Back in May of this year, I sat at my desk, logged into Slack, and started chipping away at tasks for a project that I had been working on for the prior two months. I took a long sip of my coffee and released an exhaustive sigh. Normally, this is the time of day I feel the most energized, the most focused, but this morning was different. At first, I thought I was just tired. Did I not sleep well? Was I dehydrated from my workout? No, I knew this feeling—this was burnout.
I have written about burnout in the past, so I won't get too much into the theories, but this burnout felt different. The last time I burned out was when I was at my previous SaaS company, as Head of Product. I was working too much and feeling no fulfillment, but I still had a lot of mental fortitude. This time, I felt like all of my analytical and creative energy was siphoned out of me.
I was working on a project that was meant to be an automated migration of content from one tool to another. I was supposed to project manage the project and spot-check the validity of the work. There ended up being a few technical issues that snowballed into the migration being primarily manually migrated. This meant, for about two months, I was copy-and-pasting, endlessly. This process seemingly changed the composition of my brain from a creative, analytical thinker to a button-smashing pile of mush.
That morning, when I logged into Slack and started button-smashing, I lost it. I realized that I was burned out and it was affecting all areas of my life. My wife mentioned that I looked like I was working for my old company again. I wasn't having this. I told the agency where I was contracted to do this work that I needed to take a week off, in one week. I knew that this was important and timely. If I didn't act fast, it would compound even more. This was my first Think Week.
This Think Week was not facilitated the way I would have preferred, but it worked out. I took an entire week with 90% no work. I did nothing for the agency I burned out for and only did high-priority tasks for one of my clients. It took me four days to start to feel like myself and another three for my brain to fire at a creative level. The Think Week worked perfectly, but I was not proactive enough with it, so this burnout had repercussions that lasted months.
This burnout, plus my previous five months of travel, were the reasons for this newsletter slowing down over the past year. This newsletter is massively important to me, not for financial or narcissistic reasons, but because creating fuels me. It also entirely stopped content creation for my business, which has slowed down a healthy client backlog. Not to worry though, things are changing and I am being proactive with my Think Weeks.
All of this backstory is not for you to feel bad for me, but rather for you to know that you are not alone. Burnout is not a one-and-done thing. It can be an old friend for most. I have probably burned out more than this in my career; I just did not have the recollection of it.
The first thing is to be cognizant of how you are feeling and think if this feeling is consistent. As I mentioned in the last burnout edition, burnout feels like depression, so try not to skim over it as just another bout of it. We live in a world where depression, to various degrees, is a norm—but this form is something we can mitigate. Check out my last edition, as I think it will give you some ideas of ways to prevent an impending burnout. If you are at all like me, burnout is always right around the corner if you don't find ways to harmonize work and life.
I know how you feel. When I worked in an office I too was so burnt out from the never ending deadlines. The exhaustion is mind numbing.