Why Do We Need Energy Drinks?
You need to rest. Yes, you.
I don’t care who you are. You need to rest.
I’ve got friends and family who—when I offer the cursory greeting “How ya doin’?”—respond with how busy they are. They wear it like a badge of honor.
“I’m worn out. I may be dead on my feet, but my, look how wonderfully busy I am!”
That’s nothing but another form of pride.
Busyness = Productivity
Productivity = Usefulness
Usefulness = Importance
We’ve bought into the myth that busyness equals productivity and value. We fuel our feeling of productivity when we multi-task, but a study has shown that when we multi-task, we’re actually getting less done—up to fifty percent less!
This myth fuels the energy drink business. Americans drink over 1200 million gallons of energy drinks each year. For those among us who look down our noses at energy drinks, we still consume our coffee and caffeinated beverages for the same reason: we want to be awake. We don’t want to miss anything. We don’t want to sleep.
I am not against energy drinks or caffeine. Many days a coffee cup is fused to my left hand. What I am against is not resting.
It’s a sin.
The Fifth Commandment is a call to rest. It is not a command to avoid fun on Sundays. Every command from God is for our benefit. He calls us to rest because He loves us. We benefit from the physical, emotional, and spiritual restoration. We need it once a week—and we need it daily.
- “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27).
- “I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the Lord sustains me” (Ps. 3:5).
Jesus valued rest. “Because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, ‘Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest'” (Mark 6:31).
Do you really want to be productive? Slow down. Stop. Rest. Sleep. I have learned from experience that when I take a day of rest, get plenty of sleep at night, and don’t push myself from dawn to dusk, I am truly more productive. Weird, huh?
Be productive and rest.
