Take a Break From Burnout

Sloth - the bringer of peace!

Sloth might be listed as one of the Seven Deadly Sins, but it is a also a very cute animal and can be a great teacher for us in times of struggle. It is a slow-moving, energy-saving mammal that covers a distance of about 40 yards a day and has a very low metabolic rate. It spends up to 20 hours a day sleeping. That's why the sloth has a lot to teach us when we are suffering from burnout.

I hear people often going on about work-life balance but I find it to be a strange and unhelpful notion. It implies that working is not a legitimate or enjoyable and integral part of living, and that life must happen outside of work. The inevitable conclusion is that you can have a life and you can have work but not at the same time! So presumably work equals death?

I think the reason why the notion of work/life balance has taken such a hold is because we work too hard. That doesn’t mean we work smart, by the way. We simply work too hard, for too long and at a frenetic pace, often in jobs we loathe and despise or, if we’re lucky, only derive moderate pleasure from.

When we lose the capacity to deeply relax, pace ourselves, and keep ourselves in a state of equilibrium, burnout can come knocking. It's too easy for relaxation time (usually defined by anything that’s away from work) to be squeezed into the tiniest space through which we dive; bingeing heavily on pleasure as quickly as we can before returning to the treadmill of work. Our lives get lived at a desperate pace, where we try to shove far more jam than is humanly possible into the smallest jar.

This is personally and professionally damaging. Performance suffers and health suffers. Burnout in some form or other is inevitable, even for the most robust.

Stephen Covey’s seventh Habit, Sharpen the Saw, recognises that human beings have a profound need for balance, recovery and recalibration. Rest, relaxation, a change of pace and time to reflect are vital requirements that we cannot live without. But this is often talked about as something that needs to happen away from the workplace rather than being a part of it.

Too many work cultures still frown on the idea that someone can sit quietly at their desk just thinking. It can be seen as ‘slacking’ or ‘not pulling your weight’. The implication is that you don’t look like you’re working hard enough, and the focus is not on business, but on apparent busy-ness.

As more of us are starting to work from home, at least part of the week, we might even place these restrictions on ourselves. Disallowing ourselves those moments of respite and contemplation.

I say, let’s bring on a bit of sloth! Let’s stop or slow down for a while. Let’s not be afraid to sit at our desk and stare into space, or take a leisurely stroll. Let’s stop thinking that the only productive person is the person who’s racing around at 150 miles per hour weaving a trail of turbulence around them.

We know that longer hours do not contribute to better performance or higher productivity. The law of diminishing returns explains how performance decreases the longer someone works without a break. So being the last to leave the office and doing 12 or 14 hour days doesn’t mean that you are the highest achiever, but it could mean that you are the biggest loser.

Sloth is, according to Wikipedia, defined as “spiritual or emotional apathy… and being physically and emotionally inactive”. Not too far away from meditation, then. Sometimes, we need to shut-down in order to reboot. Doing so gets rid of the glitches and enables us to process information and ideas more quickly. It also gives us space to recalibrate, which enables us to look afresh at a situation where our judgement was previously clouded.

A little dose of sloth can also help to take the heat out a situation which is getting out of hand. Of course, too much sloth is as bad as too much of most things. But if burnout is starting to get hold of you, it could be a life-saver.

Step forward Sloth and take a bow.?

Take your time, nice and slow.

There is no rush, no need for speed,

It’s time to think that we all need.

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