Burnout: Are you holding the match?
You are hard-wired to survive intense, difficult experiences. But far too often, we persevere through intensity, speeding up our gears and pouring ourselves out toward a solution. And then we stay there. Without a mindful shift, we fail to return to our normal operating state. Instead, we adopt habits that helped us succeed in extremes.
Our highest capacity–the experience that reserves of energy and intellect are there for–creeps into our everyday pace. If they’re not careful, workplaces and schools reward only extreme performance, and calculate their expected outputs accordingly. Unless you are in the throes of emergency response, here’s a hard truth: your burnout problem likely began due to conditions outside of you. But you are contributing to the pain.
Three ways you might be burning yourself out:
Problem 1: You pursue categorial goals.
Jessica says her job is to put out fires. Mason claims to be paid to keep people inspired. Yazmin told me she is focused on delivering excellence in every course she teaches.
These might be helpful descriptions of a leader’s mission, but they have no walls. Following your deeper purpose makes work feel like life, but a grand categorical mission will require your dedication at the highest level all. the. time. Your work will carry the same gravitas when you are texting from the bathroom on your twelfth cup of coffee as it will when you’re freshly rested and focused.
Solution: Count something.
Listen, we overcomplicate goal setting. Strategic, complex exploration of objectives is important and has its place. But when I study communities and organizations that truly go far and get there with enjoyment and collaboration, they do something different. They set high expectations, and then find simple evidence of progress that they can count.
Your mission deserves milestones. Don’t be afraid to zoom into your categorical goal by framing with clarity. What can you count that you are in easy control of doing?
If Jessica’s role is really one where she has to put out fires, she could count the number of times she proactively checks in with her team. She could count the positive reinforcements she offers every month. She could even count the number of great solutions she co-created in a week.
Mason writes 1000 words every day, in order to further his inspiration of others.
Yazmin is committed to opening and closing 3 courses this month. In order to continually deliver excellence, she counts the meetings she attends with a mentor she knows will offer her great critique and the 3 books she read that expanded her breadth of knowledge on her subject.
Problem 2: Your days are all the same.
Nothing in life happens in a straight line. But chasing a perfect upward trend on a growth chart, many knowledge workers hold themselves accountable to goals better suited to industrial producers. Targets were likely set based on average outputs–consideration of all contributors across a set amount of time—making it hard to see the ups and downs of individual experience. This does not mean it is healthy or possible to apply equal pressure, pace, and effort for the same amount of time every single day. Perhaps what works so well about the flexibility some workplaces have adopted post-Covid is the accidental harmony it creates with our human lives.
When we are stressed, we tend to tunnel our vision on the next goal. During the time we most need to access creativity to solve difficult problems, we are blinded instead by relentless focus. When we are crunched for time, we spend our pauses on work rather than rest. But even a short break could be exactly the breath we need to help us realign our talent with our goals.
I recently spoke with an executive who had left his organization, only to realize he had fallen accustomed to skipping his flu shot and his regular haircut, because the short breaks they required felt better spent on urgent deadlines. Since leaving, he is actually more productive (not to mention more polished and immuno-boosted).
Adam Grant’s latest suggests breaks deepen learning. He cites research that demonstrates people obsessed with their work put in longer hours yet fail to perform any better than their peers. Not only are they at risk of burnout, but they also risk boreout (yes, a real term).
Linda is under a tight deadline, and has a lot on her plate. She does some mindful journaling before starting her workday so that she can steadily power through and chip away toward the deadline.
A professional services team is known for their creativity, so they are quick to send instant messages any time an idea arises.
Connie hasn’t taken a vacation in the three years she’ s been with her company. Her role and the state of her responsibilities are just too important.
Solution: Breathe natural life into your schedule.
Create moments on purpose where you reach (exert yourself at high capacity) and where you recover (refuel in a way that feeds you).
Linda has a lot on her plate, and starts her day with mindful journaling. Rather than powering through all day, she uses a sand timer to remind herself to take a walk. Any time she makes a breakthrough in her work, she lights her favorite candle and spends time stretching her body.
A professional services team values creativity and knows variety inspires learning. They turn off instant message notifications on the weekend, when great ideas are encouraged to be written in paper journals and shared if they return during the workweek.
Connie takes a vacation. Her role and the state of her responsibilities are just too important not to.
Problem 3: You’ve let go of your end of the support rope.
It starts innocently enough. Sure, you wouldn’t ask anyone you care about to go through the pain you are enduring. But you are different, maybe naturally more gritty, perhaps even smarter than them. We even trick ourselves into thinking if we are working in areas of our strengths, we can expect extreme performance all the time. I wish I could go back to tell my younger self this: going it alone is a short-term fix that causes long-term damage.
Jeff is surrounded by talented friends, but setting them up to contribute on a project would require him to slow down too much. He knows the shortcuts and works better alone.
Dana is always the leader of her small group anyway, so she sets the milestones for the project and jumps into completing them.
Maika doesn’t want to burden the people she loves. She stealthily handles the mess, gets in a good workout, and moves through the rest of her day.
This is not a blanket push for improving teamwork. I have interacted with my share of teams, many of which were really only connected because they answer to the same person on an org chart. But I’ve also seen teams of teachers go out of their way to offer expertise to peers. I’ve seen siloed attorneys collaborate regularly to improve the experience of their firm. I’ve watched people who share nothing more than a zip code offer their individual talents in a way that transforms a neighborhood into a community. So yes, you can say your team is independent rather than interdependent, and allow that distinction to dismiss the need for collaboration. At best, it’s a missed opportunity. At worst, it’s perpetuating a standard of isolation that distorts our perception and drives our exhaustion.
Collective intelligence, the capacity not of an individual but of a group, can be the entire body of work for an organizational psychologist or workplace consultant. But you can harness the same proven benefit by applying a more holistic approach to giving and receiving support in the solo area of your work.
Solution: Believe those who say they want to support you. Or at least act like you do.
Complementary strengths drive great collaboration. Rather than identifying areas of weakness that someone else could possibly help you, why not start by getting to know your partners’ areas of strength? In any relationship, commit to curiosity about two things:
What specialty does this person enjoy so much that they’d offer it without being asked?
What experiences have we shared to remind me how much I trust them?
The difference between a good life and one that exceeds your wildest expectations is how well you thrive in a community. To both offer and receive the network of connection a community offers, you must cultivate both self-awareness and others-awareness. And then you have to do a bit more work.
The real work is holding onto your end of the rope. Others have thrown it to you, saying they want to be connected. It could have been a casual conversation about shared interests or a long history of shared experience. When you get stressed, your tunnel vision can jump so far into your work that you let go of that connection. Trust is what keeps the rope tied to those you can help you.
How would you behave if you trusted that you were not your own only hope? You do not require a huge network of supporters, nor do they have to be supremely talented. What matters is that you acknowledge the different lenses to both a problem and solution that different people bring. Find at least one person you know you’d feel honored to support, and begin by simply asking for how your situation looks from their angle.
Jeff has a few trusted advisors he checks in with regularly. He specifically asks them to review his most meaningful goals and how he is progressing toward them. Many times, they identify more efficient paths forward by offering expertise he did not have.
Dana doesn’t want to carry the full weight of her group anymore. She looks for at least one person every quarter who she can help develop by asking them to own or adjust milestones that no longer require Dana’s exclusive authority.
Maika pays attention to the cues her body is sending. When she feels a certain knot in her stomach and shoulders, she knows it’s time to invite help. Rather than wring her hands over the need for support, she invites help and then spends that energy penning a killer thank-you note.
It’s much easier to fall into the trap of burning yourself out than it is to mindfully adapt. It’s hard because it requires the very presence of mind that we often lose when we are performing at heightened levels of stress. So do yourself a favor and get out ahead of yourself. Know what activities facilitate your stretch moments (reach). Plan the time and resources it takes to rest in a way that refuels you (recover). And find a regular way to remind yourself of these three acts as powerful differentiators:
Dream big, count small.
Health over hustle.
Don’t just crush it. Collaborate.
