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By Tyler Morgan

“And from that period on, I was in a wormhole. You couldn’t get me out of the room. I would come home from school, sleep for like 30 minutes, go into a room for four hours, and that was it.” 

The above quote comes from Rick Rubin’s interview of singer/songwriter John Mayer on the former’s Tetragrammaton podcast, and Mayer is describing his teenage years when he was learning how to play guitar. Practicing an instrument for four hours a day will tend to result in one becoming rather proficient. But maybe there was something else contributing to Mayer’s aptitude on the guitar. He does not dwell on it, but embedded subtly in the middle of Mayer’s quote may be a key insight into how he became such a generational talent: he took time to rest.

As it turns out, Mayer is not the only highly successful person to benefit (consciously or unconsciously) from the power of rest. There are numerous examples of highly successful people who prioritized rest as a way to achieve peak cognitive performance, including iconic politicians, inventors, business leaders, writers, artists, and musicians. Instead of viewing rest as a waste of time that could otherwise be used to get more things done, these individuals understood that adequate rest was essential to ensure their working time was used effectively and efficiently. While internal auditors are busy people, it is clear from numerous examples of prolific and impactful individuals from outside the auditing world that even the busiest among us can benefit from prioritizing rest.

Perhaps the most likely objection to using rest as a way to become a more effective internal auditor is the belief that internal auditors simply have too much to do to be able to prioritize rest, but history suggests otherwise. Take, for instance, Winston Churchill during World War II. Churchill first served as the British prime minister from 1940-1945, and there clearly was a lot riding on his performance during this time, with each day being filled with a monumental list of items for him to handle. However, Churchill had a longstanding habit of taking an afternoon nap, and he deemed the fate of the free world resting on his shoulders as no excuse for missing his afternoon slumber. The naps continued during the war. He did not consider napping to be a luxury but rather viewed an afternoon nap as an essential way to maintain his legendary daily productivity. Churchill wrote, “Nature had not intended mankind to work from eight in the morning until midnight without the refreshment of blessed oblivion which, even if it only lasts 20 minutes, is sufficient to renew all the vital forces.” Naps were not a decadent activity to be enjoyed solely when little was going on, but they instead functioned as a way for Churchill to stay in tune with immutable biological rhythms and maintain peak cognitive performance during a historical period when every decision was critical. 

Since internal auditors are knowledge workers, they tend to be judged on the quality of their work rather than quantity. And since work quality is positively correlated with cognitive performance, and cognitive performance is enhanced with adequate rest, it follows that rest is a lever internal auditors can pull to increase the quality of their work. University stakeholders likely will not be impressed that an internal auditor regularly works 60-hour weeks or that they never take breaks during the workday. Instead, internal auditors will be judged on the quality of their output and how beneficial it is to their university, especially as artificial intelligence and other technological innovations likely will reduce the amount of time needed to be spent on mundane, low-value administrative tasks. Instead of focusing on work quantity, internal auditors should prioritize producing high-quality, meaningful output that goes far beyond cookie-cutter reports and trite recommendations. In a world where ChatGPT can quickly spew elegant, professional-sounding reports with all the right buzzwords but little substance or original insight, internal auditors who are able to think critically and apply their institutional knowledge to solve tough problems will increasingly stand out from the crowd and be extremely valuable to university stakeholders.

There is strong evidence that prioritizing rest will enhance internal auditors’ critical thinking skills and problem-solving abilities. While a nap to break up the workday may not be a realistic possibility for many, the good news is that rest is not just limited to naps. There are lots of ways to rest, and the remaining paragraphs will explore a few tips, tricks, and key insights backed by science to help you get the rest you need. 

Walk

It may seem counterintuitive to list exercise as a way to rest, but there is plenty of evidence supporting the idea that physical exertion can help boost cognitive performance and improve memory. While countless forms of exercise may achieve these results, many studies have focused on walking in particular. This is great news for higher education internal auditors, as college campuses are often some of the loveliest places to take a walk. A campus walk can also be a great way to become more informed about what is going on at your university, whether by walking through unfamiliar buildings or by having informal conversations with faculty and staff you encounter. Walking outside also provides the added bonus of getting sunlight, which has been linked to better mood regulation and other cognitive benefits. The combination of physical exertion and sunlight exposure may even improve sleep. 

Sleep

Even if workday naps are not a realistic possibility for you, there are many things you can do to at least ensure the quality of your nighttime sleep. In addition to regular exercise, consistently going to bed at the same time each night ensures your sleep is aligned with your circadian rhythm. Limiting screens and other overstimulating devices near bedtime may make it easier to fall asleep, and the same can be said for caffeine consumption. Even if you can fall asleep a few hours after drinking coffee, there is strong evidence that your sleep quality will suffer even if you are unable to perceive it. This is because caffeine typically takes a long time to break down in the body. In his book Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams, Matthew Walker points out that caffeine has an average half-life of five to seven hours. This means that half of the caffeine you consumed six hours ago may still be circulating in your system, though this amount could be higher or lower depending on your individual caffeine metabolism. Many of us would never drink six ounces of coffee right before bedtime, so it is worthwhile to consider the fact that having twelve ounces of coffee at four o’clock might be functionally equivalent. Therefore, it may be wise to skip that late-afternoon latte.

Play

We live in a golden age for picking up new hobbies. Given the staggering amount of content available on YouTube and similar platforms, it has never been easier to learn to, say, bake a loaf of sourdough, play the drums, or plant that vegetable garden. Maintaining meaningful pursuits outside of work can help reduce the odds of burnout and ensure that your identity is not completely tied up with your occupation. Promisingly, there is evidence that Americans are increasingly prioritizing hobbies and leisure.

Unfortunately, however, the time we spend with others appears to be declining, despite strong evidence that our relationships and a sense of community are correlated positively with numerous quality of life measures. But hobbies do not have to be solitary pursuits, and combining hobbies with socialization and a sense of community likely will augment their restorative effects. One need look no further than America’s current obsession with pickle ball, a sport often played in groups of four. Is it possible that our love of pickle ball has something to do with its ability to bring us together? If you are not into pickle ball, there are plenty of other activities that you can enjoy with others, such as book clubs, board game nights, running and walking clubs, bowling leagues, volunteering for a nonprofit, and playing in a band.

Leave

According to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, nearly half of all U.S. workers surveyed who receive paid time off from their employer used less leave than they were offered. While this number might be skewed somewhat by the lack of a distinction between personal and sick leave, it is clear that at least some of the unused leave stems from workers being concerned about their work performance, with 49% of those with unused leave citing a fear of falling behind at work as a reason for forfeiting leave. Similarly, about one in five of those surveyed with forfeited leave were concerned about hindering their chances for advancement. However, if we again apply the logic that being a valuable internal auditor relies on peak cognitive performance, and peak cognitive performance demands adequate rest and a lack of burnout, then it does not follow that forfeiting our vacation time will necessarily make us better internal auditors, and it could be doing the opposite.

Whatever You Do, Do Not Unrest

While engaging in fulfilling and restorative rest pursuits is important, it may be even more important to actively avoid activities that keep your brain stimulated at all times. This is because there is strong evidence that our brains perform important functions when they are not busy dealing with a demanding task or trying to find a solution to a pesky problem. This brain state—characterized by introspection during times when an individual is not deeply concentrating on their external environment—is known as the default mode network (DMN), and the DMN likely assists with problem solving and planning for the future.

The DMN was discovered essentially by accident. Scientists researching which areas of the brain were activated during cognitively demanding tasks noticed that these “active” areas of the brain became deactivated in between tasks, as expected, but something else happened during these rest periods that caught them by surprise. Instead of seeing a brain with minimal activity, they noticed that other areas of the brain began to light up, indicating that though participants might have been at rest, their brains were not. This paved the way for a critical insight: just because we may be taking a mental break, our brains continue furiously working away in the background on our behalf.  As we learn more about the DMN—it was only discovered in 2001—it is appearing increasingly likely that our modern digital environments, saturated with numerous distractions that keep us in a state of perpetual stimulation, are holding the DMN back from performing its important functions. Whether it is out of an attempt to maximize productivity, or just to ward off boredom, we rarely allow our brains a moment to rest. Instead, the moments of time that used to be the domain of boredom are now filled with social media scrolling, listening to podcasts, and replying to texts and e-mails. At the time the DMN was discovered, this level of constant mental stimulation would have been almost impossible, but in just a couple of decades we have transformed into individuals who almost never have to be alone with our own thoughts. This should alarm us since it is clear our brains are doing something important during times of mental rest. Therefore, purposefully abstaining from mentally stimulating activities for at least some time each day may be worthwhile. It may seem like you are wasting time, but in reality you are taking a positive step to ensure that your brain can perform at its best, and hopefully you will quickly notice the benefits of a little rest.