How do you make time for self-care?

How Do You Make Time for Self-Care?
Some weeks, I don’t. I’ll be honest about that before anything else. Between ward rounds, lecture halls, closing property deals, mentoring students who are counting on me, and trying to keep King David Properties running with the kind of integrity I’ve promised myself I’d never compromise on; self-care can start to feel like a luxury item on a budget that’s already stretched thin.
But I’ve learned, slowly and sometimes painfully, that self-care isn’t a reward you earn after everything else is done. If it were, I’d never get to it. There’s always one more file to review, one more student to reply to, one more chapter to edit. The work doesn’t run out. So if I wait for an empty schedule to take care of myself, I’ll be waiting forever.
What helped me instead is treating self-care less like an event and more like a posture , something woven into the ordinary hours rather than something I schedule for a Sunday afternoon that never arrives.
For me, that looks like small, almost invisible things. Five minutes of quiet before I open my eyes fully in the morning, just to remember who I am before the day tells me who I need to be. A short walk between the hospital and home, even when I could squeeze in one more task instead. Saying no to a request that would look good on paper but would cost me more than I have to give right now. Writing not for anyone else, not even for the novel I’m working on, just a few lines that let me process what a day has been.
I’ve also had to unlearn the idea that rest is something you do only when you’re tired enough to justify it. Rest, for me now, is preventative. It’s the thing that keeps me sane enough to show up fully for my patients, honest enough to serve my clients well, and present enough to mentor someone without secretly resenting the time it takes.
There’s a faith dimension to this too. I believe I was given these different callings : medicine, business, writing, and mentorship  not to be crushed under them, but to steward them well. And you can’t steward anything well from a place of depletion. Even in scripture, rest isn’t presented as weakness; it’s presented as wisdom. If I truly believe my life and my work matter, then taking care of the person doing the work has to matter just as much.
So how do I make time for self-care? Honestly, I make it non-negotiable in small doses rather than negotiable in large ones. I don’t wait for a free day. I steal minutes. I protect a boundary here, a quiet moment there, a walk instead of a scroll. It’s not perfect, and some weeks I still fail at it. But I’m learning that self-care isn’t about doing less of what matters, it’s about making sure the person doing it all is still whole enough to keep going.