Why You Can't Switch Off (And It's Not About Workload)

That guilt you feel when you rest, it is not proof that you haven't done enough. It is proof, however, that you have been conditioned and groomed for years and years by a system that really needed you to keep going. You don't earn your right to rest by working. You earn the ability to work by resting. And in high-stress, high-stakes jobs, nothing is ever really finished. There's always more that can be done.

The superhero delusion was installed by a system that needed you to believe it, because guess who it benefits, right? Doesn't benefit you.

A couple of days ago, I got back from annual leave. I'd been to the theater with some friends. I'd had a really brilliant day, and I came home, and I sat down in the garden with my husband with a cup of tea and just started to chat.

But within about two minutes, I started to feel really guilty Because I knew I'd left some tasks unfinished, I knew there was a backlog, I knew I needed to record this podcast episode, and it was just in the back of my brain making me feel like, "Oh, my word, am I allowed to sit down and chat and have a cup of tea after I've been off all day?" But it was a day of annual leave And this isn't the first time this has happened to me.

A few weeks ago, uh, my daughter was watching TV on a Sunday afternoon, and I sat down with her and watched an episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine I knew she'd been really stressed about her GCSEs, and I thought, "Well, wouldn't it be nice just to sit and do something with her?" So I excused it in my head, but I'm, I'm here, I'm supporting her, and actually I really enjoyed it It was really nice just to rest and have a bit of a laugh, but I needed the excuse that I was doing it for her.

Doing it for me just wasn't enough.

So when did you last rest without a reason that justified it to yourself or to other people? Now, whether you're a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, or a senior leader, if you've ever felt that you needed a justification for stopping or for this episode is for you. Now, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.

It's that little voice that says, " Well, if I don't do it, who else will?" And there's that nagging feeling that something catastrophic is about to if you're not just constantly scanning your to-do list, making sure you've not missed anything, or made sure you've met all your deadlines and made sure everyone else is happy.

And this little voice, it runs this audit of whether you've done enough, have you been useful, have you been responsible enough, have you done everything that everyone expects you to before you sit down and before you rest? every doctor, every vet, every senior nurse, every person who chose a profession with real stakes, with real consequences, with real uncertainty, you've all got versions of this story, and the story's almost identical.

Now, we did a survey of over 600 healthcare professionals, and almost one in three said that they lie awake worrying about whether they or their team will be able to cope with the future workload. And actually, only 7% said that there was nothing in particular that woke them up at night about work. Only 7%. But the rest of us, constantly thinking about work, and also constantly on the go. And the question I want to ask today is this: What is it all actually for? Why do we do it?

And yes, we could say it's the workload, and yeah, it is the workload, and there is always too much to do, and that's the problem. But I think we've got the logic backwards, and once you see it, it's really hard to unsee.

So here's the sequence that most of us operate from. So we work. We need to have done enough work or produced enough output, and then we can rest when we've earned the right to, and then we can stop. And it, it feels reasonable, it feels responsible, but it's completely backwards. You could think about it this way.

Before a long flight, the ground crew will check the fuel, not- Before takeoff, not after takeoff, not somewhere mid-Atlantic when you can sort of see the gauge dropping, but before because it's not easy to refuel mid-flight You need to know you've got enough energy for what you need for the flight before you leave the ground, or the flight doesn't happen.

And believe me, I've sat on planes where we have waited 'cause there has not been enough fuel put on the plane But let's apply that to how you've been running your working week. If you're anything like me, you might be taking off on a quarter of a tank and then planning to refuel somewhere mid-Atlantic every week, and then wondering why you're running on fumes by Thursday. You don't earn your right to rest by working. You earn the ability to work by resting.

And in high-stress, high-stakes jobs, nothing is ever really finished. There's always more that can be done, more that needs to be done, more which you could be doing. And if your permission to rest is earned from doing enough, you're going to waiting for that permission a very long time, and you've been waiting, for permission that is never gonna arrive So why do we keep running this sequence that actually doesn't work? It's not random.

It has been installed in you, literally programmed into us from a very young age. And I'd actually go a bit further and say that we have been groomed.

Because I don't know about you, all my life I've been judged by my output my entire career If I've worked hard enough, if I've done well enough, if I've passed the exams, finished the project, if I've made sure that everybody's happy, nobody needs anything, then I've earned the right to stop And that's what's on every school report or every appraisal, every rota, every performance review. Do the work and then you can rest.

And it's so deeply embedded in us that rest without prior sufficient work and output, it feels like you're cheating And it doesn't just feel naughty, but for some of us, it feels like we are shirking our professional responsibility. And so every day for a high achiever feels like an exam. Now, my daughter's revising for her GCSEs right now, and she will

absolutely deserve a massive long break and a rest when it's over. But for high-stress, high-stakes professionals, you're running as fast as you can just to stay still quite often. Or keeping things safe requires, like, maximum, maximum effort, and there's still loads and loads of people who need you and you just don't have capacity for.

The problem is th-the need at the moment, it always seems to be outstripping the supply The demand is outstripping the resources And the lists don't clear, the inbox keeps building up and up and up, and the permission for you to stop will, it will never arrive Because your own conditions for stopping and resting are never met And so rest for us becomes a real treat, something that we look forward to on holiday or maybe weekends if, if the weekend is clear enough, or it

can only happen when things ease off. But things don't ease off, and you know that. They just don't, do they? And unfortunately, we kid ourselves that we can keep going whatever the cost. Now, I call this the superhero delusion.

not because it's delusional to really care about what you do and care about your job or to take on responsibility, of course not, but because it's a belief that you specifically are the exception to normal human physiology and functioning, and that the rules about rest, they apply to other people, but not you And the superhero delusion says, " I'm the exception to the laws of nature. I can take off on a quarter of a tank, and I can keep flying without

refueling." And in fact, uh, people that we've been talking to in, in our workshops say, "Well, I know I can't, but other people tell me I have to, so I have to." But that just doesn't make any sense, does it, either? Because the thinking is, well, other people need rest, But I can probably push through and I'll be fine. I'll rest when I get there. And here's the thing about the superhero delusion. You don't have this thinking because of arrogance.

It's not because you think you're somehow special, but this program and the way of behaving has been installed in us through years and years of high-stakes work stopping sometimes really did have consequences, and sometimes it still does. But let's not kid ourselves. Just because there are important consequences to not doing things, it doesn't mean that you'll suddenly miraculously get extra time or get extra energy.

The problem is I think that you've made all that your problem, and you've just absorbed the extra effort that's needed rather than passing it up the chain To the people that needed to commission more people for this service, or ask less or give you more resources. But somehow you've made it your problem, and when somebody needed you, you showed up.

When the rota was really short, you covered it, and when the patient or the client in front of you needed your full attention, you gave it regardless of how you were doing and how you felt. So the superhero delusion was installed by a system that needed you to believe it, guess who it benefits, right? Doesn't benefit you Like who doesn't want a teacher who goes the extra mile for their pupils or a doctor who just fits somebody else in?

But when that becomes just the norm all the time, it's not sustainable despite what we'd like to believe. Something has gotta give You know, our systems weren't wrong in telling us that the work that we do matters. What they've been wrong about is not instilling in us that we also matter Because in the long run, the outcome is that no work will get done when people burn out or they leave.

That serves nobody at all But there's another layer underneath this, and it can feel a bit uncomfortable. Even when we could rest, we just give our rest away to other people. So we think, "Well, our children deserve it more. They're exhausted." So we cook dinner, empty the dishwasher, do the washing while they watch telly Even if we've just come in the door.

That's definitely happened to me on my knees, but not wanting to make a fuss, Not wanting to appear selfish or needy Or we think that, well, our colleagues, our teammates deserve it more because they've also had a hard week. And of course, our patients and our clients, they deserve our best.

So we save whatever's left of our energy for them as well, And we are last on the list, and that's another thing we've been groomed to think, that actually everybody else comes first was groomed to think that I should always, always, always make the care of the patient my first concern, which turns into whatever the patient wanted Without any boundaries

And here, what is being weaponized against us is our conscientiousness, which is exactly what we needed to get into these positions in the first place quite often. And sometimes underneath that conscientiousness, there's perfectionism or people-pleasing that's masquerading as conscientiousness. And so that same quality that made us really good at the work that we do is that thing that actually won't let us stop and rest. Now, it's not a character flaw, it's just conditioning.

And the first step out of it is seeing it for what it is And I think the problem is that we think that the opposite of conscientiousness is unconscientiousness, if that's a word, and other people might describe it as shirking your duty or being flaky.

I would say it's not that we're trying to be unconscientious, it's just we wanna be boundaried and we want to be So conscientious with boundaries Now, I want you to notice what you find yourself thinking when I ask, what would you do with an afternoon of genuinely unscheduled and unpressurized time? Not holiday planning or catching up on admin, but an afternoon of nothing in your diary. For me, it would be sitting in a sauna or somewhere beautiful with a book.

Now, if your honest answer is, "I just don't know," or you do know but you just feel too guilty, then this isn't a personality trait. This is the superhero delusion working exactly as installed So we get to a point where there are two different choices. You could keep running that program that has been driving your behavior. You can go from holiday to holiday or weekend to weekend just hanging on by your fingertips, proving to yourself that you were busy enough to deserve a break.

But then when the holiday comes, you charge your battery to maybe 20%. But we all know that holidays often aren't really real rest, they're often just hard work somewhere else. And then you come back, and within three days, your energy levels are right back to where they were. And sometimes you just tell yourself, "Well, that's just how it is. That's the job. Everybody feels like this. I'll be better when things ease off.

When, when my new colleague starts in 18 months' time." And I kid you not, that is genuinely what a consultant colleague told me. " It's okay. In 18 months time, I'm gonna have another colleague joining the department." 18 months time, and that was what they were waiting for Because things are not going to ease off, and you know that.

and you might end your career just having waited for conditions to rest that never came. Waiting just to feel like you'd done enough, and waiting for permission to rest that your work was never, ever going to give you Or you could decide to treat rest as the condition for good work, not as the reward for it. Not because you've earned it.

So you will be resting not because you've earned it, not because everything is done, but because the airplane needs fuel before takeoff Not when it's run out And a full tank does not make you self-indulgent. It actually makes you functional, because the people that really depend on you need you at your most effective with a full capacity, not running on fumes and calling it fine.

Your work will be better, not because you're trying harder, but because you've actually got some energy to bring to it, and you will feel better. And this won't be because the workload has changed. It probably won't.

But because you stopped waiting for it to change before you allowed yourself to rest, even when the workload was high, even when the work was undone, even when you started to feel guilty because often when we do start to rest, it's like trying to do a handbrake turn on a motorway, and your amygdala is just firing, going, "Well, hang on a sec. There must be something to worry about. There must be something urgent

here." And you start to actually look for the things to worry about in your work. And so recognizing that that drive to keep going, not to rest, can be a threat response, can be your amygdala trying to keep you safe Taking that pause and maybe just surfing that urge, that can be really, really helpful And it takes some practice just to stop, sit with it for a bit, and really examine it whenever I have sat down or gone away and thought to myself,

"You know what? I could do lots of work here, but I'm not going to," the urgency that that work feels, it just diminishes hour by hour, day by day. And by the end of me being away, if I have properly decided to put work to one side, it's taking up much less importance in my life, and I look back and I struggle to see why it was so important in the first place.

I guess you could say I've gained perspective now some of the mistakes we make in all of this is thinking we've got to have a massively long period of time before we can rest properly. We know that's not true.

Even sometimes 10 minutes lying under a tree or reading a book or giving yourself, uh, the chance to have a cup of tea and sitting in silence we know can be quite restorative The other mistake we make is taking all the time we need for our rest from our home life and not taking any of it from our working life. And I can guarantee that if you're listening to this podcast, you are probably working way over the amount of hours that you're contracted for or paid for.

How about taking some leave just for you, not to spend on family holidays perhaps? We also can think that active rest is as good as normal rest. So creating dinner parties for lots of people, doing charity walks, organizing the football rota, well, yeah, that's fun, but it's probably not re-energizing you. It's probably not rest So the choice you've got is not between rest or productivity.

That is not the real choice. The real choice is between the way you're currently operating and just the pure physics and physiology of it. Which is the superhero delusion or accepting your human limits and your human capacity And actually being realistic and believing something that's actually true Because you are not a frog. You are not just sitting in a pan of water not noticing what's going on around you. You have noticed.

You've noticed every time you've sat down to rest and felt guilty about it, and every time you've watched something on a Sunday afternoon and needed a reason to, and every time you took a day of annual leave and spent quite a lot of it wondering if really you should be getting on with some work You've noticed it, and then you turned it into evidence against yourself Telling yourself that it's selfish for even wanting to rest.

And because you're feeling guilty, it must mean that you're not good and you've done something bad But I want to offer you a different reading of this same evidence, because that guilt you feel when you rest, it is not proof that you haven't done enough. It is proof, however, that you have been conditioned and groomed for years and years by a system that really needed you to keep going. It's the system and your programming talking.

It's not the truth, and the truth is this: You are worth it even if you never do another day's work in your life And that is not just a platitude to help you feel better. It's what you need to believe in order to make sustainable work possible Because when your worth, your value, and your significance is not on the line every time you stop to rest, stopping becomes possible.

Switching off becomes possible And when stopping becomes possible, you can actually go again You don't have to earn your rest.

You never did