7 ways to do a 'hard reset' on your life before 2026: Physician edition
Industry Buzz
I stay off technology for the first hour of the day. Rather than diving into emails or social media, I focus on my routine. By delaying tech use, I start my day calmly and feel more in control.
—Randall Turner, DO
If you’re heading into 2026 still feeling the effects of being overworked, staffing instability, inbox overload, and the general hum of clinical chaos, you’re not alone.
That's why you might want to do a “hard reset” on your life—a way to take back control before the new year steamrolls you.
1. Do the 'wheel of life' exercise
In an Instagram post, Colby Kultgen, founder of 1% Better, recommends rating the major domains of your life on a scale from 1 to 10. Then you focus on the categories scoring lowest.
For physicians, this exercise can be uncomfortably clarifying.
Maybe your clinical competency is a 10 but emotional bandwidth is a 3. Maybe your physical health quietly slid to a 5 during a year of skipped workouts and late-night charting. Maybe the “relationships” slice is basically a sliver carved out between 24-hour call blocks. Seeing the imbalance on paper helps you triage your own life with the same intentionality you bring to patient care.
2. Improve your sleep habits
For doctors, improving sleep is practically a rebel act. Rotating shifts, late-night notes, call schedules, and a brain trained to scan for threats make healthy sleep architecture a challenge.
But the importance of sleep cannot be overstated. Healthy sleep is foundational to cognitive performance, metabolic regulation, and long-term health, and a large body of research backs this up.
Studies consistently show that inadequate sleep impairs attention, memory consolidation, and decision-making, while also increasing sympathetic activity and inflammatory signaling—mechanisms linked to cardiometabolic disease.[] [] Sleep restriction may also influence obesity, morbidity, and mortality. []
But even small wins matter, like committing to a consistent wind-down routine on non-call nights, protecting your sleep environment, or limiting post-10 pm EHR time when possible. You don’t need to become an eight-hours-a-night unicorn. You just need sleep that stops actively sabotaging you.
3. Declutter every aspect of your life
Yes, cleaning your house helps. But for physicians, the real clutter culprit is digital. The EHR inbox, the 9,000-device Apple ecosystem, the lecture slides sitting on your desktop from 2019.
Your goal? Clear the literal and mental surfaces. That might mean taking one hour to archive old patient messages, clearing your phone of unused apps, or finally deleting the 88 screenshots you saved as “articles to read later.”
Doctors spend their days managing other people’s chaos—no need to marinate in your own.
4. Make a 'stop doing' list
Medicine rewards additions: add a committee, add a clinic session, add a quality project, add one more patient at the end of the day. Try flipping the script with a “stop doing” list, suggests Kultgen.
For 2026, what can you eliminate? Maybe it’s agreeing to every meeting that arrives with a calendar invite, maybe it’s chasing inbox messages after 8 pm, or maybe it's the reflex to say yes to noncritical favors that cost you energy but help no one meaningfully.
Subtraction is a legitimate clinical and personal strategy.
5. Curate the information you come in contact with
Doctors live in a firehose of information: journals, clinical alerts, CME requirements, specialty newsletters, constant new guidelines. Add social media, news cycles, and podcasts on top of that, and mental fatigue becomes the default.
But try being intentional with what you consume—and maybe even take a social media break. A 2022 study found that "asking people to stop using [social media] for 1 week leads to significant improvements in well-being, depression, and anxiety." []
Ask yourself: What actually enriches your practice? What restores your curiosity? What sources consistently drain you or spike your anxiety? Choosing your inputs wisely is an underrated form of professional self-preservation.
6. Close your 'open loops'
Open loops are the thoughts tugging at you: the license renewal you keep forgetting, the CME module half-finished, the thank-you note you meant to write, the home repair lingering on your to-do list.
Doctors know the psychic weight of unfinished business—think of it as the nonclinical version of having 27 unsigned notes. Kultgen suggests listing every open loop, then assigning each one to a category: do it, schedule it, or let it go.
Related: 6 tips for sticking to your New Year's resolutions7. Establish a morning routine that'll help you get your head on straight for a busy day at the clinic
For many physicians, mornings start reactively: checking overnight messages, fielding patient portals, scanning labs, hustling through emails, or rushing out the door. It's important to start your day in a way that gives you a clear head before you dive into the chaos.
Indeed, research shows that responding to work emails outside of working hours—like first thing in the AM—can spike morning salivary cortisol levels with a higher cortisol awakening response—a physiological indicator of stress. []
For doctors, that might mean five minutes of quiet before the clinical marathon begins, a brisk walk, a non-rushed breakfast, a “no-email-before-8” rule, or simply deciding not to start your day already behind.
"I stay off technology for the first hour of the day," said Randall Turner, DO. "Rather than diving into emails or social media, I focus on my routine. By delaying tech use, I start my day calmly and feel more in control." []