The Micro Decisions That Lead To Burnout
Today we are hearing more and more about burnout and work fatigue from executives and professionals in every industry and sector. The global pandemic has exasperated our time in front of the computer and phone screens without any ending in sight. We have lost a sense of normalcy to schedules and rituals. With the endless list of household chores, work deadlines, and demands of family, self-care has been the first to get moved to the backburner.
It is difficult to estimate the costs that burnout is having on corporate institutions, but the top leaders are aware that their employees are struggling in a profound new way. Nothing in our past has prepared us for this burnout epidemic.
What does burnout look like and how do you know if you have it?
One day, you just hit a wall. You can no longer function at the same energy and capacity you once were. For some, burnout looks like pure exhaustion where they can’t get out of bed, yet they are having difficulty falling asleep (a sign of adrenal exhaustion where the adrenal glands have been pumping the stress hormone cortisol into the blood for so long, they simply give out). Or burnout looks like an emotional/psychological meltdown that shows up as rage or fits of crying. Burnout can even lead to distressing the immune system leaving you susceptible to colds, diseases, and even the COVID19 virus. These health issues are of course more than just an inconvenience and can be a life-threatening situation. Whatever the condition or the symptom, the effects are the same — the body and mind have gone into overload.
While a significant episode like a breakdown can seem like it happens overnight, the truth is that it has been leading up for a long time. Rarely do you find a professional or an executive who simply wakes up one morning and can no longer function.
The truth is that there have been tiny micro signals along the way, which the person has either chosen to ignore or has been in denial that it was happening.
To prevent and solve the burnout epidemic that is happening across the world, in every industry and sector, we need to zoom out and start looking at our decisions on a micro level, which have led up to burnout. You see, if you only pay attention to burnout or a breakdown after it has happened, unfortunately, this is too late. The costs of a meltdown or a catastrophic injury or disease or psychological meltdown would cost exponentially more resources of time, energy, and money to recover than if the person had noticed these micro signals along the way. Not to mention the lost time that it will take to recover.
I know about burnout from first-hand experience. When I was in the corporate world, I had a devastating burnout that ended up with me in the hospital with pneumonia. It took that catastrophic event for me to wake up and reanalyze my life, my decisions, and how I was showing up at work. What I discovered was surprising.
It wasn’t only the long hours that I was plugging away on emails and project deadlines, but the lack of awareness around my eating, sleeping, and recovery habits where I found the greatest surprises. I was completely unaware that I wasn’t nourishing my body because I wouldn’t feel hungry when I was consumed with the adrenaline to get a tight deadline across the finish line. I wasn’t sleeping restful sleep because I had my laptop with me in bed, often falling asleep to the glowing light of the screen which prevents your mind and body to go into pure, deep REM sleep. There were these choices I was making that were preventing my body and mind from recovering, and that was what led to me making this shift in my everyday habits and intentions.
And the craziest thing is that I’m more productive now because I see how the small choices you make throughout your day will either lead you on a path of productivity and accelerated efficiency or into the path of meltdown, burnout, and destruction.
How To Become Aware Of Your Micro Decisions
Here’s how you start to look at what caused the burnout in the first place, and if you’re fortunate enough to be reading this before you’ve had a burnout, then this will prevent one from happening.
It’s easy to look at the broad picture strokes of day-to-day life that you see in the calendar — the scheduled meetings, when you need to pick up the kids, etc. These are typically the areas of activity we give all our focus to because they are immovable and set in a prefixed time. These scheduled tasks are the perfect opportunity for you to zoom out and look at what needs to happen before and after each of these activities. For example, knowing that you have an early morning meeting gives you an opportunity to think about how you need to prepare for that meeting. Zoom out an hour or two hours before the calendared event to see what micro-decisions you can make to set yourself up for sustained energy and lasting success.
Giving yourself some buffer time after you finish your work before you go to sleep so that you can rest peacefully and have a nighttime ritual where you unplug from the electronics and the computers and the cell phones so that your mind has time to unwind and relax will get you more quality sleep and prepare you to have energy and focus for the following day.
Rarely do people zoom out and look at these micro-decisions that are made before and after a significant event is happening on the calendar. If you have ever studied rockets, you know that the direction of the rocket in orbit is controlled with just a tiny thrust of an engine. It’s the same as in your work, effectiveness, and efficiency of your career. One small micro decision can change the trajectory of your entire day, your entire week. And if that micro decision becomes a habit, you will be setting yourself up for long-term success and preventing burnout.
So in this age, an era where it seems like everyone is having a burnout or breakdown, be one of the few who has the awareness, the consciousness, and the patience not to get caught up in the hustle mentality. Moving from one activity to the next without any conscious awareness of your micro-decisions will only exhaust your nervous system, drain your adrenal glands, and lower your immune system, leading to burnout.
Instead, choose to be a calm, centered, peaceful creator of your own life and work. You will find that more people are drawn to you. Your boss, your clients, your customers, and everyone who you interact with during your day-to-day life will want to work with you to give you more projects and to advance your career because you will have this calm, clear, focused energy that everyone else is chasing.
