Ok, we need to talk about rest.

In a recent conversation, an amazing, brilliant, hard-working academic researcher lamented to me that their time off over a long holiday weekend didn’t restore them as hoped. As we chatted through why that might be, several things came to light:

1) They still checked email and other notifications over this “time off”—just like they do on regular weekends. While there wasn’t much activity given that it was a US holiday (a reprieve!), this was a light-bulb moment revealing to my client that they have no boundary between work and non-work time. That means, except during times of actual unconsciousness, at any other time of the day or week, they could be performing work (yes, responding to work emails and other messages is work), thinking about work, or worrying about work. A lack of boundaries means that work can potentially take up a lot more time than intended.

2) Their usual mode of operating is to sustain themselves enough during the week to make it to the weekends for a chance to get some downtime. In other words, they are pushing to the maximum each weekday and hoping that the weekend allows enough rest time to start the process all over again. While they’ve been sustaining this approach for quite some time, it is increasingly less sufficient, and hard to see how much longer it can continue.

3) These habits stem from multiple beliefs (and these probably aren’t all of them):

• That colleagues might judge their work ethic or dedication level if they are not accessible for work at all times without a “legitimate reason” for being unavailable;
• That something will go terribly wrong if they aren’t always on call to deal with things as they arise;
• That they have to earn their rest.

Let me be clear that I do not judge this client for these beliefs. I’ve shared these beliefs myself—and I know firsthand the consequences of this cycle of overwork and insufficient rest. I also know how difficult it is to break this cycle.

Some of this pressure comes from an overall culture that values hard work, productivity, and busyness (this is very much the case in the US, but not only in the US). Then there is academia, all too commonly promoted as a pursuit of passion that justifies giving one’s life over to it. No wonder rest feels like something that has to be earned or, at the least, has to have some constraints around it.

But humans are not machines; we cannot always be “on”. We require rest—yes, sleep, but not only sleep. Even machines exhibit degraded performance when they run constantly without rest and/or recharge. In the kinds of work that require machines to perform reliably and/or at a high level, the machines typically get scheduled downtimes, and/or there is redundancy in the system because a machine will fail. Why do we expect our imperfect, mortal selves to function better than machines? Why does a machine “deserve” rest but we don’t?

I know this is difficult; who wants to risk having a letter writer (e.g., for promotion) who questions their dedication? But who is going to take care of you and your work when, like a machine running for too long without downtime, you eventually fail—physically, mentally, and/or emotionally? What if, instead, you could recharge yourself enough each day, so that you didn’t find yourself wishing you’d wake up sick and have a “legitimate reason” not to work? So that you didn’t drag yourself into the weekend, just hoping that you’d feel marginally better by Sunday to make it through another week? So that you could plan a week off and actually disconnect yourself from work, no excuses necessary?

Making this shift is not easy, but it’s also not impossible. Some of it is about practical and strategic approaches like having people at work and in life who can share your load and trusting them to do that without your constant oversight (empower them!). Ensuring not to constantly overcommit yourself. Using your time effectively.

The other half of this equation is changing your beliefs.

First, you can never actually control what others think about you, and believing that you can have you twisting yourself in knots, overcommitting and overworking so that others might see how busy and dedicated you are (they spend much more time thinking about themselves than about you, anyway).

Second, you cannot earn rest; it is a biological necessity. Your job performance, and your ability to show up well for others in your professional and personal life, require that you tend to this need as you would any other biological necessity. Would you deny yourself water until you’d done something to earn it?

Third, remind yourself that no excuse is needed. Want to stop responding to work emails in the evening or on the weekend? Do it. You do not have to justify this change to anyone. If you want, you can let people know that you value their time and their work-life integration, and therefore do not respond on weekends. Similarly, don’t badger colleagues into giving you an excuse when they put up their own boundaries.

Fourth, consider that those colleagues who seemingly “don’t need rest” actually do, because they are humans, too. Often, these individuals either 1) have trained themselves to ignore the consequences of insufficient rest, 2) have lots of help to make their lives function (e.g., someone else handles the home responsibilities), and/or 3) aren’t talking about the consequences they experience, or at least not recognizing how their commitment to overwork results in those consequences. We all know of someone whose overwork resulted in broken personal relationships or serious health problems. Maybe we’ve even been this person (raising my hand here—listen to the podcast interview linked above to learn more about my own consequences). No one is superhuman.

So, with these in mind, what small thing could you do to tend to your biological necessity and get a little more rest or recharge today? This week?