How I am dealing with burnout
I have been overwhelmed at work the last couple of months. Part of that is because I have been very busy (juggling the management and delivery of multiple projects in work, figuring out stuff from my recent move from Ireland to Scotland, setting up a pension, organising my friend's stag do, and more) but I think I am also simply burnt out.
My burnout has been manifesting as a mighty lack of motivation and no desire to do any work. Finding myself in a mental spiral of ruminating and wishing for something different, I have been soul searching and looking for inspiration.
A book I have been reading titled 'Meditations for Mortals' by Oliver Burkeman is helping me reframe these problems and the culture of productivity in which we live.
Rather than focusing on driving maximum productivity - filling every minute of the day with purpose and meaningful work, the author opts for a simple, realistic approach to life. He advocates for aiming for focusing on the things that matter most, on a “daily-ish” basis, and not feeling guilty about the time that you are not spending maximising productivity.
It seems that we are all always trying to get to the bottom of our to do lists. And what are our to do lists but a never ending list of problems that we are trying to solve?
Life will always throw more problems at us, and the delusion of finally completing our to do lists is a naïve attempt from ourselves to try and gain a feeling of total control over our lives. This total control can never come to be, of course. So it is merely an illusion that keeps us ensconced in a sea of tasks.
As per Burkeman’s suggestion, I have been deliberately limiting myself to the number of tasks that I can do in a day. Usually, I will have a long list of things that I think I need to complete in any given day. It is usually a list of 10-15 tasks that, if I am being honest with myself, I know I can never hope to get done - particularly when I am feeling burnt out and unmotivated. So, what I have decided to do for the foreseeable future is to pick a handful of tasks that I perceive as most important - this can be 2-3 bigger tasks (that take ~1-1.5 hours) or 5-8 smaller tasks (that take ~10-30 mins).
Limiting myself to these tasks, I feel much more motivated to get them done, and don’t feel the overwhelm and dread to the same extent as when I can't see the bottom of my task list.
Importantly, even with my reduced to-do list, I don’t pressure myself to finish all of the tasks on that list. If something comes up, or if I am not as productive or energised as I need to be to start/complete those tasks, then I don’t do them, and I accept that they can be done another day. As long as there is no hard deadline for that day, and my colleagues are kept in the loop about any delays, then there is usually no issue.
Besides, if you are in the position of having a hard deadline and you are very tight for time, there is a probably a point in which you should have asked for help, de-prioritised other things to get the deadline done, or some other way in which you can reduce the stress.
After completing the tasks that I have listed for the day, I take the remaining time back for myself to do things I care about: exercising, cooking a good meal, playing guitar, playing video games, going for walks, reading, and more.
The world feels so much more vast and wonderful when you stop spending the the vast majority of your time chasing the impossible goal of completing everything on your to do list.
I hope this inspires you to rethink how you spend your time, and that you too can take more time to do the things you love.
Thanks for reading friends.
Jack