I used to dream of hitting a big, fat pause button that could stop time. Those dreams offered little in the way of making things better, but always showed up as a distraction when needed.
Today was warm and the sun was out, so I took a seat by the window at the coffee shop. Good to be back. In front of me, on the wooden table, I set down my mug next to my book, notebook, and laptop. One of the things I like about this place is that they're a coffee shop but offer free refills, diner-style. It's incredible. That probably shouldn't make me so excited, but it does.
It's been a while since Cate Hall's name popped up in my inbox. She's someone whose work I actively seek out, and going months without seeing anything from her concerned me. Well, this week she returned. And I'd planned to read her latest piece with this very cup of coffee.
It was a post on burnout, of which I'm intimately familiar.
My grandfather loves the quote from CNN founder, Ted Turner that reads, "Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise."
The rest of my family calls it "burning the candle at both ends", but they seem devout in their practice of it, anyway. I find that ironic, but I keep it to myself. Instead, I've spent the better part of a decade trying to do things differently, but without sacrificing impact or effectiveness.
Results have... varied.
Reading Cate's words, I thought of my own experience with burning out in college, and a few times in the workforce since. She used Jonathan Haidt's example of the elephant and the rider, where the elephant is the part of your brain that wants things, and the rider is the part of your brain that engineers ways to get them. Cate explains, quite well, how burnout occurs when the elephant feels duped by the rider—like Charlie Brown having the football yanked away by Lucy before he can kick it.
When you try to do too much, juggle too many things, please too many people—you crash. Like Icarus, flying too close to the sun. Or, I thought as I kept reading, like me, getting a TBI from landing on my head instead of my snowboard. That'd happened after too much time spent working three jobs and drinking myself to sleep. Years later, it looked like having a panic attack during a four-hour-long growth strategy session with a client at a marketing agency. More years gone by and it showed up as lack of acknowledgement and feeling under-appreciated for the department I'd built and the program we'd created.
Sitting back in my chair, I let out a long exhale. Those, alone, covered all three types of burnout Cate referenced: permanent on-call, broken steering, and mission doubt.
I took a sip of coffee and looked around. The sun was shining in through the window. There were only three other people in the coffee shop with me. On a Saturday morning, that seemed crazy. I finished reading Cate's essay and then just sat there for a while lost in thought.
I... I don't think I'm burned out; not like I used to be, at least. But I was, just over a year ago. Have I recovered? Did I nourish myself in the ways I needed since?
I don't know.
But, no matter how crazy life gets, I know I can smack a big, fat pause button capable of stopping time with slow mornings and a cup of coffee.
When's the last time you thought about burnout from somewhere other than in the middle of it?
onward.
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