Dealing with Burnout
At the end of last year, I attended the DDD conference and one of the presentations really resonated with me – the one about burnout. The speaker went through some of the symptoms, side effects, and manifestations of what burnout does, and it was a light bulb moment. “Aha, this is what people talk about when they talk about burnout.”
I also recognised that I’d burnt out, not just once but probably multiple times over the last couple of years. Each time it was slightly different - different circumstances and pressures, but it was still burnout. I vowed at the end of last year to make some changes in regards to that.
Using some time off that I had in January I went through a really big reset on work and life. I needed a different perspective and worked through the focus course to help establish that and to be honest, I've felt much better this year. But at the same time, work has really been challenging.
We’re working through a university merger, which I think is the biggest ever. It’s all brand new (so we’ve been told on repeat) and so it's a major thing to deal with. I expected work to be hard this year, and it has been, but in very different ways than I anticipated.
If you’d asked me a week ago, I probably wouldn’t have said anything about burnout. In a lot of ways I feel "underworked" from what I had anticipated. But this toot from Mandy Brown described burnout not just occurring because you’re busy but because you’re feeling under-utilised:
Something I oft talk about with my clients: the worst burnout I experienced wasn’t the result of overwork but of being underutilized and feeling useless. We have to get specific about burnout if we’re going to address it: https://everythingchanges.us/
This resonated because what I’ve been struggling with the most over the last few months is not too much work - but being ignored when it comes to my work and expertise.
From a professional perspective, I’ve achieved quite a lot over the last five years. We are just finishing off the final batch of courses for our 7th fully online program for the university. I’ve been involved in all of them in different ways, they also resulted in me burning out and taking on lots of responsibility for getting things done. I did do this knowingly, I always figured that this was moving towards something bigger in my career. This was all an opportunity to learn, grow, change, and know what not to do in the future.
The last few months have not been that. The last few months have not been building on the expertise of myself or my colleagues, who’ve all worked on creating different programs and doing the work that we’re required to do right now. That is to do course development on an unprecedented scale and in very little time. The scale part is the new piece, but over the years myself and my peers have been doing this across multiple areas, projects and programs. This is what I've been preparing for.... and now I've been shut out. Rather than the leader I've been working towards and taking on the challenge ahead, I feel completely disempowered to do anything.
So here we are, with me sitting here feeling on the edge of burnout. Not from stress and overwork, but from feeling useless and underutilised. And so now I've recognised it, I have to think about preservation and pulling myself away from the edge.
That means unplugging and uncaring – doing less rather than more. Not taking ownership of things, not caring about the consequences of other people's actions. That's not mine to own or be responsible for.