THE HARD BREAK
WEEKLY REST FOR RELENTLESS FOUNDERS
4-Minute Read
Can you keep up your current pace without breaking your body, marriage, or mind?
Aaron Edelheit spent years building a huge single family rental business on the classic founder diet. Long days. Late nights. Constant travel. Always reachable. On paper, it worked. Revenue and opportunity grew. Inside, his system was collapsing. His sleep frayed. His patience disappeared. The people he loved got the scraps of what was left.
In that pressure cooker, he made a decision most founders would call irresponsible. One full day every week where work could not reach him. Phone off. Laptop away. No email. No deals. For 24 hours, he stepped out of the game.
The result was not a weaker company. It was a stronger one. His creativity returned. His decision making sharpened. He saw risk and opportunity faster. He eventually sold that business for more than $200 million from a calmer, clearer nervous system.
This issue is about that move. Treating weekly rest not as a reward when you’re done, but as strategic protection for the operating system that empowers you to complete what you start with strength and vitality.
Let’s dive in.
protecting your nervous system
Your nervous system runs the show; every decision, conversation, idea, and dollar you create. It decides whether you can access courage or collapse. Whether you can hold tension in a hard conversation or numb out and avoid it. Whether your brain can track complex strategy or only scan for threats. When it’s fried, you survive instead of lead.
Sleep helps, but it’s not enough. Your body also runs on a weekly rhythm. Daily, you have circadian cycles that reset your energy every 24 hours. Weekly, you have circaseptan cycles that reset your immune system and stress load every 7 days. Ignore those long enough and your internal “ops team” starts to fail.
Weekly rest is not a luxury. It’s maintenance for the system that runs your whole life.
When Founders Ignore Weekly Rest
You already know the signs:
Decision fatigue. You stare at simple choices like they’re life-or-death.
Short fuse. The people you care about get the worst of you, not the best.
Shallow creativity. You keep recycling the same old ideas.
Numbness at home. You are physically present, emotionally offline.
Poor health. Your immune system tanks.
Ignore those signals and you don’t just “feel tired.” You pay in real outcomes. You hire the wrong person because you just want the seat filled. You say yes to misaligned clients because you don’t have the energy to hold your standards. You break promises to your family because the next work emergency always takes priority. You battle a low-grade cold every few weeks and never seem to fully recover.
It leaves you in a perpetual state of never enough time, money, or energy to show up fully in any one area of life. You go through the motions of “keeping it all together” while silently hoping no one notices how much you’re falling apart.
Now is the time to get Intentional: 52 Maxims of Conscious Choosing!
Stock up and share with your family, friends, and team who are ready to intentionally create more of what matters to them. Makes a great gift all year long.
Restorative Production
For years, I treated weekly rest as optional. I cared about good sleep but was “too busy” for a full day off. Then a mentor challenged me to try one day of real rest each week for a few months. No work. No email. No “just one quick thing.”
It didn’t take long before my anxiety dropped. My creativity returned. Hard conversations felt easier to hold. I was more present with my family and clients. I got more done in six days, from a recalibrated nervous system, than I ever had in seven. My rest day became sacred.
Weekly rest is restorative production. It restores your energy, clarity, and emotional capacity. It produces the conditions that make your next six days powerful. And this is what allows you to produce at a high level long term.
Not yet part of The Plenteous Life community? Subscribe to The Grip! Every week you’ll receive additional video, audio, and pdf tools directly in your email inbox to help you transform at both work and home.
Detachment Is a Skill
Some founders say, “I just don’t know how to switch off.” That is not a personality issue. It’s a habit. You can train detachment from work the way you train any other leadership skill.
A few simple practices:
Set a clear “shut-down” ritual at the end of your workweek. Close your laptop, write tomorrow’s priorities, say out loud: “Work is complete for now.”
Turn off notifications during your weekly rest window. You are not a 24/7 emergency room.
Use an out-of-office message that says when you will be back and who to contact in a true emergency.
In our home, we start Friday evening. We light candles, take communion, thank God for the week. Then we step into 24 hours with no work, no errands, no rigid schedule. It is intentionally different from the other six days.
Be sure to catch last week’s issue of The Grip, THE MASTER’S RESET, for the fundamentals of building this new skill.
“Weekly rest is not a luxury. It’s maintenance for the system that runs your whole life.”
You do not earn rest at the finish line. You build rest into the structure that lets you finish well. When you protect your nervous system, you think more clearly, lead more kindly, and make higher-quality decisions.
What would change in your business, home, and health if you made weekly rest non-negotiable?
This week, don’t just promise yourself you will “slow down.” Put one weekly rest day on your calendar and defend it. The founder who can recover well will build what others burn out trying to start.
Keep creating.
key takeaways
Weekly rest is nervous system strategy, not a luxury. A 24 hour hard break each week resets your body and mind so you can make higher quality decisions and hold more complexity.
Recovery multiplies performance. Protecting one day off can increase creativity, improve relationships, and unlock better business outcomes, rather than slowing you down.
Detachment is a trainable leadership skill. Simple rituals like shutdown routines, notifications off, and clear out of office boundaries teach your system, and your team, that you are human, not a 24/7 machine.
WORK 1:1 WITH BECKY
As a self-mastery coach, I help mission-driven founders accelerate desired results without sacrificing what matters. If that sounds like good news, REACH OUT to experience how 1:1 coaching can empower you to be the masterful leader your mission requires.
May you prosper in every way!
Becky & TPL Team
52 Maxims of Conscious Choosing To Create the Deeply Satisfying Life You Desire.