Rest recharges you. Avoidance just unplugs you. Be honest about which one you’re doing.

The two can look identical from outside and feel completely different afterward. Real rest leaves you slightly more able to face the thing, while avoidance leaves you flatter than when you started, with the thing still there and slightly bigger. The difference is not the activity, it is what the activity is standing in for. Three hours of a show can be either one.

Judge by how you feel at the end rather than at the beginning. If you keep getting up from breaks more tired, you were hiding rather than resting. Do the smallest piece of the task first, then take the break properly and without guilt.