Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences:

We talk about rest as though it must improve our performance before it can earn a place in our lives. When productivity becomes the measure of whether time was well spent, even leisure can begin to feel like something we have to justify.

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I am a poster child for leisure guilt.

I can sit down to watch television, read something purely for pleasure or simply do nothing, and within minutes another thought usually arrives. There is something I could be working on. Something I could finish. Something I could research, write, organise or move forward. Even when I have deliberately decided to stop working, some part of my brain seems unconvinced that I deserve a break.

I genuinely enjoy working.

I enjoy thinking, researching, writing, solving problems and creating things. That makes the distinction harder to see because work does not always feel like an imposition. Sometimes it is the thing I would choose to do.

This is probably why I recognised myself so easily in recent research on something psychologists are calling leisure guilt.

A 2026 study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin describes leisure guilt as…

…the guilt or unease we experience when we spend time leisurely rather than productively.

Across the studies, people experienced leisure guilt during about 14 percent of their leisure occasions. People who were more prone to it also reported poorer leisure experiences, lower well-being and fewer of the psychological benefits that leisure is supposed to provide.

In other words, we can stop working without actually allowing ourselves to rest.

That interested me because we spend a great deal of time talking about the importance of rest. We are told that we need to recharge. That recovery prevents burnout. That taking breaks improves concentration. That time away from work makes us more creative and productive when we return.

While all of that may be true… listen carefully to the defence we have constructed for rest.

• Rest helps us work better.
• Rest improves performance.
• Rest makes us more productive.

Rest is being asked to show its return on investment.

Work rarely faces the same interrogation. We can spend three hours answering emails that did not require three hours, polishing something that was already good enough or attending a meeting that accomplished very little and still feel that the time was legitimately spent because we were working.

Spend three hours doing absolutely nothing useful and the internal tribunal may have questions.

When did usefulness become the test for whether time was well spent?

I suspect many of us have absorbed the idea that productive activity carries a kind of moral value. Getting things done feels responsible. Moving forward feels disciplined. Having something to show for how we spend our time feels reassuring.

We tell ourselves we deserve the afternoon because we worked hard this week. We can take the holiday because the project is finished. We can watch the movie because everything important has been done.

Except everything important is almost never done.

There will always be another email, another idea, another opportunity, another task and another useful thing we could be doing. For anyone who works for themselves, the supply is almost infinite. There is no bell announcing that work has officially ended and leisure may now begin; which means the real question may have very little to do with whether we have enough time to rest.

It may be about the rule we have created for what makes time valuable.

Productivity is useful.

It helps us create, contribute, earn, build and make things happen. It becomes a problem when it starts deciding whether every other use of our time is legitimate.

If joy matters, why must it improve tomorrow’s performance before it earns a place in today?

If relationships matter, why must time spent talking, laughing or simply being together produce something else?

If curiosity matters, why must everything we read become research?

And if being alive matters, surely some part of a life should be allowed to exist without having to produce evidence that it was useful.

Leisure guilt as an alignment question.

We say we value health, relationships, pleasure, curiosity, presence and a good life. Then we organise our time according to a rule that gives productivity the deciding vote. It’s time to rethink how we view rest.

Strategic Reflection Prompt

What have you decided makes time well spent?

About Giselle

Most costly decisions begin with an inaccurate understanding of the situation.

I’m Giselle Hudson – writer and Pre-Decision Diagnostic Advisor. Most advisors offer solutions before carefully diagnosing the situation. I diagnose first — looking for what isn’t completely visible yet. Once we identify that, everything else becomes clearer, and confident, right action can follow.

Through my daily Strategic Alignment Journal, I explore leadership, decision-making, and the patterns that shape organizations, helping leaders make sense of complexity before committing significant time, money, or resources.

What’s the one thing about your business that frustrates you most — the thing that, despite your best efforts, you can’t seem to resolve?