There’s a certain type of person you might know. Or maybe you are that person. Always moving. Always producing. Always checking something off the list. From the outside, it looks like you’re thriving. But on the inside, it can feel like you’re barely holding it together.

While listening to The Model Health Show podcast today with Dr. Judith Joseph, I was struck by her description of high-functioning depression. It’s not the version you usually picture. It’s not someone who stays in bed all day or can’t go to work. It’s someone who shows up every day and gets things done, but feels like they’re crumbling underneath the surface.

That hit home for me.

I don’t do well with rest. Not in the way most people define it. Sitting still, watching TV, doing nothing in particular—it doesn’t relax me. It makes me feel uneasy. If I’m not doing something productive, I start to feel anxious, like I’m wasting time or falling behind. I’ve mentioned it here before, but I am a to-do list junkie. Lists within lists within lists. It is never ending. It is endorphins every time I get that ding from checking another item in Microsoft To-Do, which of course is synced across both by laptops, my phone and my iPad.

It’s easy to chalk that up to being driven. And yes, it can look like discipline or ambition. But when your sense of worth starts depending on constant motion, it’s not just hustle anymore. It becomes something else.

You start chasing the next task not because it inspires you, but because stopping feels worse. The moment you sit down and breathe, that low-grade panic starts creeping in. So you keep going. You check the next thing off the list. And the next. Until you’ve built a life around staying just busy enough to keep the noise at bay.

That’s the double-edged sword. Productivity becomes both your armor and your cage.

What stuck with me from Dr. Joseph’s conversation was the idea that high-functioning depression often goes unnoticed. You’re not falling apart in the obvious ways. You might even look like you’re winning. But the truth is, if rest feels like failure, something deeper is going on.

For me, this is still a work in progress. I’m learning that rest isn’t laziness. It’s not something you earn. It’s part of being human. The goal isn’t to stop caring about work or progress. It’s to stop tying your entire identity to your output.

I don’t have a perfect solution. But I know this much: if you feel uncomfortable when you’re not being productive, you’re not alone. And if you’ve been measuring your days by how much you accomplish, maybe it’s time to ask yourself how much peace you’re leaving behind.

That might be the hardest kind of work. Slowing down. Sitting with yourself. Letting go of the pressure to always be building something. But that kind of work just might be the most important thing we can do.