Sunday Braindroppings: Coping With the Effects of Burnout

Whether we perceive ourselves as "sloths" or "go-getters," I think we all have our limits.

How we actually find — and reach — those limits varies a lot from person to person, of course. Similarly, we all have different ways of moving on, when we reach those limits.

Where is my boat going...?

"Diminishing Returns:" This Ain't Working!

Personally speaking, "diminishing returns for increased effort" was always a killer, particularly in (the many) situations where I felt like I had no viable options, or my choices were between staying "in the fire" and perhaps jumping into an acid bath to get away from the fire... and instead being eaten alive by the acid.

I experienced it during my stint in the IT industry in Korporate Amerika in the mid-1990's: We were eternally expected to put in more work and hours (so as to keep "investors" happy with ever-increasing earnings-per-share) while the ways to earn performance bonuses grew fewer and smaller all the time.

Eventually, I started waking up in the morning, realizing that I had no life. And the thought of going to work would send me to the edge of having a panic attack.

Which can be a fine realization to have... but it can also be hard to just walk away when you have a $400 car payment and a $1650 house payment and no savings because you have all this debt, and student loans and.... there's usually a long list of rationalizations...

Of course, other people reach their "burnout point" through different paths.

That said, change begins with the realization and admittance that you are — in fact — burned out. A lot of people avoid that point at just about any and all costs because it feels like an admission of failure, and that's more than their egos can handle.

I Don't Want This Life Anymore!

Miraculously, the problem "solved itself" in my case when one of my former co-workers "sniped" me away from the Korporate nightmare to join him at a much smaller and friendlier company creating "education-disguised-as gaming" software for 8-16 year olds.

It was basically a "cake" job creating and editing text pages, and it lasted all of 10 weeks before the two founding brothers had a fight, sued each other, and 80% of the workforce was laid off in the shuffling around.

This led to a different job from which I lost my spot to "outsourcing," a few months later, after the third round of "accept a wage reduction or you can walk." So I walked, because I couldn't live on $7.50 an hour. At that point... I was done.

Calendula

And that's where I started my life as a self-employed person... upping my previous occasional technical writing free-lance gigs to a full-time venture.

It was a time when I learned that you pretty much have to deconstruct your life from the top, if you want to go your own way. Meaning that the starting point isn't to create "work that supports your life," but to create "a life that can be supported by your work."

I got rid of the car and rode the bus and a bicycle; sold the house (at a loss) and moved into a 1-bedroom apartment.

I have been self-employed for over 20 years, now. And I am approaching burnout there, too. The situation may be different, but the dynamic is the same: A spiral of more and more work leading to slowly declining returns.

So, What Happens?

I have been studying the causes and effects of burnout in people for while, trying to gather some common threads... the the things that almost invariably seem present can best be summed up in the words "entropy" and "perceived lack of options."

We tend to build lives around things turning out a certain way and whereas we more readily deal with major disasters, we're less inclined to act on "slow declines" (aka "entropy") because nothing feels that bad.

So you keep plodding forward... until you eventually realize (as a metaphor... any number of possibilities could be YOUR reality) that over the past ten years your weekly income has gone from $500 to $450 while your grocery bill has gone from $500 a month to $600 a month.

No great "disaster" has happened, but you keep running faster and longer, while making less and less progress. And that's generally how people burn out.

You could be like me, with stable self-employment that makes a little bit less profit every year... or you could have a really good outside job that pays well, but you're bucking under the weight of your $200,000 student loan debt that will take 20 years to pay off... and keeping up with the payments mean you are always accepting overtime, and never get to take a vacation, and forget about buying a house before you're 50.

And this is why people so often suddenly "drop out."

Reinventing Ourselves

And so — as I have mentioned (more than!) a few times here — I am in the process of reinventing myself. For the Nth time.

It's about letting go of "the known", which is basically not working... and striking out towards the UNknown which we have absolutely no way of knowing whether or not will work.

But something has to be done, because the daily feeling of "No matter WHAT I do today, it will not be enough, and it will not lead to even a moment of peace and relief" must be removed from the equation... because it is as the root of the burned out feeling.

White Clematis

It's not always a great choice. In many instances — and I am feeling this a bit — we are trading our pervasive feelings of desperation for new feelings of anxiety over where this new direction will take us. And if you have a history of "mixed" (shitty) outcomes, it becomes no easier to visualize a bright road ahead.

But... we must keep trying!

Thanks for reading, and have an amazing Sunday!

Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!

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Created at 190526 11:03 PST
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