Do Things Tired

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There is a phrase I lived by in residency. It wasn’t something I read in a book or heard at a wellness lecture. It’s something I figured out the hard way, somewhere between a 12-hour shift and a Tuesday, I can’t fully remember.

I know what you’re thinking. Isn’t that dangerous? Shouldn’t we be advocating for rest? Are you about to tell me to push through exhaustion like it’s some kind of gold star for burning out?

This is not a post that dismisses the importance of sleep. Rest is sacred. Your brain needs it. Your patients need you to have it. Sleep deprivation is real, it is serious, and you are not weak for needing it. None of that is up for debate.

But here’s the truth that nobody puts in the orientation packet: in medicine, you are going to be tired a lot. Not sometimes. Not just during the stretches of night shifts. A lot. For years. And if you decide that you will only live your life, really live it, once you are no longer tired, you are going to look up one day and realize you missed it.

In residency, it was always the small things that meant the most.

It was grabbing drinks with your co-residents after a mid shift, still wearing your scrubs, feet aching, smelling faintly of the hospital, and laughing so hard your stomach hurt. Not because anything was particularly funny, but because you were out. You were human again. You were sitting across from people who understood everything without you having to explain a single word of it.

It was going for breakfast after an overnight. That 7 am diner booth with bad coffee and eggs you didn’t have to cook yourself felt like the greatest luxury in the world. The sunlight coming through the window was almost offensive after a night under fluorescent lights, but you sat in it anyway. You let it hit your face. You ordered the pancakes.

And it was booking a flight on a random Tuesday, because you had three days off that month, three whole days, and your best friend was across the country and you needed her. Not wanted. Needed. You knew, in that bone-deep way that residency teaches you to know things, that seeing her would restore something in you that the hospital had quietly been spending. So you went. Tired and all. You got on the plane. And you came back fuller than you left.

Those moments didn’t happen because I was well-rested. They happened because I decided that exhaustion was not a reason to opt out of my own life.

It doesn’t mean ignore your body’s limits. It doesn’t mean skip sleep when you genuinely need it, or white-knuckle your way through life on adrenaline and caffeine.

It means this: don’t let fatigue become an automatic no.

Because here’s what happens when we’re tired, and I say we because I know I’m not alone in this. We get home. We tell ourselves we’ll just lie down for a minute. We scroll. We fall into the couch. And the dinner we were going to go to, the walk we were going to take, the friend we were going to call, those things quietly disappear. Not because we made a real decision. But because we defaulted.

Defaulting to rest is sometimes exactly right. But sometimes, and you will learn to tell the difference, it’s just fear. Fear that you’re too tired to enjoy it. Fear that you’ll be bad company. Fear that you don’t deserve to take up space outside of the hospital when there’s always more to study, more to do, more to be.

Do it anyway. Go tired. Show up imperfect. Drink the beer, eat the pancakes, board the plane.

I want to say something that might sting a little, because I think it’s important.

The years of your training are hard. They are some of the hardest you will face. But they are also yours. They belong to you. The friendships you build in residency, the memories you make in those stolen hours between shifts, those things are not consolation prizes for surviving medicine. They are your life. And your life is happening right now, even when you’re exhausted.

The women who inspired me most in training never stopped showing up; not for the shift, and not for themselves. They walked into the hospital with caffeine in hand and they walked out of it and said yes to life. To the dinner. To the friend. To the flight. 

You are allowed to be tired and still choose to live fully. In fact, I’d argue that is one of the most important skills medicine will teach you if you let it.

Before I go, I want to say it clearly one more time: sleep matters. Rest matters. Saying no sometimes is not failure; it is wisdom. A night in when your body is genuinely begging for it is not wasted. It is necessary.

But make sure your no is a real choice, not a reflex. Make sure you’re resting, not hiding. There’s a difference, and you will feel it in your gut if you’re honest with yourself.

Rest when you need to. And when you don’t?

Get the drinks. Eat the breakfast. Book the flight.

Your soul will thank you.