Rest isn’t something you earn after everyone else is happy.

Treating rest as a reward means it arrives only when everything is handled and everyone is content, which is a condition that never actually occurs. So it gets pushed back, and pushed back, and then taken badly at two in the morning. Underneath the habit sits a quiet ranking in which you come last, after the group chat, the shift, and whoever is upset with somebody else.

Put an hour of nothing into this week before the week fills up. Choose the slot now, protect it the way you protect practice, and do not attach a task to it.