Gas or Brake? Biology, Burnout, and the Rhythm of Summer in Academic Medicine

Early summer is weird in academic medicine. Not bad, just...offbeat. Clinics are quieter. Meetings evaporate from calendars without explanation. Learners no longer need constant supervision. Inbox traffic slows to a manageable trickle. The academic year is winding down—and with it comes a sense of ease, or at least a deceleration.

And yet.

Beneath that deceleration, there’s often a restless hum. An impulse to make progress. To tidy up loose ends. To finally tackle that research idea or straighten out your EMR shortcuts. That tension? It’s not just habit or guilt. It’s biology.

While our Outlook calendars and badge scanners insist that seasons don’t matter, our bodies have a different memory. Thousands of years ago, summer was go time. The time to hunt, build, plant, store. Winter was when we rested—because we had to. But now, in modern academic medicine, the seasons are flattened into sameness. You’re expected to produce at the same pace whether it’s snowing or sweltering.

The problem is that society evolves faster than our biology. Our pre-industrial wiring hasn’t caught up with the industrial demands of productivity. And that’s where the friction lies: between a profession that subtly encourages perpetual motion and a body that still surges forward with the changing angle of the sun.

So what do we do with that friction?

We use the one evolutionary advantage that has kept up: our prefrontal cortex. The thinking part of our brain, responsible for reasoning and long-term planning, gives us a choice. Do we give in to the ancestral urge to sprint into summer? Or do we embrace the quieter tempo of our modern professional rhythms?

There’s no wrong answer.

If you’ve got a project you’re energized by, take advantage of the lull in meetings to create some white space for deep work. If collaborators are out of office and slowing your momentum, use the downtime to brainstorm next steps or search for new funding opportunities.

If lower patient volumes are giving you the rare gift of time, consider finally solving some of those EMR inefficiencies instead of rage-clicking your way through a mountain of notes. Or don’t. Maybe the past six months have wrung you out, and what you really need is rest. (I’m raising my hand. This past six months? It was a lot.) Permission to rest granted.

Whatever you choose—rest or motion—let it be a choice, not an accident of guilt or momentum.

Worried that if you slow down, you’ll never speed up again? That you’ll fall behind, be labeled “unproductive,” and be quietly escorted out of your department with your belongings in a cardboard box? You’re not alone. But here’s the thing: it doesn’t work like that.

Academic medicine won’t let you drift indefinitely. Your patients won’t let you. Your learners won’t let you. And you won’t let you. If you did, you wouldn’t have made it this far.

If you need a safeguard, try this: on the first of every month, put a note on your calendar that says, “Gas or brake?” That’s it. One moment to reflect. One honest check-in.

Because the gift of modern brains is this: we get to decide whether to honor our biology, override it, or—most wisely—blend both. You don’t owe the system perpetual motion. You owe yourself the wisdom to know when to rest and when to rise.