Enjoy the journey or you might burn out

Back in early 2012, I was working on a “strategic” project for my company that needed to be presented to the board in March. It was a little “disruptive” to the existing business model of the company so had more opponents than supporters within the company and that made my job as program manager very uncomfortable.

There was a lot of office politics which I hate and in hindsight, was never particularly good at anyway. I remember the day I had to present it to one of the boards committees, I was nervous. It was in a large board room with about 40 seats in the shape of a half moon. I suspect not everyone was paying a great deal of attention to what I was saying and like in many boards, the decisions have been taken in advance by many people based on careful “stakeholder management” beforehand. The presentation itself, while feeling important, seldom changes anyone’s views.

At the end of the presentation, I said my thank you’s and exited the room with a wink and a smile from my senior managers who were there to oversee my performance. It went well.

Though I wasn’t there for the voting, the proposal we had put forward was approved which was a big success, or felt that way at the time. At the end of the afternoon, I went down to the office of my boss, @Fabian Vandenreydt to debrief and his boss, @Gottfried Leibbrandt also passed by to say well done. The latter said to me “David, your ears are red” and he had a chuckle. It is true that when I was under pressure and the adrenaline was pumping, my ears turn red. We all have our own little external manifestations of stress and that was mine and he knew it.

I started to explain what all of the next steps would be to “convert the try” and execute the plan. Fabian said to me “David, relax, we have just had a great success in getting this approved and you are already running into the next steps. That’s your problem, you are so focused on the end result that you don’t enjoy the journey”. Rather than celebrating an important milestone, my attention had already turned to the next one.

He was right. The end result was how I judged myself and very often, I was willing to sacrifice a lot to get it including conflict with others, taking control and not delegating and many other characteristics that people who are too focused on end results share. Ultimately, my health as well.

Not long after that, I found myself in hospital with a suspected heart attack at 35. It was scary. Fortunately, my heart was fine but my body simply went into some form of shock induced by the pressure I had been putting myself under at work. I stress the fact that it was me who was putting myself under pressure, not Fabian, Gottfried or anyone else. My body was sending me a message which was to say “Stop, it’s enough” and it was a real wake-up call for me.?

Why did I care so much about the “end result”? It felt as though I cared about it a lot more than anyone else in the organization including my bosses, the board, the team. It was not my company. I wasn’t going to get a massive bonus whether it succeeded or failed and I would ‘t get fired either. Why did I care so much?

It was a form of burn-out. I was living in my head and not listening to the rest of my body. I felt as though the “stress was under control” but it was because I was controlling it that it drained so much from my body that it eventually had to force me to “unplug”.

I knew virtually nothing about burn-out at the time and perhaps like many, I associated it with a sign of weakness. People who don’t care, seldom burn-out so the reality is that many of the ones who do, are the “high performers” who strive for success, drive change and are among the motors in the company. I almost felt embarrassed by it for a long time and didn’t even use the word burn-out. Part of my motivation for sharing this experience so openly here is so that others recognize if they share my “DNA” and are perhaps vulnerable to the same thing.

I went to see a lady afterwards so try to understand better what was happening to me and what may have been the cause as it wasn’t clear to me at the time. As I was explaining my story to her, she said something to me which I wasn’t able to process as it seemed impossible.

She said “David, for you, the present doesn’t exist”. I was always talking about the past or the future but never about what is happening in the here and now. How could the present not exist for somebody? Surely we all live in the present??

The more I thought about that, the more I thought about what Fabian had said to me about “enjoy the journey and not just the destination”. A few years earlier I was sitting on a beach in Portugal with my wife. We were watching the waves and listening to the sea and I asked her “What are you thinking about?” and she said “nothing”. It was a bit like saying “not living in the present”, I just couldn’t comprehend it. Surely if you stop thinking, you must be dead or something? I am totally incapable of stopping thinking in the same way that I was totally incapable of “enjoying the journey”.?

A few years later, I left the company and decided to go on a journey without a destination. I’ve written in other articles about my “transition” from corporate life to the startup world and the advice of Fabian was key to deciding that not everything I do in life needs to have a clear destination and in fact is a whole lot more enjoyable (and less stressful) when it doesn’t. He led me to my adventure in @Little Food where the destination (bankruptcy) was very far from where I thought it would lead but nevertheless, the journey there is the primary driver behind @Beefounders.

Ultimately, it reminds me of the Steve Jobs speech at Stanford where he says “we can only connect the dots looking backwards, not forwards”. The journey in the startup world is the experience of creating something which may or may not be successful but it’s failure doesn’t necessarily mean it is a waste of time. Enjoy your journey!