For years, I treated rest like a guilty pleasure. Then burnout hit (again), and I discovered the quiet power of doing less.
Rest isn’t laziness—it’s essential. It made me a better doctor, a better human, and a lot less likely to fantasize about moving to a goat farm.
If you’re feeling stretched thin, maybe the most radical thing you can do… is stop.
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Let me confess something that might sound ridiculous coming from a doctor: for most of my career, I treated rest like a threat. A sign of weakness. A guilty pleasure to be earned only after I’d answered every email, seen every patient, signed off every note, and probably rotated the tires on someone else’s car just to be safe.
Rest? I didn’t know her.
But burnout—burnout I knew intimately. Like many of my colleagues, I wore exhaustion like a badge of honour. Numbness? Check. Resentment? Check. Fantasizing about driving off-grid to herd goats in the Scottish Highlands? Triple check.
It wasn’t until I hit a wall (again) that I did something radical:
I stopped.
I rested.
I took paid time off.
When I needed it, I took unpaid time off.
And slowly, I came back to life.
In medical culture, there’s a silent competition for who can suffer the most. We trade stories of missed birthdays, skipped meals, and 36-hour shifts like war medals. Somewhere along the line, “tired” became synonymous with “dedicated.”
We inherit this mindset in training. You work until you drop, and then you work some more. No one says it outright, but the message is clear: if you’re not constantly exhausted, you’re doing it wrong.
So when I first considered the idea of rest—not “just” sleeping, but true intentional rest—it felt like heresy.
But here’s what no one tells you in med school: rest isn’t indulgent. It’s life-saving.
Having said that, sleep deprivation is a major issue in medicine and needs to be solved. This is a separate issue covered in another blog.
I took a week off. Not to catch up on errands, or finally sort my sock drawer, or attend an overdue Zoom conference. I took a week to sleep, read for pleasure, and walk in the park with no destination. It felt like cheating. But then something strange happened.
I didn’t choose rest. It chose me.
After one particularly brutal stretch in the hospital, I found myself sitting in my car, keys in hand, unable to remember where I was supposed to go next. Home? Clinic? A meeting? My brain just… stalled.
Like it had been idling too long in the cold and couldn’t turn over.
That’s when it hit me: I was running a high-performance engine with no oil, no fuel, and no map.
I took a week off. Not to catch up on errands, or finally sort my sock drawer, or attend an overdue Zoom conference. I took a week to sleep, read for pleasure, and walk in the park with no destination.
It felt like cheating. But then something strange happened.
I started smiling again.
Radical rest doesn’t mean abandoning your patients or fleeing to Bali. It means building pauses into the madness.
It means:
At first, I feared this would make me a worse doctor. But the opposite happened. I was present. I listened more deeply. I made fewer mistakes. Patients noticed. Colleagues noticed. I noticed.
A growing body of research shows that chronic sleep deprivation, stress, and lack of rest impair cognitive function, decision-making, and emotional regulation—all kind of important if you’re, say, resuscitating someone or navigating a complex diagnosis.
One study published in BMJ Open found that physicians who work more than 60 hours a week report significantly higher burnout rates and lower job satisfaction (Dyrbye et al., 2020). Another from the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology showed that rest and recovery improve not only wellbeing but professional performance.
So why do we keep pretending we’re exempt?
Taking care of yourself in a culture that glorifies martyrdom is an act of quiet rebellion. It’s radical because it disrupts the story we’ve all been told: that being a good doctor means giving everything—even your health, your peace, your joy.
I’ve learned that I am not more useful to the world when I’m depleted. In fact, when I rest, everyone wins. My patients get a doctor who can think clearly and connect meaningfully. My family gets a parent who isn’t running on fumes. I get me back.
If you’re in leadership, ask yourself: do you want burnt-out heroes or sustainable humans?
It’s time to stop treating exhaustion as a metric of commitment. Rest must be built into the system—not left to chance or crisis. Encourage time off. Model boundaries. Reward recovery, not only endurance.
Because one well-rested doctor can do far more good than ten exhausted ones just barely holding on.
If you’re waiting for a sign that it’s okay to rest—this is it.
You don’t have to collapse to justify a pause. You don’t have to break to deserve healing. You don’t need permission to be human.
Radical rest isn’t about laziness. It’s about sustainability. It’s about reclaiming the parts of yourself that medicine told you were optional.
Take the break. Read the book. Stare at the clouds. Do nothing—and do it well.
We at Physicians Anonymous are holding the space for you. Come join us. No hustle required.
