Happy Friday everyone! My name is Jonathan Cutrell and you're listening to Developer Tee Friday Refills. Thank you for joining me once again for a Friday Refill. These episodes are intended to send you into your weekend energized and excited to rest. And this may sound a bit like a contradiction, but it makes a lot of sense when you think about it from a different perspective. When you think about it from, let's say, the perspective of an athlete, our recovery periods are the time when all of the work that we put in, let's say in the weight room, when that work is actually realized when our bodies adapt, when we're able to assimilate the information that we've gathered over the week, all of the struggle that we might face and all of the challenges that we rise to in our weeks when we rest and learn to recover. And this goes, not just for the weekends, of course, but for any time that you're recovering, any of the times that you exhale, that you give yourself the room to expand. You give your mind the opportunity to do nothing. These are the times where we grow the most, where we adapt the most. This is when all of that stuff that we studied, all of the learning that we had on our plates, all of it gets kind of encoded and solidified during our rest period. So I want you to think about your rest as not an optional luxury. This isn't an optional luxury. You should be prioritizing it. Perhaps prioritizing it above the some of the more active things that you think are going to make you better. This is not my opinion and this is not about having a luxurious life. That's not what rest is about. Rest is a fundamental human need and it's one that science is now affirming and it has affirmed for a long time. But even more so in the kind of cognitive realm in the past 10, 20 years, rest is critically important. But here's the thing. A lot of people are listening to this right now and they say, well, you just don't understand how busy I am and how many things I have to do. I have to fulfill this particular request from my employer. I have to be on call. I have to be present for my children while we're in quarantine. I have to get to the gym and I have to run these errands. All of these things that we have to do, they all crowd out our margin to choose what we want to do or what we need to do even. It's hierarchy that many of us are presented with very young in life. The want to's, the need to's and the half to's. There's some kind of inherent priority in that we know the things that we have to do that we have no choice about. But the truth is for most people, when we say that we have to do something, what we're really saying is that we are under an obligation to do something that we have chosen to do in a systemic manner. That's not a punchy phrase. Let's go back over that for a second. When we say we have to do something, what we're saying actually is that we chose some system that we want to live under. This can be something as big as choosing a location to live or buying a home or choosing to have children. It could be something as big as choosing a particular career path. These are things that we have chosen. And therefore we have obligations based on those very large life decisions that we don't feel in the moment today are optional. Now, you're not going to hear me on this show telling you that you shouldn't make these big choices. We all have big choices to make. And if you're not under one set of obligations, you very likely will be choosing another set of obligations. True freedom doesn't mean nothing to do. True freedom means recognizing and affirming the choices that you're making. So instead of saying, I have to do X, Y, or Z. Remind yourself. I have chosen. I have chosen to do this. And the reason for this is to constantly remind yourself that most of your life is affected primarily by you. Your choices today are going to affect you not only today, not only tomorrow, perhaps for the remainder of your life. And so making choices is probably the number one skill that you can hone. It's a huge theme on this show. It's a huge theme in my personal life. And I hope it becomes a huge theme for you in your personal study and your personal growth. How to make better decisions. For today, we're not talking about the bad decisions that you might feel you made in the past. Instead, we're talking about how you relate to your obligations. Don't allow the choices that you have made to turn into you not having the margin. Instead, affirm your choices. Recognize that your choices are a part of who you are. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. This Friday refill of Developer Teawill be back right and early on Monday morning with the new episode of The Show. And until then, enjoy your tea.