Amanda Miller Littlejohn’s “Rest Revolution” reconsiders the cult of busy
The insightful, accessible, and introspective book offers fresh perspectives on rest, self-perception, and belonging.
The Narrator We Need
I would have never imagined that a brand strategist and executive coach would create an insightful, accessible, and introspective resource on rest, self-perception, and belonging. However, Amanda Miller Littlejohn did precisely that with “The Rest Revolution.”
For the generations plagued by doctrines of ‘girlboss,’ ‘hustle culture,’ ‘twice as good,’ ‘Black excellence,‘ and ‘The American Dream,’ “The Rest Revolution” is a manual to recovering and redefining one’s self after indoctrinated aspirations and expectations fail to meet their expectations. Miller Littlejohn wields her journalistic acumen to create a narrative that weaves together historical memoirs, personal anecdotes, frameworks based on psychosocial research, and client testimonies to take readers on a journey of deconstructing how our relationship to work and rest have led us to mental, physical, and societal burnout.
Scholars, activists, and philosophers have interrogated work, capitalism, and their effects on our relationship to rest for years. Yet, during the pandemic, their work found fertile ground in a population that finally acknowledged it was burnt out. Miller Littlejohn enters as a former over-achiever who met all the quintessential social markers of success, whose clientele also meets them, all collectively demonstrating how unsustainable, detrimental, and societally ingrained overworking is.
“The Rest Revolution” is a self-help book about rest targeted towards those who actively disregard rest to obtain success. The high-achieving professionals, service and care workers, first responders, and government workers whose ability to over-work and push their limits became their identity. Workers forced by the pandemic to confront and re-evaluate their work-life balance.
The Culture of Burnout
The first half of “The Rest Revolution” positions this reflection on rest within the historical context of work in the US, Miller Littlejohn’s journey to recognizing her burnout, and her client’s realizations of burnout. Miller Littlejohn does a masterful job of reframing burnout from a personal issue that impacts specific unlucky individuals to contextualizing it as an inevitable societal issue interwoven into the nation’s foundation. The pandemic did not lead to American’ burnout. It was, as Miller Littlejohn writes,
“For many employees, [the pandemic] was a rare opportunity to shift the paradigm of work.”
The first half of the book introduces how the US adopted a machine mindset as its cultural ideal and how a machine mindset created a series of misalignments that led to burnout in our lives. Catchy phrases like back-burnering, front-burnering, skipping winter, and overworking are introduced with a diverse array of stories and historical vignettes that Miller Littlejohn shares alongside her journey to accepting she was burnt out and the impact it had on her health, family, and relationships. Miller Littlejohn consistently affirms readers that their journies are not unique or isolated but part of a modern burnout epidemic.
The book’s second half moves through the journey of acknowledgment to ways readers can begin to release overwork as the guiding doctrine of their lives. How can one deprogram and recalibrate oneself from these harmful habits? Miller Littlejohn’s advice is applicable and structured. She presents valuable self-check-ins based on intentional questionnaires and exercises designed to get to the root of your purpose.
Miller Littlejohn challenges readers to approach self-help and improvement while honoring one’s humanity. Her tactics apply intuitive and environmentally informed approaches to self-care and self-discovery. Readers explore concepts like a seasonal framework to pace one’s productivity and purpose. “The Rest Revolution” understands many of its readers are entering their journeys from a place of burnout and confusion. From that position, how do readers restore themselves and rediscover who they are and who they want to be in the future? What self-assessments help mitigate the panic of realizing you are operating in an unsustainable way? She offers reassurance that just because some things aren’t working doesn’t mean everything isn’t working or needs to change. Readers need to be guided by what’s natural and authentic to them to reject the machine mindset and realign with themselves.
A Unique Approach to Self-Help
One cannot unpack rest in the US without unpacking capitalism and its impact on our views on productivity. Miller Littlejohn’s deep understanding of her audience helps her introduce transformative perspectives on capitalism and work in accessible ways. For those in academics, arts, and community organizing, addressing how capitalism is tied to extractive and forced labor may not be revolutionary, like how Chattel Slavery and The Industrial Revolution traded bodies for economic progress and class mobility.
But for those who’ve acquired success in corporate America, entrepreneurship, and STEM-based fields, an analytical approach to capitalism, industrial innovation, and their legacies can feel like an attack on a core part of their identity. How can this system that’s developed their professional field, provided class mobility or financial stability, be detrimental to society or the self? Miller Littlejohn guides this consciousness journey without judgment or condescension. She provides the context from a variety of perspectives to help readers understand,
“We are all misaligned by our culture’s machine mindset towards work.”
We can resist this dehumanization, still actualize our goals, and envision comfortable futures. The book recognizes that high-achieving people need to assess, analyze, and re-establish healthy relationships to rest, but those new relationships must make space for ambition. Embracing rest should not erase an ambitious person’s ambition. It should realign their goals and transform their process of achieving them and their self-perception.
“The Rest Revolution” connects so many intersecting threads with the power of Miller Littlejohn’s storytelling. It enables readers to navigate between different historical narratives, concepts, and personal stories without confusion. Through snapshots of their stories, we are introduced to characters with relatable experiences, traumas, and work aspirations. As we learn about new concepts and methods, we return to the character’s journey, learning how they navigated this in their journey.
Miller Littlejohn has a unique ability to weave the narratives of historical figures (fictional and non-fictional) into the historical context of US work culture and extract applicable lessons from them. The mix of introspective self-exploration and informative tools explained through individual stories make “The Rest Revolution” an engaging and entertaining self-help book.
Miller Littlejohn transforms the legend of John Henry into insightful commentary on the machine mindset and the Industrial Revolution, illustrating how US culture glorifies overwork work as social validation. Later, Miller Littlejohn reintroduces readers to the work and enduring impact of Scientist George Washington Carver. Far beyond his invention of peanut butter, readers are masterfully educated on how Carver’s innovations and teachings transformed the agricultural and economic realities of the Antebellum South. His innovative and sustainable approach to agriculture becomes a beautiful touchpoint for Miller Littlejohn’s seasonal framework for living and thriving and an ode to her family’s agricultural roots.
Furthermore, Miller Littlejohn’s background as a career coach is evident in her pragmatic approach to breaking down concepts. She provides actionable steps to work through the ideas and leads readers through personalized yet solution-focused steps to navigate their journey of self-understanding. Her gift for helping people activate their goals shines through her clear and concise storytelling. Readers will be engaged but remain focused on deconstructing rest and work and aligning ambition with purpose.
Rest as a Priority
While this book centers on high-achieving professionals, it also applies to those who don’t feel they’ve reached their career destinations or goals yet. Readers who feel their grind is not voluntary can find guidance on how to restructure their ambition to create a more sustainable journey that’s healthy and purpose-driven, not status-driven.
As we embark on a year, new administration, and what feels like an emerging global era of exhaustion, “The Rest Revolution” offers us a space to reflect and assess how we want to engage with our lives. In this era, rest cannot be an afterthought; it must become part of our process and part of our lifecycle to remain nourished and sustainable.
Miller Littlejohn offers her insight as a guide for the high-achievers and aspiring high-achievers to restore themselves in a society that will exploit and reward their tendency to overwork. She’s created a manual that feels like a podcast or therapy session by assembling relatable stories and information and providing language to describe feelings and experiences we’ve likely felt for a long time. Most importantly, she leaves us with a malleable toolkit to decide what’s next on our rest journey. Grab your copy (physical or audio) of “The Rest Revolution” to start your rest journey and connect with others, exploring what ambition can look like.
About the Author
Kathleen Anaza
Kathleen ‘Kat’ Anaza is a multi-genre storyteller, organizer, and entrepreneur whose works center on narratives and experiences of the Black Diaspora. She has been featured in Vogue Magazine, Lonely Planet, Viator, and more. Connect with her work at https://linktr.ee/Kat_Anaza.
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