How to escape your busy schedule and rest from work

When Ali Kahlert was diagnosed with a kidney infection last month, she gratefully accepted an IV in emergency care and dutifully swallowed antibiotics as prescribed. It was the last part of the doctor’s orders that had upset her: rest.

“I was starting to climb the walls. I have to do something,” says the 30-year-old graduate student in Minneapolis. After a day on the couch, napping, sewing, watching YouTube videos, she had it. She climbed the stairs to her home office and tackled some schoolwork and chores, until a searing pain of protest shot through her kidney.