Three Things I Learnt From Burnout

I was Today Years Old when I learnt Burnout was a blessing in disguise. Burnout is a horrible, soul-sapping experience I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Ever. However, in hindsight it was almost necessary to teach me some valuable personal and professional lessons. In this blog, I want to share the three most important things I learnt that can help you beat, or avoid, Burnout too. *Disclaimer: I’m not a medical professional, this is not medical advice*

First things first, no two burnouts are the same. Burnout can occur for any number of reasons and as many colleagues and friends as I’ve spoken to about this topic, I’ve heard different causes. But there are patterns. The overarching theme I heard time and again was losing control: control over your time and life. Does any of this sound familiar: growing to do list, decreasing motivation to complete it, emails stacking up, smaller tasks taking more effort, meanwhile the laundry pile is starting to look like Everest, kitchen plates are growing new life forms on the leftovers (that’s if you bothered to cook at all or put the takeaway on a plate), and the last time you could be bothered to shower was….nope can’t remember. It’s like the external “stuff” is a growing tidal wave around you, ready to swallow you up any moment. 

Just as the underlying pattern to Burnout is losing control, so recovery is regaining that control. Everything I’ll share here is all centered on principles of taking back control. We can summarise them quickly as: stop; values and meaningful work; boundaries. I’ve made this sound simple and it is, it just isn’t easy.

1.       Stop

Disclaimer: not everyone needs to take time off work. The good news is, you can do lessons two and three without taking time off if you’re adamant that’s not for you. Skip this if you want.

Maybe you’re not sure if time out is right for you yet? I debated it for several weeks before taking the plunge. My concerns were

·       If the only reason I get out of bed is to work and I take that away, what will happen?

·       Too much will happen whilst I’m off and I won’t be able to catch up

·       Will I miss out on promotion?

But the real elephant in the question room was: what will I do? As someone who loves their work and job, the prospect of three weeks of nothingness was daunting. I think anyone who tells you time off is the easy option is wrong.

However, I was at a point where I couldn’t function and even though I was technically still in work, I wasn’t much use to the team. So, I arranged time off even though I hadn’t actually answered the above questions yet. When I shut my laptop for the last time that evening, I sat on the floor and cried. Stopping isn’t easy but sometimes it’s necessary; don’t be afraid to explore it.

2.       There are no Burnout fairies

Ok let’s say you’ve stepped off the treadmill and you’re ready to beat the Burnout! Maybe people have told you that you’ve been taking on too much and just need to slow down? They might be right but there are no Burnout fairies coming to sprinkle magic Burnout cure dust into your tea whilst you watch Netflix.

I was Today Years Old when I learnt Burnout doesn’t have a quick fix. In fact, it’s just like a physical fire: getting off the treadmill puts out the flames but now you need to clean up the scorch marks. How do we do that? For me, this started with reading. I’ve read loads on the journey so far (stay tuned for a comprehensive book review) but one that stood out was ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck’ by Mark Manson. The premise is very simple: we have a finite number of F’s to give and if we distribute them too liberally, the bucket will soon be empty. This got me thinking about values (i.e. what really gets you out of bed in the morning). I’m not ashamed to admit that prior to burning out, my values were material focused: get a promotion, earn £Xk this year, buy a Canyon bike (if you’re a cyclist you’ll know 😉) etc. Because my values were materially driven, I was distributing my F’s to “stuff” and then wondered why they only made me feel better for five minutes. This book helped me realise that connecting your motivators to things that can be disproportionately influenced by events you don’t have control over are not fulfilling places to distribute your F’s. Yes, I can control whether I produce the quality and quantity of work worthy of promotion, but I can’t control if there’ll be funding. I can adjust my investments to try and achieve £Xk income this year but so what? For what purpose? And if the markets drop that’ll be out of my control...you get the idea.

So I set about hunting for new values. I started with asking: if those material things were no object, what would get me out of bed? This is an exercise you might find valuable too: write down all the stuff you want (it’s ok to want to stuff) then ask, “if I have all of this, now what?” and that will help you uncover the things that really motivate you and leads us to the next principle: meaningful work.

A book I’ll frequently reference throughout this blog is Tim Ferris’s “The 4 Hour Work Week”. Tim’s message is simple: do more stuff that actually makes you happy whilst expending the least effort. Armed with my new-found values, I started merging my takeaway from Mark’s book with Tim’s. “Meaningful work” is a term we can apply both professionally and personally. Let’s take an example: one of my values (yes it’s cliché) is helping people achieve their goals. I apply that to my professional life in how I lead my teams but also my personal life: supporting my partner, helping out friends and even this blog.

But what actually is ‘meaningful work’? In short, it’s any action that contributes to fulfilling your value. Example: babysitting a friend’s child so she can go to a spinning class to fulfill her goal of getting fitter is meaningful work; reaching out to a client with a potentially lucrative opportunity to help me fulfil my goal of contributing to growing the firm is meaningful work. In fact, how to identify and prioritise meaningful work is a whole post in itself (and one I’m preparing, stay tuned) but for now you get the idea: understand what really motivates you and think about the types of actions in both your personal and professional life you need to take to help you get there.

“But I have a boss, I don’t have a choice over my work”. Well, I beg to differ. Proceed to our final lesson.

3.       You are the boss

Understanding meaningful work helps us identify boundaries, the next step is to implement them. You may not be your own boss on paper but you are boss of ‘You PLC’. I was Today Years Old when I learnt you can be an employee and be the boss of your boundaries, regardless of your level.

This will probably start with an honest conversation with your manager, something along the lines of “I’ve identified that “meaningful work” looks like XYZ to me and I’d like to adapt my role to that by doing ABC. I propose we trial it for two weeks and measure the productivity and go from there. Does that sound reasonable?” (Some of these phrases are suggested by Tim in his book, read more about it here).

To give you an example, I approached this conversation by proposing how eliminating or automating the elements of my role that I find meaningless would boost productivity of not just me but my team too. Then I explained how I intend to use my new-found free time to work on the things I find meaningful, which are values also aligned to our firm’s goals. I’m fortunate to have an open-minded manager who was willing to support this upfront, but I think if you approach it in the right way you can achieve a positive conversation with even the most traditional dinosaur.

Having defined the boundaries of your role and agreed how to measure productivity (more on that in a future blog), you can use this to leverage other boundaries. For example, by naturally reducing the meaningless work from your day, you’re going to be producing more value-add in less time, allowing you to reduce your working hours. I’m not talking about part-time here, I mean reducing 12-hour days down to eight. Particularly in organisations with a culture of face-time and long-hours this might feel like you’re going to be perceived as “shirking” or “weaker” than the rest. But frankly I take a dim view of this: sitting for 12 hours a day shunting pointless emails and pushing pointless pens around isn’t a skill. Cracking out high quality, value-add work and doing this at a sustainable work/life balance is. You might even be one of this first in your organisation to really put this into practice but don’t let that put you off. In the words of Black Sheep Coffee “leave the herd behind”.  

Yesterday’s lessons are today’s change

And that’s it. Three things I learnt from Burnout that changed my life. These can be boiled down to asking yourself three questions:

·       What really gets me out of bed?

·       What actions do I need to take to achieve that?

·       What am I waiting for?

The good news is, you don’t need to wait for complete Burnout, or indeed any Burnout, to implement these ideas. You can do these things right now to avoid ever getting burnt out in the first place. Sound simple? It is. But it isn’t easy. In a world that perceives “being busy + work a lot = productive person” it can feel uncomfortable even thinking about these changes let alone implementing them. But in that same world, where 75% of people report feeling symptoms of Burnout, do you really want to be a sheep bleating your way through life? I challenge you to try it. Compare the difference. It might just change your life too…