Michele Woodward

Powerful Coaching. Powerful Results.

burnout

It’s a Time Warp

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Time has taken on a weird, bendy quality in these pandemic days. Quick quiz:  Without checking any available resource – do you know what day it is?

‘Nuff said.

People tell me the lines between work time and non-work time (and school time and family time and every other kind of time) have blurred and bled into one another in a crazy grid of insanity.

We’ve never been busier even though we have no commute.

We’re swamped although we don’t leave our house.

We’re burned out while all we’ve got is time.

It’s a time warp.

The other day a client told me that she’d spent eight and a half hours in back-to-back Zoom calls. When she finally lifted her head from her computer screen, her family had made dinner. She ate, then promptly fell asleep on the couch. Where she stayed until she woke up the next morning and got ready for her 8am Zoom call.

A friend shared that since she’s monitoring her children’s studies during the day, she works well into the evening. “I’m pulling more hours than ever, mostly because I feel so guilty about parenting during the work day,” she said.

Let me lay out a few facts for you, just as a reminder:

  1. We are in a global pandemic;
  2. As I write this, it’s only getting worse;
  3. We’re in an economic downturn;
  4. Which, as I write this, is only getting worse

It seems to me that we can all use with finding a way to manage our time, our selves, our stuff better. Fortunately, I know exactly how to do it.

Set some boundaries.

No doubt, you’ve heard those three words strung together before, said by me or by a million other well-meaning folks. “Set some boundaries, set some boundaries, set some boundaries” – like a droning mantra.

Sets your teeth on edge, am I right?

I know, I know: You haven’t done it because boundaries feel so harsh and self-centered.

And they might very well require you to say no.

Which feels very icky.

Because you’re a person who says “yes!” Happily, with an exclamation point or two.

Boundaries, you fear, may make someone so angry that they will never, ever, ever speak to you again.

To which, I say: Maybe that’s a good thing in a pandemic. One less person in your bubble. #Justsayin

Boundaries work because they allow you to know where your edges are. So, let’s think about one that’s easy to set and could help you a ton. Ready?

Your boundary is simply saying, “That’s it. I’m done with work for today.” And then push back from wherever you’re working in your home to do something else.

That’s all you have to do.

You can say this at any time of the day you want to say it. Personally, if I get an 7:15am start with my first client of the day, I’m pushing back from the desk at 4pm.

Which means that from 4pm on, it’s Michele Time.

I read books, I take walks, I exercise, I chit chat on the phone with friends and family, I cook, I watch TV, I listen to music, I eat.

I store up my energy for the next day.

Now some of you dear readers are saying, “Fine for you. But I have a JOB and other people have access to my schedule and put things on my calendar and I’m getting paid more than my dad ever got paid and there’s a shaky economy and I can’t lose this job so I need to hustle and never say no and deliver, deliver, deliver.”

All I can say is that coffee is probably not helping you.

I also can say that I have a JOB and people have access to my calendar and put themselves on it and I’m also getting paid more than my dad ever got paid and all the rest.

I still set boundaries.

When you believe that you cannot set boundaries due to external pressures, you are giving every bit of your power to those external forces.

It’s OK to hustle. I am all about the hustle. Just do the right kind of hustle.

The kind that fills up your tank, not the kind that depletes it.

And hustling within boundaries you set for yourself fills up your tank.

Start small by deciding when your workday is over and push back from your desk, knowing that you’ve hustled enough for today given everything you’re experiencing and enduring.

Give yourself and everyone else around you a break by saying, “That’s it. I’m done for today”, and go about your life.

This pandemic will end one day.  It will all become a misty watercolor memory and no one will remember that on a certain Monday in October you pulled a 15 hour day.

But you’ll always remember the toasty crunchy feel of the burnout you experienced because you didn’t set a simple boundary. That knowing will stay with you forever.

#justsayin #onemoretime #setaboundary

 

Maybe You’re An Anxious Striver

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Years ago I learned something from my friend Jen Louden. It’s her idea of “Conditions of Enoughness”. Basically, it’s deciding before you set out to do anything what “enough” will feel like, so you know when you’re done.

I thought of this brilliant concept recently when hearing people talk about their drive for constant improvement. It occurred to me that constant improvement could actually be a bad thing.

Like, how you remove minute parts of a knife everytime you sharpen it. And, if you persist in sharpening the edge, at some point the knife loses its structural integrity and becomes a wisp of a thing rather than the sharp thing it once was.

I was reflecting on people who are what I call “anxious strivers”. The kinds of folks who are driven to go-go-go and do-do-do. Who only eat foods which have a point – their diet exists merely to provide protein, minerals, and “good fats”. They only read books which will improve their lives. Every spare minute is devoted to Doing Something In Service To Something Else.

Joy has very little role in their lives.

I have to ask, though: When you live in pursuit of constant improvement, when do you know how to stop? When do you know what enough is like? Because of the relentless “constant” in “constant improvement”, are you putting yourself on a hamster wheel that never stops and calling it exemplary performance?

Perhaps then, rather than constant improvement, we need to think about simply having clear goals and working to meet them. In that context, the questions become more like: How did I do yesterday? Do I need to do something differently than yesterday to reach my goal? Is it enough to keep doing what I’m doing and stay on this path I’ve set? Does this feel like enough yet?

That’s not to say stop learning. To stop incorporating your learning into your actions. I would never say that, because I’m a learner through and through.

I am suggesting that anxious striving, never knowing what enoughness looks like, never doing something just for the fun of it, sharpening your edge until you have nothing left… this is the recipe for burnout and unhappiness and, oddly enough, ultimately leads to a lack of real, meaningful progress.

The Burnout Remedy

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Tropical IslandOne day someone just might ask you, “So…what do you really want?” And in that moment, deep within your particular answer, there’s so much to learn.

Because if you quickly blurt out an answer, it could be your heart’s desire making itself clear. Which is a good thing.

But, you might pause and make a very calculated response – the response you know the asker is dying to hear – and you’ll learn something about how far you are willing to go to please others. Rather than yourself.

And if, when asked what you really want, you completely draw a blank – a stone cold, deer in the headlights head scratcher – well, then, you may have uncovered an incontrovertible truth.

It’s very likely you are burned out. 

Roasted, toasted, fried crispy burned out.

Sapped of every ounce of your imagination by the grind of the relentless, day-to-day busyness that is your life.

Gah, I am exhausted just thinking about it.

Aren’t you?

So what do you do when you are a walking tortilla chip, unable to even identify one thing you really want?

First, take a break. I’m not saying it has to be a month in Fiji, but that would be cool if you could pull it off.

But I bet you can find a single day.

One whole day for yourself. And just in case you aren’t clear, “for yourself” translates into: no chores, no work, no obligations. 

(Now some of you are starting to hyperventilate because that seems so lazy. So indulgent. So “not me”.)

(Others are anxious because there’s so much to be done. There’s always so much to do. Got to keep doing!)

(Still, one or two of you are frantic because you fear that if you step away for even one day, someone might jump in and take your place and then where will you be? Living in a van down by the river, that’s where, mumbling about Gantt charts and pivot tables.)

(And, if you don’t mind me saying so, it’s exactly this type of do-do-do, fear-based drama that has drained you, my darling.)

On this For Yourself Day, you are to find something that restores your energy. Something to block out the noise and haste and allow you to reconnect with the Essential You.

Because your Essential You is really pretty fantastic. You may have forgotten just how fantastic, but with a little time and attention, you can find You again.

For yours truly, I find myself when taking a walk in nature, reading a great book, seeing art, doing a little writing, and preparing a tasty meal.

(As you can see, I have faced burn out once, twice or a zillion times in my life.)

At the end of a day such as this, a day when you’ve attended to your own self and your own energy, it’s entirely possible that you will have found an answer to the question, “So…what do you really want?”

And whatever it is, it will be your answer.

Yours.

And it will be exactly the right one. Which will feel both totally exciting and utterly relieving.

So, let me ask you… when are you taking that day for yourself?

 

[Editor’s Note: My office will be closed on Wednesday.]