Yesterday’s idea is “Today Years Old”
I love my job. Yes, really. I’m an Associate Manager in a big Consulting firm and I love my job. I honestly believe I’m a Consultant for life. I don’t mind if that makes me sound dull, I get meaning from my job and it gives me purpose. Until I burnt out.
Anyone in Consulting (or frankly any career) knows that long hours “come with the job”; it’s just part of the lifestyle. Consultancies (and many companies to be honest) are full of “insecure overachievers” and so the work hard (read “long”), play hard (read “competitively”) cycle is perpetuated. It doesn’t mean that everyone will spectacularly crash out, but more people than ever before are burning out to some extent. Forget COVID for a second, Burnout is a pandemic in itself.
I used to arrogantly believe that I’d never burn out; I’d know the signs and have control to step back before the train derailed. I was wrong. Stuck in this never-ending cycle of “must do more”, the more I was burning out, the more work I added to the plate. Counter-intuitive; I know that now. But I am not alone. A shocking 75% to 77% of people reported experiencing symptoms of Burnout. We shouldn’t ignore this. This starts with not ignoring ourselves.
In the end, I had to press pause and stop working for three weeks. A colleague described recovery from Burnout as a journey but I’d been looking for an overnight fix. Only when I stopped working altogether did I really realise this. So, I “packed up my troubles in my old kit bag” and embarked on a journey of discovering why my Burnout had really happened and what could I do to prevent it again? Countless times along the way I thought “wish I’d known that earlier”. You’ve probably seen memes of “I was today years old when I learnt…” and I found myself saying this a lot in relation to Burnout recovery too. And so “Today Years Old” was born.
I have one, simple, objective: share things I’ve found useful to people who might find them useful.
If you’re reading this you’re probably one of the following: my Mum (hi Mum), someone experiencing Burnout, have experienced Burnout, wanting to avoid Burnout like the plague (well done you for being proactive). You might be in Consulting too and whilst much of my blog will touch on this industry, I hope you’ll find this useful regardless of your vocation.
Where will this take us? Who knows! I have no expectations of what might come of this, all I know is I was ‘Today Years Old’ when I learnt I could write a blog. When will you be Today Years Old?
