I feel like I’ve spent much of this pandemic digging out of a case of burnout, watching people burn out around me, trying to get ahead of things, trying to inch up from zero but never really feeling like I make it that far.
And all those things feel so much harder when rest is lower quality. When we are more isolated. When time is monotonous, we feel like we have less of it.
I work somewhere with untracked vacation, so I keep my own records. I know how many days I took off as vacation, how many days for “life debt”, how many days for learning and development, how many days I was sick, and how many weekend days I worked. All of these numbers are in the “normal, European” range. But if I think about it, I remember two weeks I took off. One in July, and one in September. The ones where I made a plan and went somewhere. Approaching the end of the year, it doesn’t really matter what my record says – I’m tired like the only breaks I took were those two separate weeks away.
Two benefits of getting away, then. The first is that the change of scene is memorable and changes our experience of time. The second, that it gets us away from all the admin of life. The chores that keep life going but that also sometimes make life feel like a drag.
I used to think that rest was going away somewhere and doing something else entirely. I thought it was finishing a novel each day. Waking up whenever. Wondering around freely, without a schedule. When I think about what it was like to recharge in the before times, I think about the 10 days or so I spent in Bali, doing yoga until my wrists gave out. I think about a blissful long weekend in Hong Kong. I think about Venice in November, the biennial, the architecture, the fog. I think of that trip to Costa Rica, the sea turtles, the kayaks, the jet skis, and swimming every day. I think of days spent wondering across Barcelona, across Reykjavik, across Copenhagen, across Prague. I think of taking the boat to MONA in Hobart, skiing in Andorra and trips to the spa.
My concept of rest was “active rest”, like, in the Peloton class where after 15-20 minutes going hard you get a break at 80-100 RPM but “just” 30 on the tension.
But also I’m biased to remember the active moments. The periods I spent lying down, or days I spent with the program of go to the gym, eat something, and read a book, blur into one. According to my Kindle, I have read 941 books. Not all of them were on planes; I must have passed many days this way.
I used to have two modes: rushing about at full tilt, and collapsing from exhaustion. Therapy helped me shift to somewhere else, to see myself as worthy of rest, to shift my concept of self care to actually involve care for a future Cate. I’m glad I did this work before life as we knew it was cancelled. This timeline has forced me to reconceptualize rest again. To pay closer attention to what makes me feel recharged, and what makes me feel worn out. To find things that make me feel like time has passed but it was time well spent (like crafting), and pay attention to those things that make me feel time was wasted (like binge watching Netflix).
A question I ask – myself and others – a lot, is “what makes you feel recharged?” The answers are fascinating, a friend today described the incredible feeling of painting a wall with a brush, feeling like she was accomplishing something, enjoying the moment – even though her husband subsequently repainted it with a paint roller for a better finish.
I feel recharged when I…
… experience something new.
… meaningfully connect with a friend.
… wake up from the kind of deep sleep you only get from intense exercise.
… make something.
… finish a book.
… bring order to my living space.
… relax in the sauna after a good swim.
… emerge from the floatation tank.
… spend quality time with my partner.
… see a raccoon.
This topic feels really present right now, as almost everyone I encounter seems exhausted. Most of us get something like a break for the end of the year, and it’s worth thinking about the question, what will you do, so that you can recharge for 2020 take 3?
I return to the topic of burnout often, and when I do, it’s always in the context of the Maslach burnout inventory (there’s a book [Amazon] but I think a good summary is sufficient). Most interesting to me are the five causes of burnout that are not overwork, which I think are key to understanding why doing less doesn’t necessarily heal.
The six causes of burnout are:
Lack of control.
Lack of reward.
Absence of fairness.
Lack of community.
Conflict in values.
Work overload.
As we start – at least in some countries – to see a way out of this situation, and a return to a more “normal” way of life, a recurrent theme I see is people describing burnout. This is unsurprising, given the list above.
Lack of control. It is normal, possibly even healthy, to feel powerless in the face of a global pandemic. Coming from a relatively privileged existence, I have never in my life felt like my wellbeing was so contingent on the competence of the government in the country I live in. However once I’d registered to vote, there was nothing more to do about the most useless man in Ireland being the health minister.
It is hard to live with so little control. Some coping mechanisms are harmless – like running a marathon around your living room, or obsessive crafting. Some are mixed, like the people who become armchair epidemiologists (impact dependent on reach and the quality of the armchair epidemiology). Some have done a lot of damage, like the people who protested, denied reality, even up to their dying breath.
I have come to see much of the bizarre behaviour over the past year as the search for some semblance of control where there is none.
Lack of reward. The reward for following the “rules” of living in a global pandemic is largely not getting sick, and not dying (YMMV). There is no dopamine hit here. Particularly not relative to all the things we gave up – the vacations we didn’t take, the meals out we didn’t enjoy, the art we didn’t experience, the hugs we didn’t share.
What did you celebrate over the past year? What achievements did you mark, what milestones did you commemorate?
There was such a dearth of celebration in 2020. Why? There were still new jobs, promotions, major achievements, birthdays, engagements. But there was nowhere to go, nothing to do, and a backdrop of misery that made happiness seem inconsiderate, somehow.
Absence of fairness. From people who are frustrated by the inequity of vaccine availability to the racists who view suffering as something for “other people”, unfairness – however perceived – is one of the core themes of the discourse.
Lack of community. This period has been one of loneliness and isolation. Offices closed, social engagements cancelled, curtailed or held on Zoom. Feeling low emotionally causes people to withdraw socially, which impacts their own sense of community, but if enough people you know are doing that, it will also impact your own sense of community.
Beyond that, it turns out that navigating a public health crisis where every interaction carries some component of risk is a social minefield. We have learned things about others we can’t unknow – and that has impacted our relationships.
Conflict in values. I am not a rule follower, but I have rigidly followed the rules of public health. I strive not to be a judgemental person, but it turns out I have a deep well of uncontrollable judgement for people who are unable – after a year of mask wearing – to put their mask over their $expletive nose. I deeply value my freedom, but I have accepted months constrained to a 5km radius. It turns out, some values around science and collective responsibility override everything else.
The way we have been living is not a way in which most people would choose to live. However we have coped, there is likely some level of dissonance there.
Work overload. Finally, the cause of burnout that everyone recognizes, and I’m sure a factor for many people’s pandemic burnout. Work is (often) harder, because we lost structures we relied on in normal times, because people are more likely to be out or struggling. Life is harder, because the logistics of many things got more rigid and often more difficult. Because there is no respite from our homes, and our homes are more demanding when they are home and office and gym and entertainment (and school and playground). Because downtime is lower quality so we just keep working instead.
Now what?
Perhaps you see yourself in these factors, what can you do with that?
Awareness can be a powerful tool, and understanding the causes of our burnout can be key to helping us address it constructively. Quitting your job might help, but if the key cause of your burnout is lack of community (and you like your coworkers), it might well make things worse. Each cause has at least one potential antidote.
Lack of control >> focus on what you can control.
Lack of reward >> celebrate more!
Absence of fairness >> push for equity, contribute what you can to addressing inequity.
Lack of community >> make effort socially.
Conflict in values >> explore the conflict, what values are you honoring instead?
Work overload >> high quality rest.
Something that I have found great comfort in, as I have tried to rebuild some semblance of creativity amid the exhaustion of this dark timeline, is following instructions. Whether it’s a peloton class or a crafting project, there is something reassuring about knowing that if I can mostly follow the steps, I will find some level of adequacy. This has given me a sense of control and reward, where previously there was none.
It’s not a magic wand, but it is a significant improvement, and if you’ve also been struggling with burnout, I hope you can find some manageable things that can help you address it, too.
Something that I was struggling with as 2020 came to a close was that I was leaving the year the same way I started it – feeling burnt out. Whilst things had improved – I had managed to get a better baseline, address life debt, change the situations that had caused me to be burnt out – I hadn’t managed to reconnect with my creativity.
Of course, the pandemic has not helped. Emotionally, the background news of the world being on fire is draining. Practically, I used to write on planes, in coffee shops… I managed a couple of posts written in hotel lobbies or bars, but a hotel stay is an expensive way to blog, and not always possible anyway with the periodic lockdowns. I used to spend a lot of time in art galleries, exploring, finding inspiration. This, too, has not been possible.
I have felt so lacking in drive and inspiration to create; I haven’t known where to begin. My Glowforge arrived in May and it took months for me to even do a test print – let alone anything more. My house renovation blog post moved achingly slowly. A common topic in coaching calls was that I wanted to write, periodically had ideas and yet… consistently failed to do it. Of course, these things often don’t get easier as time goes on, either. Writing is a habit; a practice… my habit was gone.
But as the working year wrapped my coach and I came up with a plan. 12 days off, something creative every day.
I took a broad view of what would constitute “being creative”, simply put it meant something would exist that didn’t before.
Day 1: Flowers
I started with something easy, where the only variable was raw materials. I knew if I bought home enough fresh flowers, I would do something with them. It has been mostly seasonal bouquets at the grocery store lately, but thankfully M&S came through for me. A great selection of both small and large roses, and some exciting seasonal extras.
I made up three vases. The first combined sticks of willow with lilies and eucalyptus leaves. It’s a really large arrangement (around 3ft x 1.5ft) but it’s been a lovely focal point in the kitchen.
The second is the simplest, three colors of small roses (white, deep pink and yellow) in a bowl vase.
The third is another large (not quite as large, ~2×1.5ft) my favourite pink blush roses with cream and some Alstroemeria (what I would call a “filler flower”) to round things out a bit.
Aside from being easy, flowers were the perfect way to start because they became a physical reminder and validation of the exercise. All of the arrangements are still going, and I’m excited to create new ones to replace them as they die out.
Total cost was in the region of €50-60, which is pretty reasonable for three good sized arrangements lasting around two weeks.
Day 2: Cake
Day two I was still not feeling particuarly “creative”, and so looked for something that it would be easy enough to see through if I started it. I settled on making a coca cola cake (this recipe looks similar, although I suggest single cream instead of milk).
It was going pretty well until I made a crucial mistake towards the end. I flipped it, regretted it, tried to unflip it, failed. I piled the pieces that had fallen off on top and iced it, figuring it would taste the same anyway. Unfortunately (or fortunately? for my sugar intake) that was not that great (two more mistakes: double cream because there was no single, and cooking it fully – it’s better slightly undercooked and gooey). I stuck most of it in the freezer, so maybe I’ll be grateful for it one day.
Day 3: Photography
Day 3 was December 25th, and I was still lacking in momentum. My partner and I went exploring, walking a completely new route. I took some photos, and tried some new styles when editing them.
Day 4: Bowl
Made a bowl on the Glowforge. This was following a pattern from the catalog, but the gluing was pretty finicky. I learned some things, bought a different kind of glue, and a few days later, much more easily, made a second one that is a little bit better aligned.
Still! It was an achievement and the first meaningful thing I had made on the Glowforge.
Day 4 was the day that I finally found some momentum and could see how the practice compounds. I photographed the flowers, incorporated the previous days walk into my “usual” walk.
I start making notes about how I’m feeling to turn into this post.
Already this idea has allowed me a broader lens. Instead of “I must write” or “I must use the glowforge” I think more broadly, and pick something I “want” to do, or that fits the energy / expertise I have. The bowl was a print from the catalog, next step will be a print from the catalog on a material where I have to encode the settings. I’m working up to printing some ideas I have from scratch, but I don’t have to start there.
What would it look like to do something “creative” every day, even once my time off is over?
Day 5: Friendship bracelet
During time spent searching around town for materials (more glue, keychains, spray paint…) I found thread for friendship bracelets. I used to make loads of them as a kid, and it seemed like a fun thing to try again as part of this project. I put on a movie and knotted away, by the end I had this. I gave it to a friend who was super touched, and a second friend asked for a thicker one (which took much longer to make), so in all it was a success.
The big project of day 5 was supposed to be a tea light holder, but I messed it up and put one side on inside out. So frustrating!
Question: is it creativity if it fails? I want to say yes, but I think the need to make things successful, to “finish” them, is one of the thing holding me back.
I learned a lot from my failures. Once I realized the tea light holder is wrong, I experimented with removing the protective coating with dish soap and a sponge (works great!) The bowl is not perfect, so I was happy to experiment on it. I ended up using them both to test out the metallic finishes I bought.
Day 6: Owl
I had had this kit for ages, so long I don’t even remember who gave it to me! (Sorry!) But in the mood for something different, I got it out the cupboard and spent the evening constructing it. I messed up a few times but I got there in the end, and I think the result is pretty cute!
I also printed out some leather letters for keychains. Blocked on keychains arriving (after searching Cork for them I eventually gave up and bought online). This was a momentous occasion, as it was my first time using a non proof-grade material in my Glowforge. I had been super anxious about this, but it worked fine. I bought some comparable leather, and used the same leather settings as the proof grade material. It probably needed a little more power, as some of the needle holes needed to be pushed through a bit more, but came out fine over all.
Finally, I took a second go at the bowl: this time with better glue (more precise, faster acting). Much better!
Day 7: Tiny Planter
I had been looking at this design for ages but lacked the required material (thick acrylic). Finally, I decided to try some fluorescent yellow acrylic I had but wasn’t sure about. Again, it wasn’t proofgrade (I love proofgrade, but shipping wood and acrylic from the US to Ireland seems bonkers) my friend Seb recommended a more local supplier and gave me his acrylic cut settings. My plan: print twice, glue together.
Unfortunately, I had two problems. The first was the material was a bit too big for the Glowforge. Apparently you can score (very deeply!) and snap acrylic, but there’s a real risk it will shatter and anyway… I lacked the tools to do the scoring. Thankfully the lovely man at our local hardware store offered to saw it in half for me. The second problem was that the design uses a lot of acrylic, and I didn’t have enough to print twice.
Instead I decided to make a tiny version. I sized everything down to 50%, and… voila!
It turned out adorable so I figured I could get four tiny planters out of the material I had. Unfortunately, I had a bunch of problems with the side pieces snapping off, and being just a smidge too wide for the cut. I think the design would work better at 60% rather than 50%, but I would need to check that. US sizing is in inches and it’s ~1/4″ (thick) and ~1/8″ (medium), but Europeans size in mm and it’s 0.5 (thick) to 0.3 (medium). Imperial “measurements”: why. So inexact and frustrating.
But still, I love it, and managed to produce one extra for a friend! Now to get a tiny plant to put inside it!
Also: experiments with spray paint and acrylic for the tea light holder. Conditioned the leather for key rings. Found some interesting supplies at the art store! Started on another, much wider friendship bracelet on request from another friend.
Day 8: Custom Print
Took a picture, used an app (Rookie Cam) to render it as a drawing, touched it up to remove artifacts (downloaded GIMP!), added a border and made it a PDF (keynote) and printed it. I did a test on some draftboard, and found a step I needed to remove.
Quite excited about this, will go through my archive and see if I can find other pictures this can work for. I think they need to be structurally recognizable, but low detail. This one with the (Skellig) island and the bird is perfect.
Day 9: Keychain!
The keychains I ordered online arrived earlier than expected – yay! I took the leather letters, applied leather conditioner and leather protector, then stitched together with two colours of thread. This was pretty hard and I stabbed myself multiple times with the needle; there was quite a bit of blood. I also ended up unpicking it and restitching it tighter, but in the end I’m happy with it. I like the two tone thread look!
Also: wrote the first WTHIC since October. Continued work on thicker friendship bracelet. Went through photos to create more of the day 8 style prints.
Day 10: Retro Camper Desk Organizer
My biggest piece yet, the Glowforge January design (I subscribe to Premium). It seemed like a good way to start 2021 and the #makedontbreak challenge (my friend Rachael suggested in response to my WTHIC email).
This was so fun! I am really happy with how the metallic paint came out.
Sprayed the tea light holder with a copper spray, so that is now “finished” bar the electronic tea light (which I have searched all of Cork for and cannot be shipped to Ireland from the UK). I’m not totally happy with the finish, so I may respray it again later, but for now but I think it will look okay once the light it in it.
Also: unpicked day 9’s keychain and restitched it tighter. Yet more work on the thicker friendship bracelet.
Day 11: Cross Stitch
Made this piece from a kit a friend gave me ages ago. I think I unpicked about as many stitches as I ended up with, but I’m pretty happy with how it turned out!
Also: letter keychains for my friend and her husband! And, I finally finished the thicker friendship bracelet. 12 threads: never again.
Day 12: Bracelet
This was my most tricky creation yet. I had the idea that it would be fun to engrave my own handwriting on things, like the custom prints from day 8, but why not also a leather bracelet. Who knew how hard this would be.
Step 1: Write on a piece of paper. Attempt to write in a straight line.
Step 2: Use the scanning function on the phone to capture the text.
Step 3: Crop and make the background transparent (I thought this was easy to do in keynote, but in the end used some online service for this).
Step 4: Build up bracelet design in Keynote.
Step 5: Try and turn it into an SVG. Fail. Build it from scratch in Gimp. Somehow still fail to turn it into an SVG. Try various online services. Fail. Eventually find this site and get a reasonable SVG.
Step 6: Upload design to the Glowforge, and carefully select which bits to cut / engrave / ignore.
Step 7: Try on draft board, check size, adjust as necessary.
Step 8: Print on leather!
Step 9: Add thread and turn it into a bracelet.
I am summarizing here, because step 5 was actually around 100 steps and took about an hour but finally I have made something that if not perfect is wearable. I really love the way the handwriting came out.
How I want to improve it: double side it, and edge it with stitches, that will hold the thread in making it more sturdy.
Bonus: yet another keychain.
What I Learned
Momentum builds momentum. Looking back through the whole thing it’s really clear that I started with very little momentum but once I got going it really compounded. The first days I really just eked out one small project a day, but not long into it I was pushing multiple things along, and achieving larger things.
Ambiguity can be freeing. The lack of specificity helped a lot. It freed me from things that had become a chore (“write!” “use the machine you spent a fortune on and years waiting for!”) and focused me on how I wanted to feel – creative. It also set the bar lower on days when I needed it to be lower, and allowed me to get started at all.
Significant change requires singular focus. I had this time off work, but I did not fix my sleep schedule, the house is chaos, and I haven’t been outside every day (normally a core rule for me). I have generally lapsed at everything I would “usually” do, in order to address the one thing that I really wanted to change. This isn’t sustainable long term, but for twelve days? Whatever. And, after over a year of trying to “feel less burnt out” / “find some creative energy”, I actually did, so who cares about… anything else at all. Yes, I’ll have to bring those things back in, and find some sense of balance, but that’s fine – now I know I have it in me to create again.
What now?
The last three days of my project coincided with the first three of the #MakeDon’tBreak challenge, so I’m going to try and keep doing something every day through January [twitter thread]. We’ll be in lockdown all through January, so distractions are pretty minimal, and this seems like a nice way to spend it. I have more prints (like day 8), more friendship bracelets, more keychains, and another (terrifyingly complex) cross stitching kit. Wish me luck!
I did an interview a while ago (all delays my fault) with Yerbo who created the Burnout Index, talking about burnout, kindness, good friends and self care.
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone (Amazon) was one of the most impactful books I read in 2019. It was extremely readable and super insightful. Reading this book fundamentally changed my approach to therapy, helped me accelerate my progress, and ultimately finish* (*at least for now) therapy.
Therapy is such a personal thing and it’s hard to know what happens behind the scenes, what is a normal struggle, what the process looks like. This book was the only thing I’ve read that gave me any insight into that. It’s also easy to unintentionally get in your own way, and the author is so open and honest about how she gets in her own way, that it helped me see how I was getting in my own way and stop – or at least get in my own way less. I’ve bought this book for multiple people, and recommend it whole heartedly.
This Too Shall Pass (Amazon) is not as well written, honestly I would not describe it as well written at all. It was recommended to me by a friend who is a trainee therapist. It’s a series of case studies, each of them highlighting particular points of struggle and phases of life. The case studies are arranged into themes, and each theme concludes with some general insight.
I still found it worth reading, there is this genuine empathy, care, and understanding of every person depicted and I really appreciated their stories and the insight into their struggles. I read it at a point where I was struggling with the enforced life changes of the pandemic, and wondering whether I should reach out to my therapist, but feeling unenthused about therapy via Zoom. The book helped me step back a bit, normalized some of the things that I was struggling with, and encouraged me to have a bit more empathy for myself and ultimately feel better without needing to return to therapy. Something I really appreciated about it was that it’s by a British therapist who practices in London, which is more culturally akin than one based in LA/USA.
Bonus book, not strictly about therapy, but Burnout (Amazon) was hugely influential on me and fundamentally changed the way I think about success and wellbeing. I have bought well in excess of twenty copies for other women, and think every professional woman should read it. It was so well written, so readable, and such a great articulation of forms and effects of stress resulting from unrealistic and unreasonable expectations on women. I tweeted snippets and insights as I read it, which you can find in this thread.
In September, I disappeared in Seoul and caused everyone who cares about me to think I was having some kind of breakdown. I deactivated my Twitter account, and refused to engage with anyone other than my closest friends. I got to the point where I felt I had to drop everything, and then I came back and chose things that could return, one by one. Some things still haven’t made it back. Maybe they never will.
What took me to that point was three team turnarounds in three years. The final one, with a fractured shoulder whilst buying and renovating a house (also a turnaround). But that is the big story – what took me to that point was a thousand choices, made at various decision points, that consistently put my own well-being last. What took me to that point was some deep seated need to act as-if I was some highly-optimized, resilient robot rather than a physically hurt human being with her own needs and life.
It was hard to untangle this, because the ways in which I am good at the turnaround are directly related to the ways in which I am bad at being a human in the world. I focus on the important – I let things that are not important go (but life is made up of unimportant things and it’s hard if none of them are “done”). I stop dysfunction like some kind of human shock absorber – I am afraid to let people into my own dysfunction, to the point of being willing to shut them out entirely. I have high standards – the standards I would hold other people to are nothing compared to the standards I have for myself. I see it as my job to live in the space of ambiguity and create clarity for other people – I don’t prioritize resolving ambiguity for myself. I am very driven by values – sometimes the values I hold conflict with what I need as a human.
“Show me your heart like transparent Glass Catfish” ~Seoul Aquarium
In this space, when people expressed concern it was met first with bewilderment, then resentment. Bewilderment, because this was – as I understood it – what I had been asked to do. It was always going to be terrible for me, the real surprise was how badly my shoulder was injured and that renovating a house was extremely terrible too. Resentment, when that concern came as feedback, to which I wanted to respond, “I did what you needed, I’m sorry it didn’t look pretty, too.”
In a distributed environment, no-one needs to know how you really are.
Around the time I disappeared in Seoul. I was winding up on the third turnaround team, handing it back to the proper person. I was deeply burnt out, and my then-boss hadn’t decided what team I would go to, resulting in me drifting around without a clear place to go, unsure of what I could take on – my life in general feeling on hold around medical appointments and waiting.
At home, I found a therapist, finally unpacked and started living out of closets rather than boxes, did the work of building a life in the city I had spent the best part of a year calling home but didn’t feel like home yet, prioritized medical appointments above everything else (with some help from my mom). At work I covered a month of parental leave for one of my peers, and the engineer leading a huge project (the new editor) asked me to come help him. I joked to my peer leading that part of the organization that he had brought me to her like a cat with a dead animal offering. I “joked”. It felt true.
“I’ve found out that life and soul are the most essential elements in art.” ~Arario Museum in Space, Seoul
We rolled out the new editor. I moved to another team, reporting to the CEO again – I was grateful to him for resolving the drifting, but felt like I was doing what everyone else wanted me to do – although how could it be any other way, when I didn’t know what I wanted myself? I kept going to therapy, got to the place where I could confront some of my less appealing characteristics, spent time with friends, finally shared pictures of the house. Had moments where I could contemplate feeling okay again, even if that was definitively, absolutely, not right now. Always contingent on things outside of my control.
Today I feel okay, even happy. Things are not perfect, but I have a sense of direction and purpose, some kind of stability – some internal, some external. Various things came together, and it started to feel like enough to go on. I started to feel like enough.
Only the most perceptive people notice when you disappear
Raccoon ~Seoul
This was not supposed to be a story about burnout, this was supposed to be the things I learned working through it and being able to see the other side. But it feels dishonest to write about how to make teams more functional without some level of insight into what that process has done to me. It feels futile to talk about working through burnout, without some insight into the context that burnout was within. Only the most perceptive people notice when you disappear, especially if the Achievements keep accumulating because it’s easy to assume busy instead. Not everyone can be present when you’re a shadow, simpler and less confronting to say “let me know if you need anything” and disappear instead.
When I think about burnout, I always come back to the Maslach Burnout Inventory (there is a book, but it’s more succinctly summarized in this article). It is a helpful framework for thinking about burnout, in particular the five causes of burnout that are not overwork. They are: lack of control, insufficient reward, lack of community, absence of fairness, and conflict in values.
Lack of Control
Lack of control was a huge factor for me. Both on a personal level (the healthcare system and builders), as a human at work (what is my job now?) and in a work context (these things are not working well, but out of my remit to fix). This is really what triggered my disappearance in Seoul, when I realized going with the flow was leaving me completely miserable, and even (in a certain context) triggering an existential panic where I wasn’t sure if I existed at all. It was a topic that came up again and again in therapy.
Owl, Tokyo
Letting go of everything allowed me to focus on things within my control. The relationships I was confident were good, the appointments and calls I could make to move things forward, the remit I had at work. I refused to engage with the ambiguous or bad, and demonstrated to myself that most things continued without them. As I let them back in, I was very deliberate in giving them an appropriate place in the hierarchy of importance, and any supporting structure needed to be manageable.
I learned more is within my control than I thought, and that I need to accept and manage the impact of things outside of my control. The result of this is that I feel more centred and less blown about by uncertainty or ineptitude. I change what I can change, influence what I can influence, and when neither is an option, I aim to contain it and move on.
Insufficient Reward
One way to look at the situation I was in – drifting – was that the reward for doing a good job was the ambiguity, because the only decision that had been made was that I wouldn’t go back to my previous team. I understood (and agreed) to this, but it definitely left me living in a space of uncertainty that got harder and harder to manage over time. I felt less confident – did my boss really value me? Would other people think I had been demoted? Would what I ended up being given be something I even wanted?
In response to this, I searched for validation elsewhere. Focused on shipping things: internal blog posts, progress reports, external articles. Hoarded complements. And with people I trust, admitted that I felt terrible and straight up asked for the validation I needed. These things helped in the moment, although fundamentally they needed to come with a change in mindset too – one of looking for information that supports a positive hypothesis, rather than a negative one.
Lack of Community
It is a truth universally acknowledged that leadership positions are lonely. In many ways, I got myself into this situation by so badly wanting my peers to be a team and being prepared to do things in service of that. At the lowest point, though, I did feel disconnected from them in terms of tempo – they were busy and focused and I was drifting around. They had direction and I was lost.
This was a time to lean on the community I had worked hard to build. When I left our group to move to the new team, one of the most meaningful things was the support and enthusiasm of my peers in seeing it as a positive move – even as I wasn’t sure – and as I left the channels, one of them veto-ing my departure from our backchannel and peer support call.
“If all relationships were to reach equilibrium then this building would dissolve” ~Arario Museum in Space, Seoul
other people assumed I felt the most confident at a point where I felt the least confident
It was also a time to build community. On my new team, and with other groups of people who it’s in our remit to help. Peers in other parts of the business, all engineering team leads, everyone involved in our hiring processes. This work is just beginning, but I am genuinely excited for it.
Last week I was at a leadership offsite where we had an intense development week. A coaching exercise with a colleague I don’t normally have much interaction with surfaced that other people assumed I felt the most confident at a point where I felt the least confident. This is one of the dissonances that can arise when people don’t see each other, and I think in the absence of other cues, can make it easy to assume someone is busy and not reach out. I’m not totally sure what to do with this, but I can at least model the behavior I want, and make more effort to check in.
Absence of Fairness
There was one situation in particular that really got to me – a lot of my time was wasted, I was denied any kind of input, and a situation was forced onto the team that I felt negated much of the effort I had made. It felt like a situation where “assuming best intent” and trying to be helpful – usually a good thing and a strength – in the wrong situation feel like an attack vector.
I’m not confident in what I’m taking from this, yet. On a concrete level, the importance of documenting and being direct. I think it’s easy to assume that “other people notice” but if they don’t this can lead to a cycle of frustration. Usually little things are just that – little things. However sometimes they are a product of something much bigger and much more problematic. If no-one flags the little things, the patterns take much longer to surface.
On a meta level, it’s reminded me to ask, “how much is this is my problem?” and accept that sometimes the best we can do is manage the impact of failure, because we do not have the power to prevent it.
Conflict in Values
“Inframince” ~Arario Museum in Space, Seoul
This came up, and particularly when people’s stated values differ from their lived values – creating a compound effect. This is a concept that has come up a lot in coaching for me – for every turnaround project – the question “what values is this hitting for you?”
so much of good management seems to be about being a decent human being
I am personally very values driven; so much of good management seems to be about being a decent human being. Of course, being decent is rarely the easiest path in the immediate frame, and often a lot of work. This is the kind of dissonance that will escalate a disagreement to existential crisis for me.
Again, it is a strength, values scale much better than people or process and creating values on teams is part of how I have been effective, and able to hand things off. However, the downside is clear and intense. I think this is true for a lot of effective people who burn out – we are good because we care, but the downside is that care is for a reason – often values – and we struggle when those values are violated. It can seem like the path for success is to be more self-serving and care less, but that just creates the situations that we claim we don’t want. If we want things to be different, we have to make them different as we can, but in a way that isn’t self-destructive, or requires changing the core of who we are.
This is not a concrete takeaway, so concretely, I seek to support people rather than systems, make sure my work aligns with and communicates clear values, and ask questions and seek clarity on things that are open to interpretation or are potentially problematic.
Work Overload
“Live without dead time” ~Museum of Art, Seoul
Of course, in all of this, working a lot was a factor. I worked long hours and regularly over weekends (even if “just” travelling so as to avoid missing a weekday). In many ways overload was a multiplying factor, though; I used working to avoid things I didn’t want to deal with (like the building site or the medical system), and the fact that I had worked so hard compounded the existential problems of reward, fairness and values.
The first thing I changed here was working to make the time I did take off better. Moving to a place where I could have a separate office (I work from home), and organizing my living space and containing the mess such that I could have a place to relax without seeing a physical todo list in the form of things not yet done or tidy. The better my physical space has been, the better I have felt. The first time I had a weekend where I didn’t have any domestic stuff I needed to do was a milestone.
Within that, I made more effort to stop work by 7pm, and then be deliberate in spending my time on what would make me feel better. E.g. making an active choice between the gym and bringing some sense of order. When I needed to work a weekend, I made a point to balance that with other things I needed – like working in a coffee shop for some human contact, and breaking up delivery points with things for me. And also making sure I didn’t make the exact same mistake the following week and have to work a subsequent weekend.
The second thing was a resolution to take statutory holidays. These are not super meaningful to me – as an atheist, I don’t celebrate religious holidays, and in a distributed environment there are always other people working. However coming to see them as like weekends – arbitrary days that we have agreed as a society not to work – has been helpful. Yes, I could take a three day weekend any time when flights to Paris are cheaper, but I can take that three day weekend and the arbitrary one too (and using the arbitrary one to play video games is completely reasonable).
Similarly, I started taking time off for medical stuff. This wasn’t always possible (it’s unfortunate if one is in hospital on a day that is supposed to be release day, for example), but overwhelmingly has been. If I have to go to the UK to see the doctor, I take the entire period, rather than trying to work around flights and transit and appointments, to do what is going to be best for me. This was a bit of a culture shock for me, at the Conglomerate when people were sick they “worked from home”, but in an environment where people already work from home people actually take sick days. Including me.
Finally, I think it’s always worth taking time where there is opportunity. I took an extended break between ending my last job and starting this one (I fulfilled a life goal and went to Tuvalu). I made two weeks of space between the first team and the second, even though I had some work to do, I was free of responsibility and had two amazing long weekends (one in London, and one in Paris). Winding up on the second team made space for the disappearance in Seoul – where I had many positive experiences (including meeting a raccoon!) even though I didn’t feel particularly positive in myself.
The Other Side
The TL;DR of this is perhaps that I have spent a lot of time lately confronting the shadow side of my strengths – the personal cost of the professional “success”, and how that manifests as burnout. It’s hard to understate how confronting this has been, how difficult, and it’s still far from done.
I know, though, it’s something I am far from alone in. Burnout is the epidemic of millenials, and the epidemic of tech, particularly in those of us who genuinely and deeply take on the work of inclusion, of trying to make the functional environments we have never, or rarely, experienced ourselves. A while ago I wrote that the third shift of inclusion work is to heal ourselves and more than ever I believe this is true. Broken leaders cannot create functional environments – especially if we have power, we owe it to the people we work with to do the work on ourselves that makes us safe and reasonable people for others to show up to.
“Forgive Yourself” ~Sign in Tulum, Mexico
Thanks to my colleagues who engaged so openly in our leadership training, which helped me break out the other side of this, my boss who looked out for me at the worst point, and the amazing community in our engineering managers slack, who started the conversation that made me realize I was ready to write this, and inspired me to do so.
I found the Truth About Burnout (Amazon) from this article, which I think gives the main takeaways from the book far more succinctly. I did find the book interesting and I’m glad I read it, but I wouldn’t necessarily encourage other people to. It’s a little dated in places (it was published in 2000), and what it goes into in depth is mainly fixing the experience within broken organisations. If you’re not dealing with a broken organisation, the summary would give you a good list of things to look out for in yourself, or so that you don’t become one.
The concept of the Maslach Burnout Inventory was really eye-opening for me. There are six causes of burnout… and only one is overwork. When I was working in a job I hated, and wondering why I felt so terrible, thinking it couldn’t be burnout because my hours were reasonable and it turns out it totally could be. It was.
The other five causes of burnout: lack of control, lack of reward, absence of fairness, lack of community, conflict in values.
I’m currently watching the stats about the attrition of women in technical roles play out in my network, which is depressing. Leaving myself seemed less bad because I thought “maybe it’s just me” or “maybe I was just unlucky”. Now, when women tell me that the job they have is their last in the industry, and why, I connect those reasons to the five causes.
Lack of control -> HR process. Opaque hiring and promotion processes.
Lack of reward -> In SV women make 86.4 cents on the dollar (the pay gap varies across the US and internationally).
Absence of fairness -> Men promoted on potential, women asked to “be patient”.
Lack of community -> Being on of few people like you, having to take on the bulk of the work of “fixing” things.
Conflict in values -> Where do I begin, maybe with white men’s obsession with “meritocracy” and the hiring “bar”.
My point: I have been thinking about the concepts in this book a lot, and I’m glad I read it as an exercise in taking the time to connect these things together.
Before graduated college was dishwasher, waitress, heavy equipment washer, pilot car driver, sign painter, production assistant, bank teller, park ranger, metal sculpture (that was degree).
After graduated realised need to figure out what to do for a living. Decided to be a web designer. Taught herself.
Dad was a U.S marine, sky diver, scuber diver, karate instructor, occasionally big jerk. Taught 1) life is short. Be smart be kind, life is short don’t waste time doing you don’t like doing. 2) love what you do, because life if short.
Loss of 15yo brother at 11, learn – life is short. At 27 lost her mom, reinforced this message. Taking the positive, love her work. In a time of loss, found that work was thing that could poor pain, passion, love energy into. Made her work better. Sure that work saved her life, was a sanctuary.
April 9, 2012. Dad was doing something he loved – riding his motorcycle from her house to his, didn’t make it. Again found, positive from something negative, he died doing something he loved. Lived a life of making decisions to do things he loved, so the odds of him dying doing something he loved were pretty high.
Thought it would be the same, work would be saving grace, everything would be fine.
This time it wasn’t. Work was the balloon, string cut, drifted away. Fell to the ground like a limp noodle.
Thought could just keep going.
It’s important to understand the difference between dissatisfaction and burnout. Wasn’t dissatisfaction. Was different.
When designing experiences for people, you need to be able to connect.
Single mom of two beautiful girls, could not give up, sell everything and run away to the mountains.
Dad was into self help, was so cheesy to her growing up. Thought, dad really found something in it, threw herself into it in search of something that she liked.
Reinforced – needed to pick self up, and carry self through this.
Movie Rocky – unconventional training methods. Drinking raw eggs and punching meat.
Seen movie hundreds of times, “It doesn’t matter if I lose this fight, all I want to do is go the distance”. Realised most important part of the movie.
Started looking design process. Realised. “I am a designer I have 15 years of tools in my Mary Poppins bag for solving problems.” “I have what I need”.
You could design your life, just like your life is a product. We’re making stuff. We pour all this emotion and soul into the stuff that we make, had never before thought of flipping it onto herself.
If my life is the product, and I can control the outcome, what do I do?
No one size fits all, basic process.
Step 1: Understand.
“Breakdown occurs when clarity of vision is lacking.”
First mobile product was the zappos mobile app. Had been working on website for about a year, was approached to look at the mobile apps.
You can take these questions and turn them at yourself. Her goal: to get unburntout.
Stakeholders are really important in this too – these are the people who depend on you and you depend on.
Whatever the goal is, have clarity of vision.
Step 2: Discovery.
Context – users – this applies to life too. To be a better mom, did stakeholder interviews with kids. Interviewed teachers, talked to their friends.
Brand – can take that at a personal level. Need to decide what the personality of the brand is.
Existing patterns – hugely important, what patterns exist in user behaviour, what patterns exist in the world.
Feasibility.
Behaviours – want to understand the environment, look at day to day rituals, what is working what is not working.
Existing processes.
Once gathered – can brainstorm things that are targeted at a very specific problem. Then you get solutions, and puzzle pieces.
Side-note: What’s good – looking at product, looking at what is wrong, don’t forget what’s good.
Step 3: Design
Once you understand what problem you are designing, you have puzzle pieces. Design is nothing but solving puzzles.
Problem is carrying stuff. Hate bags. If has a bag, leave it.
Disney came up with a solution – band, magic band, photo ID, credit card, hotel room key. All these things in one magic band, don’t need to carry stuff, they have solved that problem! If only we had that in the real world (apple watch).
The Power of Habit – story of convinving americans to become a nation of people who brush their teeth. Trigger, action, reward.
These are patterns we need to think about when designing products, but also when designing your life. The reward re-enforces the action.
BJ Fogg tiny habits. Improving health. Drinking water feels small and insignificant. Fill my water glass – do it after waking up. Automatically drink the water after fill the glass. Break it down so small, impossible not to do it.
Because of little things, was able to fold this sort of habit form into life.
Break it down so small that you can’t deny it in your life.
Celebrate the little things.
Do some kind of physical manifestation of the reward.
Get something out there – whether it’s your product, a beta, or your life, then you can immediately get feedback on it. That feedback helps you.
Step 4: Iterate
Once you have feedback you can start iterating on things and make it better!
Jesse James Garret – watch, fail or succeed, learn, try again.
We need to iterate.
Really rare that we throw something perfect out there the first time.
“All I want to do is go the distance” – Rocky lost, but he went the distance. Then there was Rocky 2 and he totally kicked ass.
Test, tweak revise. Don’t give up. There’s so much out there.
Wrapping Up
The tools – you have the skills. Whatever you do to build the products you’re building, you can use these.
Worked on products. Works on life. Learned take these skills, and coaching, can not just help people inside companies, can actually help companies. Came back around, now focused on people, not products. Means that people are building better products.
Everything needed to get out of burnout was inside, just had to figure out how to apply it.
I wrote about burning out, and the aftermath, and my post-burnout-phase. But the other day a friend and I were talking about burnout in general terms, and seeing other people burn out, why that is, what it looks like. It’s interesting, because we know it when we see it, but we don’t talk about what it is, and how we get it.
Burning out is a function of ROI. It’s outcomes you care about, over effort you put in. Result gets too low, for too long, that’s burnout. Tolerance for low ROI varies, and maybe grit is a measure of that.
Which is why you can see when people are burning out. You notice that they have got more jaded. See that they started to care less, because caring became too hard. These are the classic responses to burning out – to make the equation more manageable – reduce the effort, reduce the attachment to the outcome.
When I got to that point, I took a break, which worked wonders. But now I pro-actively work on the equation.
Diversify Your Outcomes
If you only care about one thing, and that thing is not going so well, your life is not going so well.
Say you’re focused on getting promoted, and you miss out, maybe for reasons that have nothing to do with how hard you are working, or how talented you are (e.g. you’re on a project that is failing). That sucks. Your equation just blew up.
But, if you make that just a part of it, and add something else up there like learning a new language, or honing some “soft” skills then maybe you still want to hide away for the weekend with your favourite TV series and some ice cream, but you can come back Monday focused on one of the aspects that is more rewarding right now.
This is why I find having a side project super helpful, because it’s free from the vagaries of other people. There may never be a spectacular ROI on it, but because I have complete control, there’s never a zero return on things I care about, either.
Refocus your Effort
Some things in the tech industry are just pretty thankless. Process, or (for women especially) emotional work. We pretend that we are so special and brilliant that we don’t need things that other more mature industries need like standards, quality control, and managers. We’re wrong, but being right is not always it’s own reward.
Maybe you’ve spent time making sure that there is a process, and as a result you have high test coverage, low defect rate, and you’re shipping on time. But nobody notices, because good process is unobtrusive, and deadlines are seen as some unreasonable and creativity sapping bureaucratic overhead. It’s a mystery, why that project was on time, and that other one was so late. The explanation is not chronic disorganisation and poor prioritisation, but that the late one much have been so much harder. To which I say – probably, but did it have to be?
If your efforts are spent in places which are (often culturally, and structurally) unappreciated, maybe you want to put your efforts elsewhere. Sometimes this means another project, and sometimes this means how you split your time. If you spend 50% of your time cleaning up after other people (whether they are writing bad code, or just being disorganised), and it’s getting you nowhere, try and reduce that to 20% and see what happens.
One thing I do, to manage the amount of time I spend on process stuff, is if I think there is a process problem I point it out, but then when no-one acts on it, I let it go. Then later, when the same problem manifests I say, “you know, I really think X would help” and specifically mention what I think it addresses. Or, if I spend a bunch of time writing tests, I focus on why, “now we can just make minor changes without having to do all this manual evaluation”.
Recently I tweeted about quitting corporate feminism, and instead focusing on supporting other women (and sometimes men) who are trying to do things. This has helped me on a number of levels. Firstly, it makes it easier to be more intentional, because I don’t ask “is this the Right Thing do do?” (an overwhelming number of things are) but “who am I supporting?” and “do I want to support them?” Secondly, it means I stopped caring about the coorperate ROI, and my ROI is from the person I’m supporting – did I help them? Do they value what I did?
Play a Longer Game
Sometimes the answer is just… patience. You work really hard, and you do something great… and at the end of the quarter, or year, it might be reflected in your evaluation or bonus. You do a bunch of grungy refactoring work, and finally months later people realise they have been able to move faster as a result. You set up a test framework and system and 6 months later someone finally observes that there have been fewer outages, and rollbacks.
Exercise is a good example of something that has to be a long game, that people often give up on. I’ll spend a couple of hours in the gym today, but if I notice that tomorrow it will only be in a bad way from being sore. Keep going anyway.
Blogging is another. I had a really low moment a few weeks ago where I felt like I was just pushing things out into the void, and that it was pointless. But I kept gong, and a while later I get two messages within a couple of hours of each other from people telling me how much they appreciated my writing.
x/y = z
Sometimes we can’t control the end result, but we can always control parts of how we get there. Sometimes we need to step back, and see the full equation, insert in some extra things. Sometimes we need to step away. Knowing which is which is hard – waiting patiently, and waiting futilely look very similar for a long time.
The best thing we can do is be intentional about our own personal burnout equations. We need to know what outcomes we care about, and whether the effort we are putting into them is sustainable. It’s a lot easier to ask for what you need when you know what that is.
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