This summer, for the first time, I took five weeks off work. Not a digital detox, not a wellness retreat, just five weeks away from the version of my life that means I never quite switch off What happened to my body in that time is the part I didn't expect. 

One thing I noticed almost immediately was how quickly my mind and my body responded. 

Even though I was still "busy" and active, waking up early, exploring new places, staying up late and having fun, within a couple of weeks my wearable health data looked completely different. My HRV increased by around 25%. My resting heart rate dropped significantly, and I was sleeping for longer and waking up feeling noticeably calmer. 

The biggest change to my energy wasn't simply the result of being on holiday. I was still filling my days, but what had disappeared was the constant cognitive demand of work. There were no deadlines running in the background, no presentations to prepare, no emails waiting for a reply and no invisible to-do list in my head. None of these things are particularly stress-inducing in isolation, but I hadn't realised how much mental energy I was using simply holding them in mind. 

The idea wasn't to rest in the way the wellness industry often portrays it. I didn't go to a silent cabin in the woods or spend the month optimising my nervous system with cold plunges and supplements. Instead, I filled my time with the people, places and experiences that make me feel most energised and happy. 

I often joke that I have a friendship group made up almost entirely of ambitious, productive women. Some are founders building businesses from scratch. Others work in PR, media, venture capital or fast-growing start-ups. We all have very different jobs, but one thing we all have in common is that we love what we do. When we meet for dinner, the conversation almost always turns to work at some point, someone hiring, someone publishing a book, someone chasing a new idea, and we all chip in with advice and contacts. Not because none of us can switch off, but because it's genuinely interesting to us, and an important part of how we support each other. 

Even on my own, I have been known to go over and above for work. If I was engaged in a project, it could quickly become all consuming. I'd write podcast scripts late into the evening, reply to emails on my phone whilst in the bath and write notes and to-do lists in a notebook from my bed. I was aware of the irony, being the person advising others not to work like this while being guilty of it myself. Work expanded into almost every available space in my life, and for a long time I was completely fine with that. I even thought that being so motivated to work was evidence I didn't really need a break. 

For people like myself, who love working, the work itself isn’t the problem. The problem is believing that because you love it, you don’t need to step away from it. That’s what makes rest so complicated. 

In the past, when I did take time off, I felt anything but relaxed. Not replying to emails and not being available gave me anxiety and FOMO. Being self-employed can make you feel as though every opportunity needs to be taken and that saying no to one invitation might mean missing out on the next. But being on all the time comes at a cost. Constantly juggling my schedule to make space for last-minute changes, never really knowing when my working day would finish, created an ever-increasing mental load. I'd become so accustomed to that feeling I barely noticed it was there. 

A few years ago I started taking two weeks off every summer. That took some getting used to. Then I moved it to three. This year, I took five whole weeks. That shouldn't sound particularly radical, but for me, and I suspect many other ambitious women, the idea initially felt almost impossible. Five weeks away from work? The logistics alone were overwhelming. But I kept my calendar clear and made an intentional decision to step away from work completely. 

For the first week I took my teenage son to Glasgow to watch the Commonwealth Games. I'll admit that for the first few days I still felt the urge to check in, wondering whether I'd miss anything important. But somewhere around the end of that first week, I noticed that feeling starting to disappear, and the less I checked in, the less I felt the need to. The following week, my husband and I travelled through Italy and Sicily, swimming in the sea and drinking wine at lunch, before I spent a long weekend hiking with a friend. The rest of my time was slower and closer to home, being with my sister and my newborn niece, meeting friends for lunch, reading, watching films I'd wanted to see for months, all things that rarely fit into my normal routine because work has a habit of expanding to fill whatever space we give it. 

I'm very aware that being able to take five weeks away from work is a privilege, and not something I could have done at an earlier stage of my life or career. There have been times when simply protecting a long weekend would have felt significant. What I realised this summer wasn't that five weeks is some magic amount of time, but how different I felt when work was no longer constantly occupying all of my attention. 

I've spent years researching and writing about habits, behaviour change and decision making. One thing has become increasingly clear: our brains aren't designed to operate under constant cognitive demand. Every decision we make, every problem we solve and every responsibility we carry requires mental energy. When those demands continue uninterrupted for days, weeks or months, we don't notice how much we're carrying, because it just becomes our normal. 

I think this is what I had misunderstood about rest for so long. I assumed burnout only happens to people who dislike their jobs, when in reality, caring deeply about your work can make you even more likely to push beyond the point that's sustainable. Loving what you do doesn't reduce your need for rest. If anything, it increases the importance of protecting your energy so you can keep doing the work you love. 

I know that if I want to continue doing meaningful work for the next twenty years or more, I need enough space for the rest of my life to exist too. To spend time with the people I love, to travel, to read, to be inspired by things that have nothing to do with my next book, podcast or keynote. 

For me, rest isn't simply about stepping away from work. It's about stepping towards everything else that makes me who I am. Perhaps that's what rest actually looks like when you love what you do. I don't need to switch off my ambition or become someone who suddenly enjoys doing nothing. I just need to remember that my work can be a meaningful part of my life without being the whole of it. 

If this resonated, Adrienne Adhami will be taking this conversation further on the Live Well stage, exploring the small daily interventions that shift how the brain and body recover. Join her on 25 September at Old Sessions House. Book your tickets.