Everwell Mama

Rethinking Productivity: Why Rest is the Key to Doing More

• Siobhan Bingham • Season 1 • Episode 15

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How many times have you skipped a break because you felt guilty for resting? Or pushed through exhaustion only to feel like you're running on fumes? What if we’ve been looking at productivity all wrong?

In this episode, we're busting the biggest myths about rest and productivity—especially for working moms juggling it all. I’ll break down the science of why rest is essential, how cognitive fatigue is holding you back, and simple ways to make rest a non-negotiable part of your day (even when your schedule feels packed). Because real productivity isn’t about doing more—it’s about using your energy wisely.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

  • Why rest, not hustle, is the key to getting more done.
  • The science behind cognitive fatigue and how prolonged focus without breaks reduces productivity.
  • How the prefrontal cortex functions and why it needs downtime to make effective decisions.
  • How various types of rest—physical, mental, emotional, and sensory—help prevent burnout.
  • Simple ways to integrate rest into your daily routine, even with a packed schedule.

Noteworthy Quotes from This Episode:

"If we expected kids to work all day without recess, breaks, or even a chance to go to the bathroom, we know they wouldn’t be productive—but we do this to ourselves every day."

"True productivity isn’t about squeezing every single second out of your day—it’s about using your energy wisely so you can show up fully where it matters most."

"Your prefrontal cortex needs downtime to actually function properly."

"If you’ve ever been cooking dinner, the dog is barking, the baby is crying, and the food smells like it's burning—that’s sensory fatigue in action."

Resources & Links:

✨ Last week's episode

✨ Episode with Heather Copi

✨ Harvard Business Review

✨ Book an Energy Strategy Call with me – let’s create a plan that fits your life! https://calendly.com/siobhan-everwellcoaching/30min

 ✨ Join the Everwell Mama Instagram Community for daily energy tips: @everwellcoaching

Connect with Siobhan:

About Siobhan Bingham

Siobhan Bingham coaches tired working moms to boost their energy to show up better for their kids, their partner, their work, and themselves. Using her ALIGN framework, she provides personalized strategies to break free from exhaustion and create a daily rhythm that works with your life—not against it.

 Hey Mama, welcome to the Everwell Mama podcast, the place where we explore simple, sustainable, self care and wellness strategies to help you feel your best while managing your busy life. I'm Siobhan Bingham, a holistic life and wellness coach here to guide you as we uncover practical tools that will actually stick so you can enjoy self care.

Without the guilt trip. Whether you're a new listener or returning for more, I'm so glad you're here. Let's dive into the next step on your journey to becoming an ever well mama.

Hey, today we're tackling a topic that might feel counterintuitive, but is really truly life changing. And it's that idea that rest and not hustle is the key to getting more done. Yeah, rest is the key to getting more done. And for all the working moms out there who are juggling careers, family, and everything in between, this one's for you.

How many times have you skipped a break because you felt guilty for resting? Or pushed through exhaustion only to feel like you're running on curfumes? What if we've been looking at productivity all wrong? In today's episode, I'm going to break down some of the cultural myths around productivity, explain the science of why rest is essential, and share some practical ways that you can make rest a regular part of your day, even with a very packed schedule.

So let's get into our myths. The first one, of course, if you've spent any time with me, you know, it's all about societal expectations. We live in a culture today that glorifies being busy, especially for working moms. You're expected to crush it at work, be a Pinterest perfect parent, and still somehow find time to take care of yourself.

And this is a toxic cycle that leaves so many of us depleted. We think that if we can just work harder or push ourselves a little bit further, we are going to then crack the code. We're going to achieve that miraculous sense of balance. We're going to get that end goal that we've been working so hard for.

But usually, what we end up getting is just more and more tired. And unfortunately, this usually means that it's something that's unseen, that's being neglected when we're working so hard. For me, that was my family. Which makes me so sad to say, but it's true. I was so irritable and just in general not a fun person to be around.

I would also spend a lot longer on tasks at work because I was so overloaded in my brain that I wasn't able to just focus on the one task at hand, which again led to less time with my family and more irritability. You see the cycle here, right? A study from the University of Illinois found that prolonged focus with outbreaks leads to cognitive fatigue, reducing productivity.

Think about when you were in school, or think about your kids being in school now. If we expected them to work the entire day at school, Without having any recess time, without having any breaks to eat, without being able to go to the bathroom, without being able to just rest and like, play for parts of the day, you know that they're not going to be very productive by the end of the day.

Honestly, as a teacher as well, by the end of the day, they're probably already not going to have the same level of productivity as they would in the morning, unless they're teenagers. Because they're already tired from the rest of the day, with recess and play and all of the fun things in between. So, the message here is that taking short and intentional breaks actually boosts your efficiency and your creativity.

Thinking about yourself, can you think of a time when you tried to multitask, especially when you were tired? Did you make more mistakes while doing that? Or did you forget something important? Those are signs of cognitive fatigue in action. So just like at school true productivity isn't about squeezing every single second out of your day.

It's about using your energy wisely so you can show up fully where it matters most. So, I don't want to get, too in depth with the actual science behind it because I could literally do a whole podcast just on the brain and how it works. So, I'm just going to give you, the briefest overview just so you kind of have an idea of what it is that I'm talking about.

If you listened to the episode with Heather Copi about the teenage brain and the prefrontal cortex, we're kind of digging in a little deeper there. So the prefrontal cortex is right at the front of your head, pretty much, and it's the decision making part of your brain. Now remember, with teenagers, not fully developed yet, and it doesn't get fully developed until you're about 25.

With that prefrontal cortex, no matter how you're using it, no matter how you are making decisions throughout your day, for it to work properly, it needs to have downtime to actually function. And there's been so many studies on this and so many things that have been done. I'll quickly tell you about a Harvard Business Review article.

It talks about how downtime allows the brain to process information better. Which leads to better decision making and better problem solving. So think about the last time you had a vacation or the last time you just took a weekend off. You went away, you did something that was really outside of your routine, but really calm.

I bet when you came back, you probably felt sharper. You probably felt more creative. You probably just felt very refreshed and light, right? As opposed to just working straight through the weekend. Think about one of those weekends now where you did just push through. You had a really important task that needed to be done over the weekend, or you were back to back doing kids activities, and by the time Monday rolled around, You're more exhausted than you were on Friday afternoon.

So that's the difference in how we're using our prefrontal cortex. We need to have that downtime regularly in order for it to process all the things that we've already given it to do. So think of it kind of like an old school computer, right? Think about like that dial up sound. When we put in information, the computer needs to take a couple seconds, think about it, and then it's going to do what you've asked it to do, right?

Then it, then you need to give it more information to keep going. Same with like chat GPT now, right? You give it a little bit of information, it sits there and loads, and then it spits out what it needs to tell you. Your brain needs the same thing. It needs a couple seconds to figure out what's going on.

If you're just constantly throwing things at it, it's not going to be able to rest. And again, going back to last week's episode. There are many different ways that we need rest, and all of them are going to tie back to giving that prefrontal cortex some of that rest. But there are lots of different ways that we can become exhausted, and lots of different ways that we can get rest in our bodies.

So when we're thinking physical, yeah, that's sleep. Sleep is helpful, but it could also be a quick nap. It could also be stretching. It could be literally going for a walk, which again, sounds a little counterintuitive, but you're actually going to feel so much more refreshed by doing those things because you're giving your brain that break and your body is getting the blood flowing and just relaxing in the moment.

It's not in that fight or flight mode thinking about all of the things on your to do list. In terms of mental fatigue, we , need quiet time away from decision making. If you have ever felt overstimulated, if you have ever felt like the mental load was crushing you, that is literally your brain begging you for five minutes to just stop making decisions.

And there are so many different ways that you can get some mental rest. Again, we talked about it a bit in the last episode as well. And I've been talking about it a lot on Instagram as well. But one of my go tos is being able to do some deep breathing. When you do deep breathing, you're literally dropping out of your head and into your body.

And getting out of your head is, again, giving that prefrontal cortex some time to just chill. Then, emotional fatigue is a pretty big one, honestly, in motherhood. This is where we find things like mom guilt, and when we are really triggered by any sort of big emotions or big feelings from our kids, it can feel really heavy.

And emotional rest could be something as simple as talking to someone else who gets it, getting some support from another mom. It could be journaling, it could be doing some sort of art, just to release those feelings and let them out in a healthy way so that you're not building yourself up and exploding, and especially not at your kids.

And then last one is kind of a mix of the social fatigue that we talked of last time, but I'm going a little bit deeper into how our actual body and brain is working. And so we're talking about sensory fatigue right now. So think about your five senses, all of the different ways that information is coming into your brain through sight, sound, touch, smell, taste.

We, in our society, are bombarded with noise, with screens, constant demands. All of these things all the time coming into our system. If you've ever been cooking dinner and the dog is barking and the baby's crying and the food smells like it starts burning and you just feel like you're going to explode, that is sensory fatigue.

One of the easiest ways to get some rest from sensory fatigue is to limit or minimize some of the sensory input that you're getting. So this could be something as simple as turning off the notifications on your phone for 30 minutes. It could be putting the phone away for an extra little bit of time every day.

It could be putting in one single earplug, just so that the level of noise in your house is less going into your head. So you can process the things that you're hearing. And all of these things are so important for working moms, especially because

our brains are juggling multiple mental loads. We not only have the mental load of our household, of our family, of all of those pieces at play, But also of our career or our business, whatever it is that we are working towards outside of the home or at home on a computer. And we're carrying a lot of the emotional load of our families as well.

And so, if we're working all day on our career, and then we are working the rest of those 24 hours, on our house, on the emotions, on our families, we're constantly on. And even at night when you're sleeping, your brain is likely processing all of that information it's taken in all day, and it's not getting that chance to fully reset, which is why you're waking up still tired, still feeling a little overwhelmed, and not refreshed.

Your body and brain are literally never getting that chance to fully recharge. So, now that we've kind of gotten into the woe is me section, I want to give you some practical tips of how to reset all of our energy levels and reset our prefrontal cortex a little better. And I'm going to do that through a couple of the letters of my Align framework.

So we're going to start with A, which is all about activating your body's natural energy. So rest is how your body restores its energy. Think of rest as plugging in your phone. Without it, your battery is going to drain faster. It's not going to work for you anymore.

Same thing with your body. You need to charge your battery. So my tip for you today is to create a wind down routine to signal to your body and to your brain that it's time to rest. And this will help your prefrontal cortex to kind of flip that switch and start going into rest mode. But it is also going to naturally help you turn off all of those things that are keeping you going and keeping you on.

So, easy things that you can do to add into your wind down routine are some stretching before bed, minimizing screen time, having a nice warm drink, could be having a nice warm shower, anything warm is nice for rest. And having some sort of calming conversation could also be very helpful depending on the level of your emotional fatigue.

The next letter that we're going to look at is I, which is insulate your boundaries. So you really need to have boundaries around your work and your personal time. I think as a society, we're getting a little bit better with this, especially post COVID. But it's really important that you are setting these boundaries and keeping them firmly in place for when some people maybe are pushing past them.

So if your job is expecting you to answer emails at 10 pm, you need to set a boundary by logging off at a set time every night and let your co workers or your boss or whoever it is know when you'll be back to respond. There are so many different ways to have a sleep mode or do not disturb mode on all of these different apps and technology pieces these days.

So making sure that we are using those tools in order to give ourselves that break and that boundary so that we can come down and we can find that rest and our brain can turn off for a little bit is really, really, really important. And if you don't think it is, let me paint a little picture for you.

Imagine you started stretching and you were about to lie down, read a book before you go to bed. And then you get three emails back to back from work for work things. And you're like, Oh, let me just quickly do this. But then that one email wants you to do a whole doc. And then the next email needs you to.

Email three other people and then the third email needs you to do XYZ. You're going to be Flipping your mind into overdrive mode again after you told it it's time to rest You're turning off that rest switch You're going into on mode and then as soon as you've sent all of those emails and done all of that stuff one you're going to bed way later than you thought you were going to and two Your brain is still on and activated.

You need to give it the signal to come back down. Now, I want to give you some tips that I have either learned myself, or I've supported clients with, or I have developed with friends that are going through this cycle of fatigue. So like with any changes, anything that you're trying to do, if you are trying to make any sort of change, you have to start small.

Otherwise, it's not going to happen, mama. You've got to take micro breaks throughout the day. It could be as little as 30 seconds, at most 5 minutes to start. And then once you've got that, Foundation set, then you can build up more. And these breaks don't have to be something really extreme or exaggerated.

It could be a quick mindfulness exercise. It could be you just stepping outside or opening a window and just breathing that fresh air for a couple seconds. And that's just to reset your focus, reset yourself. Again, we're needing those boundaries in place. Because without them, we're getting that sense of guilt.

We're feeling bad about not being able to do it all. But when we are trying to do it all, we're actually letting down that unseen piece. And that's usually the ones who are relying on you most, whether that's your kids, your partner, or yourself. So, practicing in the mirror, practicing typing it, whatever it is that you need to do to practice.

You could even have customized messages. Like no, I can't stay late today. I have family time planned. No, I can't do this today because blank or no because just say no I can't do that tonight. Remember you are worthy of rest And you require rest because you are a human being. Rest is not a luxury.

It's not a special trip every now and then. Rest is a daily priority because when you rest, you're actually investing in your energy reserves. So that you can show up for your family and your job at your best and then within your daily rhythms I like to call them rhythms rather than routines Because routines in my mind are pretty strict in terms of the time of the day that you do them they look like little boxes in my head, you know, and Life is not always like that with kids.

So, I like to think of it as a rhythm. If we have a rhythm in music, we've got some staccato going on, we've got some brr pup pup pup, and so, some things are fast, some things are slow, everything's going up and down, there's changes, there's differences in day to day. And so, thinking about your rest times throughout your day, think about The rhythm that your kids already have.

What kind of rest times could you incorporate for yourself while your kids are having some rest time? For example, if you have older kids with little kids, you could have a whole family quiet time during nap time to make sure that the baby's getting their sleep and everyone is getting some rest, including you.

Another trick could be using a habit tracker. Some people need to see it visually written down in front of them. I don't know about you, I love checking off a to do list, I love checking off boxes, and so habit trackers can be really helpful for that, because then you're checking off every single time that you do something.

And these could be on paper, they could be digital. It's whatever works best for you and keeps you feeling your best. So a quick recap of today's episode. We have busted the myth that productivity means constant hustle because that ain't true. We've explored the overview of the prefrontal cortex.

And we've walked through some ways to make rest work for you as a busy mom. I want you to remember as you go into this week that rest isn't about being lazy or selfish. It's about filling your cup so you can pour into others from a place of abundance. and not depletion. So your challenge this week is to schedule one block of 15 minutes, and this could be 15 minutes all at once, it could be spread out throughout your week, but I need you to have 15 minutes this week for just rest.

And this is non negotiable rest. This isn't like, um, uh, no. This is rest. This is time that you have blocked off in your schedule just for you. No one can bother you . this is your rest time. After you do it, please DM me on Instagram and let me know how it felt. And if you're ready to stop running on empty and start showing up as the energized and confident mom you want to be, Let's chat.

I have a few one to one coaching spots coming up soon, and I would love to help you create a plan that works for your life. Together, we can build in the rest, energy, and balance that you deserve without adding more to your plate. You can go ahead and click the link in the show notes to book your free energy strategy call today.

To get you feeling good again. . And until next time, I'll catch you in the next one. Thank you so much for tuning in today. You can find the transcript and all the resources mentioned in the show notes below. If this episode was helpful, I would really appreciate you leaving a 5 star rating and review, so I can keep making it.

Also, I want to make sure this podcast actually answers your wellness questions. If you've got a specific question about how to implement more wellness into your already filled day, Send me a DM on Instagram at everwellcoaching so I can share resources or create a future episode just for you. Stay tuned for our next episode, and until then, remember to take a moment each day to do something that fills your cup, mama.