It’s All About That Balance, Bout That Balance, No Burnout

Is your New Year’s resolution to work yourself into burnout? Planning to work 12 hours a day until you get sick? Or maybe work out so hard you break something?

No?

Mine either. Although I have worked myself into burnout before (not intentionally). Worked myself into getting sick (unintentionally), which is sometimes just the body’s way of pulling the plug to make you slow down. And I pushed myself so hard in dance that I broke my foot… also not on purpose! 

What’s your burnout story?

Fortunately for all of us, January is Get a Balanced Life month. If you don’t think working too much can be a problem, consider this: what happens when you burn out? You probably won’t be able to work for a while. When you do go back to work, you won’t be at full speed right away either.

So. Would it be better to go full-on into the wall, with a hard splat that takes days, weeks, or months to recover from? Or does it make more sense to make sure that you have time for the other things in life that bring you joy, so you don’t end up burning out at all? Not to mention that finding time for joyful things in your life can help make you happier too.

Seen on a manufacturing plant sign

“If you don’t schedule time for system maintenance, your equipment will schedule it for you.”

Machines are purpose-built, and often made with long-lasting materials. Still, they need to be taken offline from time to time to get scrubbed up. Parts that wear down need replacing, fluid levels need to be refilled, and some parts require recalibration every so often. What happens when machines aren’t cared for properly? They stop working.

You can’t drive your car 24/7/365. You have to stop to fuel it, and take it to the mechanic once in a while. Periodically cars need new brake shoes and pads, tire rotation and replacement, new filters, etc. 

Not to mention that your computer can’t go 24/7/365 without recharging. Most people buy new computers when the old ones wear out rather than repairing them. But you often see some performance improvement when you restart it (instead of leaving it on or sleeping). Most browsers get faster when you remove old cookies and trackers.

Given all that, what makes you think a human being can get away without maintenance, repairs, or recharging? We’re certainly not built for the demands of capitalism; neither our brains nor our bodies have evolved as fast as technology has. Many of our parts are much softer and are composed of less durable materials compared to what we use for our machines. 

Yet so many of us ignore the system maintenance that humans need. The result is burnout, illness, and a loss of performance and productivity.

But by scheduling in preventative and regular maintenance, we can keep going. We’ll also probably be happier by making room for things other than work. Win-win!

Are fences for keeping people out, or keeping people in?

As a registered people pleaser™, trust me, I understand that setting boundaries can be tough. Especially for women, and especially with those in authority. However, you need to hold and enforce the boundaries around you to make sure that you have time to recharge.

Notice I didn’t say boundaries “between work and life”. Because women especially tend to put themselves last. Leaving work at 5 pm only to spend the next 4 hours taking care of other people is not balance either, even though there may technically be a boundary there between work and life. 

If you never schedule time for recharging yourself, there’s no boundary of you. Where do you end? You end up diffusing yourself by helping everyone at work and at home. Eventually, if you don’t implode from resentment, you’ll still end up breaking something because you didn’t take care of yourself.

Want to help others? That’s awesome! You have to put your oxygen mask on first when you’re in the airplane, because you can’t help anyone else if you don’t have oxygen. Another way to look at it is that you can’t pour from an empty cup. You can’t pour from your depths, only from your overflow. 

By setting boundaries between work and life, as well as between you and other people (including the ones that you love the most), you’re able to give the most. Recharging and doing the things you enjoy and the things that nourish you are what give you the ability to help others.

Helping others not your main motivation? That’s OK too. And it still requires you to build and hold those boundaries, so that you’re ready and recharged to execute your mission, whatever it might be.

Yabba dabba doo!

If you’re of a certain age (ahem), you probably remember the cartoon “The Flintstones”.  At the end of the day down at the quarry, a crow (if I recall correctly) would whistle and Fred and Barney would hop into their car that ran on their big flat feet and hightail it home.

Most offices no longer have a 5:00 whistle, but a great way to set the boundary at the end of the day is to have an end-of-day ritual. You might write down the 3 main priorities for the next day (if you don’t have them planned out already) and straighten your desk. 

It’s very easy for those of us working from home to blend work into life into work and so on, but that’s a recipe for loss of productivity. You’re getting “stuff” done (maybe), but you’re not productive. You could try having cocktail or mocktail time after work, or set aside time to catch up with your partner and/or kids about their day, or some other way to underline the fact that the workday is over.

Recap

Whether you call it recharging, system maintenance, or something else, you need to make time for the important things in life (not work) to make sure that you can be as productive and efficient as possible when you’re at work. 

A key component of system maintenance is scheduling it, which often means setting boundaries (and maintaining them) so that your time isn’t drained by other projects or people.

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