Burnt Potatoes
Intro
This is mental health awareness month, and to celebrate all things mental health I thought I’d share some tips that have helped me this year. I recently have gone through a few phases of burnout, so I wanted to share what has helped me.
I am not a doctor and this is not intended as medical advice - please see a qualified medical professional if you need help: Mental Health Awareness Month
Signs of burnout
I’ve had periods of burnout throughout my whole career. From when I was an early engineer grinding to understand a new concept or technology, all the way through to now with a whole team to take care of. I’ve gotten better at recognizing the signs early so that I can intervene before it gets too far off the rails. Here's what I've noticed as good early signs to watch out for:
Loss of empathy / Emotional weight
When you are in the early stages of burnout, it is sometimes characterized by a lack of empathy. To me this feels like a period when I stop leading with positive intent, and instead see the worst in situations when they arise.
This can lead to thoughts like:
"Did someone not meet their objective for the week? Then they MUST be incompetent and incapable of performing their job and need to be fired."
That’s a little bit of an escalation there! When my mind goes quickly to the extremes, it’s time for me to pause and do an internal systems check to see if I can make this decision clearly. Instead of listening to the situation and realize that perhaps they are in the middle of moving or their partner went to the hospital, we could start to lose that sense of community and lean into negativity with our colleagues - this is not the way.
Irritability
Alongside the weightiness of it all, burnout can quickly jump to irritability and immediate reactions to the world around us. My body goes into a fight or flight response mechanism instead of considering the deeper connections with the world. I start to cut off others, jump straight to the fastest answer I can think of in the moment, and move topics constantly. It probably doesn’t help that I’m also sucking down a gallon of caffeine a day during these periods, so I can also be jittery and my mind is racing - what a time to be alive!
When I reach this stage I know I need a break.
Loss of interest in hobbies
I love weightlifting, yoga, writing, photography, videography, gaming, art, music, woodworking, hiking, camping.. the list goes on and on. When a period of burnout is starting I can feel myself pulling back from things I used to love and enjoy. I cancel plans with friends and don’t break out my camera or go to the gym. I can feel so tired and drained that I’m no longer able to exist outside of long startup style work days, where nights & weekends I end up in a couch burrito trying to recover for the week ahead.
Not engaging in my interests outside of work can have a cascading effect on my overall health and wellness. In order to feel recovered and ready for the next week, it is important that we spend time outside of our working lives to interact with the world around us. My hobbies and activities allow me a break to see things with a fresh perspective, and I often get my best insights on difficult challenges when I’m taking a break and allowing my mind to wander.
Working from home is amazing, but when I’m spending weeks inside and not interacting with the rest of the world this can be a little concerning and a clear sign it’s time for a break.
Mitigation techniques (that have helped me)
Establish a healthy routine - “The Ideal week”
It’s far too easy to let our calendars control our routines. Daily, weekly, and monthly reoccurring meetings are like weeds that we have to constantly prune and maintain. In order to regain control of my time, I went through an exercise by Ali Abdaal recently called “my ideal week” . In it, he describes setting up an intentional workflow for your ideal week, where you mark out the time you’d like to spend from the moment you wake up until you go to bed. Just asking the question of “how would I like to spend my time?” is somewhat of an odd one to most. When everything gets a little too much I instead start to think reactively, such as:
“I go to every meeting listed on my calendar and only afterwards try to get all my work done in whatever time is remaining”
Everything is connected: If I am tied to my calendar, then I don’t have enough time for breaks, quality meals, and working out. If I go a few weeks like that, I lose interest in other activities and life loses some color. Too many months like that, and what are we even doing anymore?
By being intentional with my time and allocating the proper prioritization on the things that actually matter to me I’m able to regain control again. Here’s how I set up ‘my ideal week’ after going through Ali's exercise:
It’s intentionally similar to Ali’s original layout, since at the time I needed it more as a utility to help me work through my overloaded schedule. This has helped me align my intentions with my daily habits, so on a general level I know how I’d like my week to look. Of course there are days where this doesn’t work out. Necessary meetings extend into the afternoon or I need to adjust when important issues arise. With this in mind I still I love having a holistic view of “this is how I want to spend my days” to refer back to when I’m starting to wander.
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Outsource what you can
When I first moved into my new house I was excited for all of the homeowner activities. I would cut the grass every two weeks, clean constantly, and jump at the opportunity to complete a random home improvement project over the weekend. Everything was new and shiny, and the experience was rewarding. At the time, I was also a senior engineer who has automated nearly his entire job, giving me space and room to do all of these things. I would attend maybe 1-3 consistent meetings per week, and there an abundance of time to go around.
As I’ve progressed in my career and shifted to leading humans designing complex systems, I’ve had to invest some considerable time into building the team up. Even though we build automations for a living for the past few years now, I haven’t found any replacement for honest connections with other human beings, especially in a leadership capacity. I want to be the best leader that I can, so my focus has shifted away from the standard operational activities of my daily life. To this end, here are some things I’ve invested in:
Recognize what you can’t control
It is important to recognize what I can control, and what I can’t control, and allocating my energy appropriately. For example, let’s say I need additional staff to cover our services - these are the items I can control:
What I can’t control is the approval of the request itself. I can make the business cases and submit the request, but I then need to let the rest go and focus back on something else I have control over. Spending too much time on things we can’t control leads to rumination, which is a fast pathway to burnout.
Slow productivity
One last tip I’ve personally been trying to embrace this past month is the concept of slow productivity. I recently finished the book? Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout by Cal Newport, and have been putting some of those principles into practice. Focusing on higher quality, fewer initiatives produces higher quality outcomes. It also helps me with my blood pressure and makes the deep work sessions more enjoyable. If I block out an afternoon to work on a deliverable, you better believe it’s going to be a higher quality product then if I worked on it for a few minutes between meetings for a week.
This, coupled with my afternoon deep work blocks, have given me time to focus on important work that's in my backlog. This also gives me a quick visual indication on when I can dedicate time to a new request. At the beginning of each week I’ll take items I need to get done and assign them to a specific day of the week’s deep work session. If the requests start to span too far into the future I can tell that I need to review new requests a little more closely to see what takes priority that week.
How we apply these principles
Whew - I didn’t realize I had so much to say! Now that we’ve reviewed how burnout has been affecting me personally and some techniques I’ve used to help mitigate the effects let’s review what we can do as leaders to enable and help our teams.
Make priorities clear
Development is like a sailing ship, where you set the destination and venture forth, checking in on the course and direction every so often to make sure you’re on the right path. The more you check in with the development team the more accurate your course will be (up to a point), but also the more times you switch or change course the slower you will get to your destination. Imagine a captain changing his mind on the direction he wanted to sail, causing the crew to constantly adjust the sails and ringing to account for the new course. If you are constantly making adjustments and not giving your team time to work you might find that you have barely left the harbor!
Focus on outcomes, not on outputs
Admittedly this is an area where I still need some work and refinement on. Focusing too much not inputs and outputs of the process, while not considering the end state can sour a good engagement. I’ve even had instances where we delivered milestones too fast but didn’t pay enough attention to the customer relationship. It’s surprising when your team works too well, only to hear that the customer doesn't feel like they were getting proper value due to your blinding speed and focus. Focusing instead on the outcomes (or transformations) ensures that you are keeping in contact with your primary stakeholders and giving them the relationship that they are expecting.
Celebrate Effectiveness!
Not to say throw out your metrics altogether! It’s equally as important to monitor what your team is working on and identifying ways to make them more efficient. Did your engineer develop something in a matter of hours that should have taken weeks? Explain that to your customer and celebrate the victory! Have some follow-up sessions explaining the features, benefits, and importance of the solution as a whole, or do some advisory sessions to go deeper.
When you feel that conversations are veering too much into the inputs and outputs of the systems, remind your team of the general mission. Explain the purpose of what we are doing and (more importantly), why are we doing it. The inputs and outputs of the system are good to make sure your business won’t go under, but it should not be the sole focus on the team.
Your turn!
Burnout is something that I've experienced a bit in my career and I hope that these quick tips have given you some ideas in catching and mitigating the early stages before it gets too much.
Have you dealt with burnout yourself and have any tips to share? Comment below!
References