Hooray for Guest Post Wednesday and the super-nifty Gareth!
You’re happily riding your Kalamazoo, steadily making progress along the track that is your chosen path, when you go into a tunnel. “No worries” you think “as long as I keep plugging away I’ll reach the other side”. So you keep on pumping away, making steady progress, when you hear a noise. You look up and see a light. “Fantastic, that must be the end of the tunnel”. So you carry on, blissfully unaware of what lies in store. A short while later, you feel an oncoming breeze, and look up, seeing that the light is now much closer. “Awesome, I’m making better progress than I thought possible.” You put your head down to continue, and the train runs you over.
This is what burnout looks like for most of us. We see the signs, but either we ignore them, or we paint them in a less serious light and continue on until it’s too late.
There’s just one problem with this approach. Recovering from burnout is a bugger. Burnout shreds your confidence. It leads to regret, doubt and guilt. So much guilt. Regret that we didn’t heed the signs. Doubt that we’ll ever step back onto the track again. Guilt that we can’t deliver on our promises. Guilt that we’ve let others down. Guilt that we’ve let ourselves down.
But I’m not telling you anything new here. You know all about burnout. You know why it’s important to avoid it, yet you still ignore the signs.
The good news. You may not be doing this deliberately. It could be inattentional blindness, or more simply, you’re not expecting to see the signs, so you don’t notice them. The bad news. This is no consolation when burnout hits.
How do you start seeing, and paying attention to, the signs?
First, you need to be aware of what the signs are. Now everyone has different indicators prior to burnout, but there are a few that are universal. Tasks that are usually simple and effortless start to take longer and require far more concentration. You procrastinate more than usual. You feel lethargic and listless, regardless of the amount of caffeine you consume. Things that are of no consequence start to bother you. These are all signs that the train is approaching.
In addition to these universal signs, there are the more specific ones. For me there are two that are easy to spot. I struggle even more than usual to start blog posts. Normally, I write and delete the opening paragraph for a post 2 or 3 times, but, if the train is coming, that number can go up to double figures. I also move away from games and hobbies that require intelligent thought.
Sometimes, burnout comes on a schedule. I go through a mini-burnout every Wednesday. I always have. Because I know when the train runs, I can easily avoid it by not scheduling anything critical on a Wednesday. Your train will have a different timetable, but it’s likely that it has one. I know one of the other common ones is seasonal, with more frequent trains appearing in the winter months.
However, merely being aware of the signs is not enough. You have to interpret them correctly. Much like the onrushing wind by itself is not enough to deduce that a train is coming, it could just be a breeze, signs appearing singly, are not an indication of approaching burnout. But when you feel the wind, hear the click of the wheels and see the light, it’s time to get off the track.
Getting off the track does require a little planning though. If you post daily, you should try to get a couple of days ahead. If you have a full consulting schedule, you may want to block in some free time to recharge. If you tend to over commit, you need to practice saying “No!”
Losing a little time while waiting for the burnout train to go past is infinitely preferable to getting run over and needing weeks, if not months of recovery.
Your five-minute mission, should you choose to accept it…
Think back to the last time you got hit by the train, or even had a near miss. Remember what you felt like just before the event. What did you have trouble doing, how did you feel? If you can remember more than one incident, you can also look at timelines and see if there is any pattern occurring there.
Once you have some warning signs identified, make a plan. What are you going to do next time the train approaches? Tell me in the comments.
Gareth knows all about burnouts; he fights the Dragon of Mediocrity on a regular basis.
Want to guest post? I’d love to hear from you! Send an email to catherine@beawesomeonline.com today!