A Brush With Burnout

I recently had a brush with burnout. Work that would normally feel engaging was beginning to feel daunting. The days seemed to meld together. Each bout of effort was beginning to feel forced and strained. But the most pervasive warning sign of them all? Rushing. Despite a lot of effort to stop myself from rushing, I would find myself constantly hurrying along, trying to beat the clock, trying to cram it all in. 

Until this point, I had felt that I was immune to burnout or that my minimalist self-care protocols were keeping it at bay. But there’s no doubt that I was experiencing at least the early warning signs. 

Then came a blessing in disguise. I got sick. Just a touch of the flu. Nothing too severe, but it forced me to take two sick-days off from work. It forced me to finally and literally stop. Aside from those two sick-days, I can’t remember the last time I literally did nothing. This forced break showed me that I had been caught in an unhealthy habit loop of waking, working, and sleeping. 

So here I sit with a mechanical pencil in hand and my notebook open to a fresh page to analyze what led me to this near-burnout and, more importantly, how to correct it. 

What went wrong? 

Workload is the underlying condition here, but I don’t believe it’s the cause. I have a full-time job in a fairly high-stress, high-demand setting. I have my writing endeavors, which are passion projects, but they take their toll on the nervous system nonetheless. Above all, I’m a new dad to an amazing baby boy, which I gratefully accept as my sole priority. 

Add to this various life admin tasks like taxes, vet appointments, resident permits, daycare registration, and trying to remain healthy. It’s a tall order, but it’s not the cause of this near burnout. 

I am a firm believer in the incredible power of the human spirit. There are countless examples of people who have done far greater things than me, with far greater constraints, and far fewer resources. Marcus Aurelius said, “Do not think that what is hard for you to master is humanly impossible; and if it is humanly possible, consider it to be within your reach.”

No, it’s not the work itself that’s wearing me out. It’s my approach to it. 

More specifically, it’s fear. 

If I’m honest with myself, all the stress associated with my workload comes from the fear that I’ll fail to provide for my family—that somehow, I’ll lose control, or that life’s demands will one day overtake my ability to handle them. 

The fear leads to pressure. The pressure keeps me in perpetual forward motion. It keeps me firmly planted in the future, which is a problem, because I don’t want to live in the future. It’s a major problem that I need to begin correcting for right now, because here’s the thing; my life is already great. I could go on and list some of my achievements, or describe how far I’ve come from a teen that was headed down a very dangerous path, but I’ll spare those details and just sum it up in one sentence. I have a beautiful, healthy family, I have a good career, and I live in a nice little apartment in the heart of a beautiful European capital city. 

I don’t want to be that guy who looks back and doesn’t have vivid memories of his young family because he was too busy to form any. 

So the fear leads to pressure and the pressure leads to stress and non-mindful living. 

What’s the solution? 

There are several things I need to do. First, I’ll have to learn to live with this fear. This kind of fear is human. We want to do well. We want to provide for our family. We fear the unknown and we know the world can be dangerous and unpredictable. It’s normal (and healthy) to work to brace oneself against life’s blows. Trying to become some worry-free-sunshine-and-rainbows optimist is counterproductive. Allowing the fear to direct most of my behavior and habits is also less than ideal. So I will accept, mitigate, and ultimately aim to walk the middle path. I can’t forget that this fear, when balanced correctly with the ability to pause, slow down, and simply enjoy what I have, is a powerful motivating force that has gotten me this far. 

Next, I must let go of the outcome. I often say to myself ‘this must get done today’ or ‘this must get done this week’. But does it really? Is my world going to fall apart if I don’t knock off every single item from the to-do list? Of course not. There’s always tomorrow. There’s always next week. My dad has a quip whenever he senses that I’m getting too serious about a project: “Everything depends on this.” He’s being sarcastic to poke fun at the fact that I’m too attached to the outcome of things that seem critical, but on a grander scale—one that measures health, happiness, and peace—are trivial. 

So I’ll continue to have plans and projects. I’m not going to scrap my goals. But I am going to approach them with a supreme sense of flexibility. I’ve written about how to focus on the process. I’ve written about non-attachment. I’ve written about how to achieve flow states and how to approach work effortlessly. It’s time I start (or in some cases, resume) practicing what I preach. 

Finally, and most importantly, I must block out time for rest. In fact, I’ve just done this. I sat down with my calendar and I blocked out certain weeks where I’ll give myself a break from my optional commitments, such as writing and exercise. I’ve scheduled a morning walking meditation, an afternoon walking meditation or yoga nidra session, and an evening sitting meditation. I had been doing all of these things, but often, for as little as one or two minutes… I felt rushed. I was beginning to view them as nice to have. They are not nice to have. They’re essential. I’ve decided on a duration for each of these three daily periods of rest, and I’ll use a timer to stick to that strictly, no matter how busy the day is, no matter how ‘behind’ I’m feeling. Rest is essential. 

Final thoughts

This article has been adapted from my personal diary. It started as a reflection on how I was playing with fire—thinking of burnout and illness caused by chronic stress that ‘it’ll never happen to me.’ I’ve adapted this article and decided to share it here because I want to make myself accountable for the solutions I’ve just outlined. Because, at the time of writing, they’re just words. I need to do the work to stop doing the work, so to speak. I need to break the habit-energy of constantly rushing. I need to stick to those breaks that I blocked out in the calendar. I need to find a way to work playfully, light-heartedly, without too much emphasis on the outcome. Most importantly, I need to get my head out of the future and back to what’s right in front of me. 

I named my blog’s newsletter The Pursuit of Balance because I’ve known for a long time that it’s no trivial thing to strike a healthy balance between work and rest—between doing and being. It might be the most important thing, especially for people with unbreakable commitments to people they love. 

This article has been a little post-mortem and course-correction for a recent period in my life in which I’ve definitely let the balance tip to the side of work. It’ll take some effort and dedication to restore balance, but luckily I have a solid base of mindfulness meditation skills along with other tools like the Eightfold Path to help me. 

I hope that you, too, do more than just pay lip service to your rest and mindfulness practices. I hope that you’re honest with yourself about your work-life balance. It’s easy to idealize work-life balance, but then when the deadlines approach or the boss tells you to speed things up, the ‘life’ end of the balance goes out the window. Work-life balance is not an ideal. It’s a practice that will require effort, courage, and sacrifice. There are many ways to earn a buck, but you only get one shot at life.