Working in palliative care for the past 8 years has given me a privileged insight into my own mortality. I am reminded on a daily basis that although I am healthy today, that could change tomorrow. And if it did change, I feel lucky to be able to say I have made choices that align with my values. I have lived a life of meaning and purpose and I would do (most of) it again if I had my time over.
At times, I feel like my insight into the precious fragility of life gives me an unfair advantage. There is no question in my mind about what is important to me and the fact that I need to spend time on what matters to me now, not some time in the future. So many doctors I work with tell me they are exhausted, that if they could make different choices they would. For many, they tell me that they would choose a different career entirely if they could turn back time and start again.
My observation, from years of working with people facing the end of their life, is that the biggest thing that we all take for granted is time. Most people have an unwavering expectation that they will live well until they are old. They believe that they have time to put off the things they love while they attempt to achieve the things they like.
So here are the five reasons you are more important than your job. Read them as many times as you need for them to sink in.
#1 Life is not fair, and you are not entitled to more time.
Many people I work with towards the end of their life tell me that they are angry because they always believed they would be entitled to more time. That if they worked hard until they retired they would be granted another twenty years to do all the things they had put off while they were younger. It’s time to accept that time is a gift and you have no way of knowing when that gift will run out. You don’t need to live as if you’ll die tomorrow, that approach can breed chaos. But you do need to stop living as if you won’t die at all.
#2 Nobody is going to look out for your own health, except you.
Martin Meadows, author of How to Think Bigger said,
“If you don’t make time for health, you’ll have to make time for illness”.
Read that twice and take a moment to really recognise that it’s true. You may tell yourself that you don’t have time for health checks, that it’s ok to delay investigations. It’s not. You have sick leave, take it.* And when you are actually sick, take the time off you need to rest – one or two days to recover from something mild is a lot better than one or two weeks (or more) to recover from something major. Having your own GP is not enough – you actually need to prioritise the time to see them. So stop being everything for everyone else and start being everything for yourself, because if you don’t then nobody else will.
#3 The only place you’re irreplaceable is at home.
Don’t be fooled, you are totally replaceable at work. Even if your employer doesn’t want to replace you, they will if they need to. In healthcare, this will happen quickly and often without even a ripple.
At home though, there will never be another you. The moments you miss in your personal world don’t come with do overs. I missed my son’s first day at prep because I felt bad taking a day of annual leave from work. A day that could very easily have been covered by my team. That missed moment will never come back, and when I think about it, the sadness cuts deep.
You need to take time to really think about what is important and then make active choices to ensure that you are living a life true to this. As a doctor you probably won’t get to everything, but you will get to nothing if you don’t start paying attention.
#4 There will always be another patient to see.
Whether you finish on time at the end of your shift, or two hours late, there will always be another patient to see or another email to write. So draw the line at finishing time and get out there into your non-work life. Prioritise the urgent and important and give yourself permission to leave the rest for another time. Get comfortable with working in a team and handing over what is needed. That feeling of needing to have everything squared away, to handover a blank slate to the next team member is not helpful, and it’s also not team work. Not everything needs to be done by you, and in your attempt to do it all you are putting yourself, your team, and ultimately your patients at risk.
#5 You are not your career, you are you.
For so many doctors, the concept of having a life outside of medicine is one that they have long forgotten. After years of studying, working long hours, exams, research, there is no energy, or time, for anything else.
Hobbies disappear, you forget what you enjoy outside of work. When you do find yourself with a day off, there is a mild level of discomfort as you ponder what you are actually going to do with your time. I have been there, most doctors have. And when you are surrounded by others who feel similarly it can be hard to recognise that it is a problem. But, a problem it is.
In 8 years of palliative care, I have had thousands of conversations with people on their death bed, literally. I can count on one hand the people that talk to me about their work. And when they do, it is usually to say that they can’t believe they spent so much time working in a job they didn’t like. Even for the people who have had the good fortune of loving their job, at the end it is the people they have met, the places they have travelled, the experiences they have had, that they reflect on. You need to make sure that when it is your turn on that bed, you have something more than work to talk about.
So in the words of Hilary Clinton,
“Don’t confuse having a career with having a life.”
*If you work privately and tell yourself you don’t get sick leave, read my blog “How to reframe your financial psychology and start making your money go further”.
