Some Thoughts On Burnout
Credit: @theomzproject
I talk a lot on this blog about ‘doing the work’. That is, in order to get to where we want to go, we need to put in the time and effort to get us there.
More often than not, this means A LOT of effort - long hours and plenty of personal sacrifices. The bigger the goals, the more that’s demanded of us. I stand by that.
And while everyone’s different, and each and every one of us have different levels of endurance, stamina and focus, sooner or later, there has to be some tempering. Sooner or later, unless we’re conscious and mindful from the start, we hit a wall. Things become far harder than they were, than they should be.
And yet, so much of the time, most of us don’t even know we’ve hit that wall until it’s too late - and maybe not even then, because we don’t know what it is. Burnout.
I think there are a few signs that tell us.
We stop talking. We stop communicating openly with those around us, not just professionally, but worse, personally.
We take on an underlying negative tone. We become more resentful, more cynical. Our sense of our work is mired in complexity, a strange cocktail of angst, anger, exhaustion and apathy.
We stop looking after ourselves. Our focus is just on our work and not on ourselves - physical or mental. Exhaustion - in all its forms - seems to be a constant.
We don’t detach. It’s hard to take breaks for FOMO. We can’t bring ourselves to disconnect and compartmentalize.
We stop connecting with others. Our conversations are limited. We don’t go out. We avoid socializing, meeting old and new friends. We believe we need to always be ‘on’, need to always be on that treadmill.
Sometimes, we even forget why we’re doing this in the first place. What the actual point was, of all of this? In some ways, that’s the worst one of all.
There’s more than a little autobiography there, because I write this from a place of not only observation but personal experience. I suspect many of you reading this feel the same way.
It’s a hard place to be, and it isn’t sustainable. Not only do we suffer but so do those around us. And yet we don’t figure it out until it’s too late.
In many ways, doing something about it is very, very difficult, because it entails letting go, what we might think of as giving up on the commitment. Because if I’m not focused on this all of the time, how will it get done? How will I stay ahead? How will I achieve?
The reality is that if we don’t get our heads around this, we won’t be able to keep going for the long term. We won’t be able to achieve our goals because the burnout will take its toll and this will come to an end, one way or another.
The reality is that there’s room for both paths - full commitment, tempered with some level of managed balance.
It’s doing the work, personally, so that we can do the work, professionally.
