From the President
by Bob Motley MD, MS
How long does it take for that vacation feeling to wear off after you’ve “gotten away from it all” and return to work? It seems to wear off pretty quickly, doesn’t it—jumping back into “life” and a busy practice? Ever wish you could keep that relaxed feeling going for awhile?
To some degree we are victims of our “super-busy” American culture that promotes production and consumption. It’s easy to fill every minute of our day with activity with no time for quiet and no time to “just be.” Many of us were brought up in a medical culture that has conditioned us to long hours of study, service and self-sacrifice. Every professional works hard to achieve and maintain excellence, but sometimes we forget that we need to balance that with fun.
At a time when my growing practice was hitting its stride, a thoughtful nurse shared the book Margin by Dr. Richard Swenson with me as I headed off to vacation. Swenson’s book takes a hard look at how the pace of life, fed by technology, has increased over the last 60 years. Like “energy vampires” in ads from the electric company, our abilities to “be there” can be drained by the growing distractions of the information age. Insidiously, we’re at risk for becoming slaves to our thirst for information—from AI queries to newsfeeds, to connections on social media—from our email accounts to our children’s extracurricular activities, to our thirst for more “things”. It’s all “good stuff”—or is it?—and there’s just too much of it.
Swenson recommends recapturing some of our “margin” by applying prayerful intentionality to our time and the important relationships in our lives. He asks us to critically assess whether this “one more thing”—this purchase, this task, this new social group, this “fantastic opportunity” (with hidden strings attached)– is really going to contribute to what is meaningful to us. He advocates cultivating an “attitude of gratitude” and the practice of contentment. When we’re content, we have less need for “more.” He recommends being judicious with use of our personal email address (do you have a separate address for junk mail and spam?) He’s a fan of delegating or eliminating non-essential tasks—“Can this be done without my input or direct oversight?” He recommends building in a little buffer time to “be quiet”— in the car, between cases or office visits, or on the way to lunch. Quiet lets us hear the “whisper” of Our Lord.
Boundaries around vacation time are also important. Sinsky et al, in a JAMA Network Open study from 2024, “Vacation Days Taken, Work During Vacation, and Burnout Among US Physicians,” found in a cross-sectional study of 3024 US physicians that 59.6% took 3 weeks of vacation or less per year, and 70.4% worked while on vacation on a typical vacation day; both findings were associated with higher rates of burnout. Full electronic health record inbox coverage was associated with lower rates of working while on vacation and with lower burnout.
My wife and I did a couple of important things to keep our sanity as our five children were getting busier with their activities. First, we set an expectation that one team sport (or major activity) per season was enough—and we learned to carpool with other parents. While initially difficult for our children, they discovered other ways to connect with friends and to explore their interests—and to take an occasional nap during those years of rapid physical growth. The second strategy was “the booked calendar trick.” We purposely scheduled one weekend per quarter as “down time,” telling friends and family that we were already “booked” that weekend—when in fact, we were purposely scheduled for down time. That became our “margin”—unstructured time to relax, recharge or recreate.
In a way, being attentive to “margin” in our lives is a good way to practice stewardship. With gratitude for the gifts we’ve been given by our Lord and Creator, we can be thoughtful about how we respond to the gifts of family relationships, our time and how we use it to preserve our “human capital” in a profession that frequently asks us to offer our skill and talents in sacrificial ways. Time to schedule that next long weekend!
