We Just Need Three Days

Whenever I tell someone I’m “just a bit tired” or “need a break”, they always say the same thing. Oh, why don’t you take the evening off? Oh, why don’t you take a day off? Oh, why don’t we go do something fun for a few hours on the weekend? Oh, have you been sleeping and eating well?

The intention is good, of course. They’re just trying to be nice and subtly persuade me to slow down. I think most people get reactions like these.

They are, unfortunately, pretty useless.

A huge percentage of people—both kids and adults—now report feeling incredibly tired and burned-out. It’s a side effect of a world that’s given everything to the wealthy and just squeezes more and more out of everyone at the bottom. It’s the logical consequence of a world where “performing” or “getting good grades” as a 6 year old is somehow a thing—no, it’s the most important thing in the world to governments, schools, and parents.

I, as well as basically my entire family, are part of this group too. I can’t remember a day when I didn’t feel just incredibly tired. It’s been that way ever since I started high school, which meant the start of a neverending cycle of having to work, and perform, and work even harder, all while earning pennies and having no security. It’s exhausting. It’s draining. It’s idiotic.

It’s a much deeper exhaustion than just “oh I didn’t sleep well last night” or “oh I worked a bit too hard today”. It’s an exhaustion that seeps into your bones and muscles and makes you wonder why you’re a 28 year old in the body of an 80 year old.

Until I read something interesting. And then I read it again. And then I read something similar, in another place, related to another topic.

I started noticing the “3-day pattern”.

• Several people who were severely burned out were recommended to “do absolutely nothing for 3 days”. And it worked wonders for them; they simply never tried it before.
• When our hormone levels are depleted, it takes around 3 days to completely refill and rebalance. (Mostly dopamine, as a dopamine deficit is responsible for being completely exhausted and demotivated and incapable of exerting any more effort.)
• When you have a bad habit, it takes about 3 days of consistently not doing it/doing something else to break it.
• And so forth.

Three days. Just three fucking days of resting and recuperating. And I, like almost everyone around me, had never had the opportunity to do it. Never even thought of it. We were told that taking “the evening off” would be enough, right? We were told we had to work 40-hour weeks, and if we couldn’t sustain that then it was somehow our own fault. We all view the “weekend” as our moment to recuperate, but that’s only two days. And it’s usually two days filled with other work that you couldn’t do during the work, such as administration or household chores. Or, famously, homework/studying for school stuff due Monday. Because all teachers are like “well you have the weekend, so we can give you MORE homework for Monday!”

I’d wager that almost everyone from my generation has never even had the opportunity to truly take 3 days off. They might have never even thought of it or considered it. If they did, they probably met a lot of resistance, and had to perhaps “schedule” doing nothing for 3 days … some time next year, when they finally have the time.

It’s messed up, honestly. It’s so ingrained in our current culture and society, and going in the wrong direction, that I don’t think the next generation(s) will be any more able to take three days of peace and quiet once in a while.

But I hope this article at least makes some people realize this and try it.

Because I, for the first time in my life, tried it. Once I saw this pattern I vowed to actually see it through. The next time I felt utterly drained and exhausted, I just cleared my entire schedule and to-do list and took my three days off. Three days of sustaining basic healthy habits and nothing more. Three days of just light socializing, light exercising, not much more. Three days of, perhaps, maybe, doing some small things if I really feel like it or some great idea comes to me. But nothing is forced, nothing is planned, nothing is required.

Three days.

It’s nothing. No company is going to suffer from employees taking three days off. No student is going to suffer from staying home from school for three days.

And still it really works.

Sure, by day two I was wondering if I wasn’t wasting my time. I felt a bit of energy again, didn’t I? And if I could just work on X for a few hours now, I would meet that self-imposed deadline! Maybe … maybe …

But no, I stuck to the plan. And by the end of day 3 the difference was night and day.

• By “sleeping on it” for three nights, I had figured out solutions to loads of problems and realized I was wasting time on the wrong things in basically all my projects.
• When I woke up on day 4, it just felt natural and easy to get out of bed, do what needs to be done, and be productive and active for much longer than usual. I didn’t linger in bed for an hour, half-checking my phone, half-wishing I’d fall asleep again, because I was too exhausted to step out of bed. I didn’t rush through my work so I could take a break—and then lack the energy to stop taking a break and go back to work for the rest of the day.
• And this was sustainable. It wasn’t like I’d “saved” energy now, peaked on day 4, and then I was just as tired. All things felt easier, all things felt less draining, and the benefits of taking three days off lingered for far longer. They were so pronounced, in fact, that I wondered (with a tinge of regret) how much more I could’ve done the past ten years if I’d just tried this once.

Now, I don’t know if it will work for you. Of course I don’t. The reasons and severity of exhaustion or burnout differ from person to person.

But this number—3 days—kept coming back in all the research and studies, all the presentations, all the stories I gathered. Most people had simply never tried laying low for 3 days in a row. If people took a day off, or went on “vacation”, they did so in a way that still had them working far too much and ignoring their body’s boundaries. People generally only “allow” themselves one day, and that’s that.

And, well, you simply won’t be completely refreshed or recuperated after a single day. So you call it a waste, probably don’t try it again, and continue feeling exhausted.

Three days.

It’s stupid that we can’t even get that. My experience so far shows that this will do many people a lot of good. This can really help people get out of the rut of exhaustion, and if not that, to at least manage it better and soften it.

Try it. Three days of basically nothing. Just light exercise for body and mind, nothing straining or forced, and that’s that. It’s the minimum time needed to “reset” your body and brain, and it’s something most people of my generation never got.

You are chronically tired, for years on end, stuck in that flow … that you forget how it feels to not be that exhausted. I had completely forgotten that you could actually wake up and not feel like a trainwreck that somehow had to stand on two feet again and do it all over today. If three days of complete rest can accomplish that, imagine how much healthier and more productive all of us would be if regular complete breaks were normalized.

Hopefully, you see this improved state in my quarterly updates on the blog. If you check them from years ago, you’ll see the repeated cycle of “I did a LOT of stuff” followed by “I was so exhausted I basically wasted the entire month”. Again, and again, and again. And sure, all together it averages out to a pretty productive year. But it’s not healthy or sustainable, while everything I tried back then had basically no effect. This thing—recognizing complete exhaustion, then stepping back and taking a 3-day complete break—actually helped and stabilized it.

Those were my thoughts for today,

Tiamo