[G] The misconception of resilience is often bred from an early age. Parents trying to teach their children resilience might celebrate a high school student staying up until 3AM to finish a science fair project.What a distortion of resilience！ A resilient child is a well-rested one. When an exhausted student goes to school， he risks hurting everyone on the road with his impaired driving； he doesn‘t have the cognitive resources to do well on his English test； he has lower self-control with his friends； and at home， he is moody with his parents. Overwork and exhaustion are the opposite of resilience. And the bad habits we learn when we’re young only magnify when we hit the workforce.

　　[H] As Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz have written， if you have too much time in the performance zone， you need more time in the recovery zone， otherwise you risk burnout. Mustering your resources to “try hard” requires burning energy in order to overcome your currently low arousal level. This is called upregulation. It also exacerbates exhaustion. Thus the more imbalanced we become due to overworking， the more value there is in activities that allow us to return to a state of balance. The value of a recovery period rises in proportion to the amount of work required of us.

　　[I] So how do we recover and build resilience？ Most people assume that if you stop doing a task like answering emails or writing a paper， that your brain will naturally recover， such that when you start again later in the day or the next morning， you‘ll have your energy back. But surely everyone reading this has had times where you lie in bed for hours， unable to fall asleep because your brain is thinking about work. If you lie in bed for eight hours， you may have rested， but you can still feel exhausted the next day. That’s because rest and recovery are not the same thing. Stopping does not equal recovering.

　　[J] If you‘re trying to build resilience at work， you need adequate internal and external recovery periods. As researchers Zijlstra， Cropley and Rydstedt write in their 2014 paper： “Internal recovery refers to the shorter periods of relaxation that take place within the frames of the workday or the work setting in the form of short scheduled or unscheduled breaks， by shifting attention or changing to other work tasks when the mental or physical resources required for the initial task are temporarily depleted or exhausted. External recovery refers to actions that take place outside of work-e.g. in the free time between the workdays， and during weekends， holidays or vacations.” If after work you lie around on your bed and get riled up by political commentary on your phone or get stressed thinking about decisions about how to renovate your home， your brain has not received a break from high mental arousal states. Our brains need a rest as much as our bodies do.

　　[K] If you really want to build resilience， you can start by strategically stopping. Give yourself the resources to be tough by creating internal and external recovery periods. Amy Blankson describes how to strategically stop during the day by using technology to control overworking. She suggests downloading the Instant or Moment apps to see how many times you turn on your phone each day. You can also use apps like Offtime or Unpludded to create tech free zones by strategically scheduling automatic airplane modes. The average person turns on their phone 150times every day. If every distraction took only 1 minute， that would account for 2.5 hours a day.

　　[L] In addition， you can take a cognitive break every 90 minutes to charge your batteries. Try to not have lunch at your desk， but instead spend time outside or with your friends -not talking about work. Take all of your paid time off， which not only gives you recovery periods， but raises your productivity and likelihood of promotion.