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Musings Report 2019-20 5-18-19 Warning Signs of Burnout
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For those who are new to the Musings reports: they are basically a glimpse into my notebook, the unfiltered swamp where I organize future themes, sort through the dozens of stories and links submitted by readers, refine my own research and start connecting dots which appear later in the blog or in my books. As always, I hope the Musings spark new appraisals and insights. Thank you for supporting the site and for inviting me into your circle of correspondents.
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Welcome new subscribers-patrons Harold A. and Pamela F.
Warning Signs of Burnout
Longtime readers may have noticed in increase in content and From left Field links on burnout: my recent blog entry Burnout Nation and these links:
How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation
Minds Turned to Ash: Is burnout simply the result of working too hard?
From moms to medical doctors, burnout is everywhere these days
I've burned out twice, the first time in 1986 when I was 32 and last August (age 64). Having already gone through burnout once, you'd naturally assume I'd be better prepared to recognize the warning signs, but alas, I didn't: I just kept trying to keep an impossibly burdensome workload glued together until I could no longer sustain it.
Burnout is one of those experiences that no one who hasn't been through it can ever really understand what it feels like. The non-burned-out person may be sympathetic, but they can only relate to being exhausted in the usual fashion, where a couple days off or a vacation from the pressure-cooker cures the exhaustion.
Burnout isn't simply exhaustion; it's more like being broken in ways you can't fully understand in the initial breakdown.
It often surprises those who should know better (like me), and it tends to break those who reckon themselves unbreakable: Type A personalities, go-getters, perfectionists, the super-ambitious, those blessed with tremendous willpower and self-motivation, people who view accepting open-ended responsibility for complex enterprises as a worthy challenge, people who are caring, efficient and productive: the sort of person described by the old saying, "If you want something done, ask a busy person."
Burnout creeps up on these kinds of people because they've developed coping mechanisms for high-stress workloads out of necessity: their workloads would overwhelm average workers within the first hour of the first day. Burnouts often have been doing the work of two or three people. They've managed to juggle so many responsibilities and roles by optimizing their skills and character traits, and developing (often without being consciously aware of doing so) coping mechanisms: routine exercise, a glass of wine, habits such as turning off all but the most essential inputs at night, ruthless prioritizing / triage of crises and so on.
I think of the erosion that leads to burnout as having two components: buffers and reserves. Buffers are like wind breaks or wetlands that protect the core structures from occasional storms. We thin our buffers when dealing with a sustained crisis or a series of crises. If this pressure never ceases, i.e. never returns to a state in which buffers can be restored, the storms start eroding the core structures.
Reserves are what you have left in the tank, what you draw upon when your normal energy has already been depleted. I think of reserves as having two levels: one short-term, the other systemic. In the process of burnout, the short-term reserves are drained and never allowed to recover. The systemic reserves are then tapped until the tank is dry. At that point burnout is inevitable.
We can think of this process as a slippery slope. Those most at risk of burning out are those who tell themselves they can manage it all because they've done so for months or years, ignoring the warning signs that their ability to do so is rapidly being degraded.
The person approaching burnout starts tossing whatever isn't essential over the side of the boat. All too often what gets tossed overboard is whatever free time enabled some restoration of reserves (and sanity). The person approaching burnout has to jettison everything else in order to conserve what's left to keep the crushing workload duct-taped together for another day, another week, another month.
The irony is striking: the less driven person would soon realize, "This is killing me, I've got to change things." The driven person is accustomed to overcoming all problems and challenges, and so they tell themselves "it's going to get better as soon as I get through ABC."
But crises ABC are immediately followed by DEF and GHI so on, in a never-ending crush of open-ended responsibilities. The personality type most prone to burnout is also prone to reckoning they can somehow manage even as their abilities and reserves erode.
I'm not at all sure that people approaching burnout can stop themselves at the edge of the cliff before they slide over; it's asking them to step out of the personality, ambition and doggedness that's served them so well.
The people prone to burnout typically hope to keep everything that caused the burnout unchanged: they're wedded to whatever they feel can't change or be allowed to change: their career, their business, their multitude of responsibilities, their incomes, etc.
Then the whole structure collapses beneath them. In some cases, the first response is denial that anything has to change or be let go of: the Type A personalities reckon they can power through the recovery from burnout just like they've powered through every other challenge.
But burnout isn't like other challenges. Burnout is the mind-body's "engine governor:" when the governor detects that the engine is about to fly apart from the stress, it shuts the engine down to save it.
People who aren't saved by burnout shutting them down end up with impaired immune systems that lead to physical illnesses or even death. So we should be grateful burnout is the mind-body's last-ditch defense mechanism.
So the first response is often to plan a quick recovery and return to the life that caused the burnout. This resistance to radical change extends the burnout or insures future burnout.
I think something like the Kubler-Ross progression has a role in burnout recovery: the standard stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
I think the burnout progression is a bit different: depression and denial; frustration; acceptance; renewal.
Depression tends to go hand in hand with burnout, so it begins the progression with denial: what's wrong with me? etc.
I would substitute frustration for "anger": the burnout is frustrated they can no longer do what they did before.
Eventually the burnout accepts they burned out as a result of causal factors, and accepts they don't have god-like powers. They accept that they have to let go of what they once thought could not be let go of.
They learn something important about themselves and their life, and that sets the stage for renewal via changing things, very likely in profound ways.
Resistance to changing what we once clung to as "cannot be changed" is a key dynamic in burnout. I tend to think that burnout is related to being fixed, stubborn, rigid, and recovery is related to flexibility, fluidity, adaptability, letting go and accepting limitations.
If you see someone who seems to be sliding down the slippery slope to burnout, or you sense it in yourself, I think it's useful to accept the possibility that it's not possible to stop the person (or oneself) from slipping over the edge, as burnout is a last-ditch learning process for which there is no substitute.
Highlights of the Blog This Past Week
The Normalization and Institutionalization of Fraud 5/17/19
Downward Mobility Matters More Than Liberal-Conservative Labels 5/16/19
The Economy Has Fundamentally Changed in the 21st Century--and Not for the Better 5/15/19
Burnout Nation 5/14/19
Is China's Belt & Road a Decade Too Late? 5/13/19
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
My ciambella Italian ring cake came out beautifully. My one addition: a cup of grated fresh coconut.
Musings on the Economy: End of the Current Tech Cycle?
In broad brush, the 1990s tech boom was the build-out of the hardware and software of the Internet.
The boom since 2007 (the launch of the iPhone) has been driven by the integration of Web services with mobile telephony (smart phones) and social media (MySpace launched in 2003, Facebook in 2004 and YouTube in 2005).
For all intents and purposes, that integration is complete: virtually all Web services are available on smart phone platforms, and social media, entertainment, games etc. have been ported over to mobile telephony.
Once the build-out is complete, companies that scaled to enormous size can no longer grow as fast: a $1 million revenues company becomes valuable as its revenues soar to $100 million, but the $40 billion revenue company has trouble reaching $50 billion, and is prone to missing overly optimistic estimates.
The boom ends. I think we're at the end of this tech cycle, and there is no replacement source of fast growth or revenues. Apple is hoping to substitute services (i.e. utilities) for the decline in iPhone sales, but the margins on commoditized services is much thinner than the fat margins of iPhones.
Many see AI (artificial intelligence) as the next driver of immense tech profits, but if it turns out AI is easily commoditized and deflationary, profits (which flow from monopolies and cartels) may turn out to be fleeting.
From Left Field
From moms to medical doctors, burnout is everywhere these days
Stop clapping, this is serious: Tom Lehrer interview from 2003 (he's now 91) (via Richard M.)
How Big Tech Threatens Economic Liberty -- worth a serious read...
Absolute Capitalism-- better than its title. Solid overview of what neoliberalism means...
It’s Time to Break Up Facebook
New World Order's Stealthy Tool of Subversion: NGOs
Wealthier people produce more carbon pollution — even the “green” ones -- no! My purchases are greener than yours!
The Economy Is Booming, But Young Workers Are Miserable
Global Regulators Race to Curb Silicon Valley
China, Russia and the return of the civilisational state
The All-American Expo That Invaded Cold War Russia (via GFB)-- fascinating. I want one of these 1950s Roombas....
The Internet Apologizes: Even those who designed our digital world are aghast at what they created. A breakdown of what went wrong — from the architects who built it.
"I think a big part of knowing that you’re right is working as hard as you can to prove that you’re wrong. And if you can’t, well, there’s only one option left, which is: you’re probably right." Kevin Systrom
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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