Anne Lamott’s line reads like a bit of practical wisdom you might hear at a kitchen table, yet it lands with the force of a proverb. By borrowing the language of everyday technology—unplugging and waiting—she makes an immediate point: many problems aren’t solved by pushing harder, but by pausing long enough for systems to reset.
That simple framing matters because it removes moral drama from exhaustion. Rather than treating fatigue as failure, Lamott suggests it’s a normal condition with a workable remedy. From the start, the quote invites a gentler interpretation of productivity: restoration is not a detour from life, but part of how life functions. [...]
