Human nature.

Last week, you read it’s the reason why you’ll abandon a beneficial health and fitness practice if it becomes impractical. As well as why you’ll feel like a bit of a failure for a bit of time after doing so.

This week, you’ll read about another of your species’ tendencies: to judge the worth or value of someone or something based on outward appearance. Doing this often produces or perpetuates prejudice, though, so we’ve created a saying to caution against it.

We tell one another, “Never judge a book by its cover.”

Nevertheless, I recently did the opposite. I judged a book to be worth reading simply because of the drawing on its cover.

This adherence to human nature, however, didn’t produce a feeling of failure afterward. Just a feeling you’d benefit from knowing more about the book.

It’s titled Move, Rest, Recover: Your Practical Guide to Balancing Your Body and Mind (VeloPress, 2025), and its cover illustrates something I’ve done for 25 years after my most demanding bike rides. Something I’ve suggested you do after any strenuous aerobic exercise as a way to expedite recovery.

Elevate your legs against a wall.

The book’s author, Erin Taylor, writes that she does this, too, but that it serves a different purpose. For her, it’s a “daily practice” that creates a “distinct transition” in the middle of the day.

When she elevates her legs for 10 to 15 minutes while breathing deeply, it allows her to flip the switch and go from being a writer or a coach to a mom.

A mom who then picks up her kids in a state that’s “far more calm and present” because by elevating her legs she’s allowing herself to rest and recover in the middle of the day. A mom who can then “better support her family” during the rest of it.

It makes sense to share how Taylor benefits from elevating her legs because of something that makes so little of it. Something she calls the “most startling imbalance” in our lives.

The imbalance between work and rest and recovery.

“Too often,” she writes, “we wait to rest [and recover] until the decision is made for us — when we’re sidelined by injury, signed off sick, or stuck in a deep valley of fatigue.” Hence, the book’s main title: Move, Rest, Recover.

While you could argue that this three-step process is merely a common-sense approach to exercise, Taylor argues that many of us forsake common sense and fail to apply it to other facets of life, maybe because of the aforesaid American work ethic. Instead, we “often wear our busyness and related tiredness like a badge of honor.”

Which makes no sense.

What does, Taylor asserts, is for you to “honor” the following reality: that rest and recovery is “just as important as everything else [you] do.” So she’s put together this book, a workbook in essence, to help you achieve the proper work/rest balance.

Which means you read a little, reflect a lot, and then write down your thoughts about both. But even if you’re not the sort who finds the third step appealing, you’re sure to find the first two enlightening.

For instance, Taylor stresses a few things that you might not expect. One is that a desire to squeeze more into your day could really be a desire for distraction, a way of not dealing with troublesome thoughts or feelings.

As a result, you believe you’re finding comfort in your never-ending “going, making, working, caring.” But comfort it’s not. It’s only a “shadow” of it and “disconnects you from yourself.”

Another is that rest and recovery “can and should happen within and alongside life’s messy moments.” That you can find rest “right in front of you” if you “choose to slow down, breathe deeply, and pay attention.”

Paying attention, the “simple gesture of noticing [and] meeting yourself in the moment,” is ultimately what allows you to recognize it’s time to stop moving and start resting and recovering.

To help you recognize these times, Taylor lists 11 “common signs” that your mind and body give you as their way of saying it’s time for you to rest and recover. Two I’ll admit are dead giveaways for me: when my patience with people and tasks wanes and when my workouts add stress rather than reduce it.

I’ll also admit I felt a bit less stress every night I sat down and read this book.

Which may be the best reason for why you should do so too. For what’s noted on the book’s back cover is indeed true: the book’s a great “counterbalance” to the hectic pace of daily life.

Read it and you could very well learn how to move through your days with greater ease and more effectively.