeps into your personal life—ducking out of Sunday brunch to check your emails, for example—that’s “polluted time,” Headlee says. If your relaxation hours are polluted, you’re not reaping their full benefits. What’s more, you may be reinforcing the idea that you “should” be accomplishing tasks even during your downtime. To keep [your free time](https://time.com/5331721/enjoy-leisure-activities-study/) free, Headlee recommends writing down your working hours and posting them somewhere visible as a reminder to yourself. Just as a store wouldn’t reopen for a customer who arrived after it closed, Headlee says, you shouldn’t make exceptions to your hours when you get a late-night email or feel the itch to check in with the boss on a Sunday afternoon. “Closed is closed,” she says. For extra reinforcement, consider adding a line about your working hours to your email signature or telling your friends and family about the boundaries you’ve set so they can hold you accountable. ## Remember to relax your body, too Lots of people walk around with muscular tension that keeps them in a stressed-out state, feeling frazzled even when they’re trying to relax. Newman recommends tensing, then releasing, different muscles in the body to help release pent-up stress. [Breathing exercises](https://time.com/6244576/deep-breathing-better-well-being/) can also help catalyze a relaxation response. **Read More**: [_How to Get Back to Sleep After Waking Up at Night_](https://time.com/6985605/how-to-stay-asleep/) ## Consider seeing a therapist Not all busy people have relaxation anxiety or sensitivity, Luberto notes. If you’re active by nature but also enjoy your downtime, however occasional, there’s probably no cause for concern. But if relaxing feels hard or impossible to you—whether because you’re guilty or anxious or distracted—it may be time to call on a professional, she says. Psychological techniques like cognitive behavioral therapy may help. ## Start small, then practice If you struggle to unwind, don’t dive straight into the deep end by booking a weeklong beach vacation. Start by finding small moments in your day to practice slowing down and getting comfortable just _being_. And pick moments strategically, choosing those when you’re most likely to succeed—like during your morning shower, Westgate says. Like most things in life, resting gets easier the more you do it, Headlee says. Slowing down may feel uncomfortable or even shameful at first, but once you train your brain, it will get easier, she says. “It’s going to take a little time to teach your brain that you can not answer that email and nothing will happen, nothing will explode,” Headlee says. “You just have to keep doing it.” ## Transcript Despite the price hikes millions of Americans have decided to quit their job this year, and it is now being called the Great resignation first team. The great resignation followed recently by the phenomenon of quite quitting. Many surveys have also pointed to a sense of fatigue, sleep in the American Workforce, apparently, culminating in a common desire to do last Hyatt. Quitting is a term, sometimes used to describe people who have decided to not leave their jobs but take a step back from their jobs. So this could look like you know, doing the bare minimum of your job requirements or leaving everyday at 5 on the dot. If your work day is supposed to end at 5, it's just sort of a way for people to reclaim some work-life balance without actually quitting their job. So there's been a lot of data in the later years of the pandemic to suggest that people are not feeling engaged with their work. So a lot of people are reporting that they're actively disengaged from their jobs, mentally checking out. A lot of people are actively looking for new jobs at prioritize work-life balance and hopefully lower stress. And a lot of people are just saying that they're not happy at their current work environment or sort of having this Reckoning with the role that work should play in our lives, in general. And for a lot of people that is turning into a reframing of the way, they think about ambition and accomplishment and striving in their work in a given week, I probably only do about 15 minutes of real actual work. Many people have described their newly lacks attitudes toward work as a loss of ambition. But it's hard to say whether ambition is actually dropping across the u.s. population. So a study from the society for human resources management and which is a group that does a lot of workplace research found that about half of respondents were actively looking for a new job as of July of this year and a lot of people who had recently, left job said that they had done that because they wanted better work-life balance. Considering large cultural factors changes, are happening in some Industries, but the progress has been slow, leading some people who can afford to step back to replace corporate ladder climbing in favor of more, satisfying, social family or personal lives, think about ambition and burnout on an individual level because anybody who has a job is working within a larger economy and a larger system, so things like inflation and wages, not keeping Pace with that. Things like workplace is not prioritizing worker, safety during the pandemic. Things like income inequality, all of that contributes to the way that we think about our work and we think about our ambition. So to a large extent, ambition is defined by the place. You work in the country working. Just as much as it is by yourself workers. Questioning the purpose of their jobs, in a row work, should claim their lives is nothing new. However, According to some experts and maybe it's that many people are thinking, critically about work, and in some cases to think of Alex A lot of psychological research suggests that if you can focus on goals that are important to you and that you find internally motivating that your work can actually serve your mental health instead of hurting. So, maybe that would be focusing on how good it will feel to finish a task or learn a new skill as opposed to just driving for the next promotion or the next Rays. So it's the extent that you can focus on things that you personally find meaningful and not external markers of success. 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