I try to be more solutions focused and positive than not but occasionally I feel the need to put the record straight.
Almost daily I see people sharing ‘solutions’ to burnout that, from experience and research, I know just don’t work, or at least don’t work in isolation. I know the temptation to hit on the latest new fashionable ‘thing’ or to try something completely different in order to ‘fix’ our problems; we are all looking for a simple fix, a tablet to take or a reset button to hit.
However, if it was that simple - well you would have fixed it long ago!
So, here are 5 ‘solutions’ to burnout that just don’t work, and why…
Taking a week’s holiday or sick leave to sleep it off. Yes, exhaustion is the first pillar of burnout and is the most obvious symptom, the one we pay attention to first and foremost. But burnout isn’t simple tiredness or even exhaustion. It’s a state of depletion. That means it will take more work to refill your energy, rebuild your energetic reserves and your resilience to stressful events than a simple week lying on a sunlounger by the pool or watching videos of kittens on YouTube whilst you lie in bed. For variations of this also see: taking odd days of holiday to catch up on life admin, taking half-days off sick after you’ve gotten your vital work done or spending all weekend lying on the sofa so that you can mostly function during the week.
Flexible and agile working. Hot desking. Remote working. Apps that allow you to time record on your phone or apple watch whilst you use a VPN to log in and access your emails and your CRM. Look. I love flexibility and one of my pitched battles as a lawyer was requesting the ability to work from home so I could actually concentrate on my complex tasks without the phone ringing off the hook, the ‘can I ask a quick question’ interruptions or the open plan office that resulted in my threatening to throw a stapler at the loud people making photocopies and coffees within inches of my desk because of the poor planning of ‘get everyone in on the same floor without thinking about the noise all those human beings make in a confined space’.
However, these are not solutions to burnout in and of themselves. What most of us end up with is unlimited access to work coupled with the intense fear of failure and a crushing to do list. In those circumstances, remote working and agile working environments are to burnout what handing the keys to a liquor store is to an alcoholic. The intentions might be pure, but the behaviour is enabling and destructive nonetheless.Going vegan/taking up hot yoga/joining the gym/giving up junk food/drinking green juice. All admirable in and of themselves and of course a healthy body means you are more likely to be able to sleep, to physically withstanding resilience and long working hours and so on. But these things in and of themselves are not cures to burnout. They are pieces of the puzzle but are not penicillin or a vaccination in and of themselves. They are also often a sign that you are looking for a magic pill solution rather than addressing what is really going on.
Whilst we are on the subject - there is no essential oil, no pill, no cream, no balm that will resolve your years of chronic excess stress that has not been successfully managed and if your friend suggests you buy their latest new product and join their downline, they are not your friend and they are just pushing their MLM pyramid of doom on you and you should give them the verbal slap they deserve. I despite when other people prey on the insecurities and worries of those facing burnout and sell them snake oil as a solution. There are plenty of therapies that will help, I often promote buying magnesium oil to help with sleep, I know plenty of people who have created fabulous supportive essential oils, but as with hot yoga and green juices they are a piece of the puzzle, not the solution. Anyone tell you otherwise? Kick ‘em where it hurts and run away quickly.
Leaving your career. Ah the big one. The tricky one. The one that got me on this path to begin with. If you are on the burnout spectrum then you have been worrying for a long time that you ‘just can’t hack it’ and ‘I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this’. You might even have a little dream that involves winning the lottery and driving a tank through your place of employment of an evening or selling your house and moving to the side of a Loch in the Scottish highlands to live in monastic isolation and forever cheap real estate. Can I let you in on a little secret that all the ‘freedom business’ ‘laptop lifestyle’ and ‘bossbabe femmetrepreneurs’ don’t want you to know so you’ll buy their 6 steps to building a business and quitting a job premium priced programme?
Wherever you go, there you are.
Burnout isn’t something that is done ‘to’ you (although that does not absolve employers from responsibility, see hotdesking above and bonus point below) and it is something that you have a huge amount of control over. i know, you hate me, but it’s true.
Burnout happens as a result of key behaviours and beliefs that we carry out and subscribe to. Beliefs like ‘I’m not good enough’ or ‘I’ll never be far enough ahead’. Behaviours like making sure everyone else is ok and settled and happy before you take care of yourself or acknowledging that you’re struggling every day of the week but telling yourself you don’t have time to make the changes you need. Quitting your job may be an answer, but it’s not THE answer, like green juice and essential oils. If you can quit your job, go elsewhere and not encounter the same struggles, then it wasn’t burnout, it was a toxic work environment. If you’ve jumped between jobs over the past few years and keep coming across the same old problems, then baby, I’m sorry, but it’s you. Good news is, that means you don’t have to wait for Glinda the good witch to glide in on her bubble and wave her magic wand over you. You get to save yourself.Bonus point because this one came up along the way, and this time employers I’m looking squarely at you. Stating that you have a supportive mental health aware office does nothing unless you back it up and you have buy in from all your staff. Having someone in to talk about resilience once a year, doesn’t cut it (yes, even when that person is me. It’s all about the implementation and ongoing conversation). And please, for the love of all that is good and black forest flavoured - stop thinking that sending people on Mental Health First Aid training resolves everything. Again. It’s a part of the puzzle. You wouldn’t require all employees to leave their vital medical equipment and medicines at the door and refuse to call an ambulance because you have a first aid trained employee - so too you should be bringing in the equipment and the tools and the resources ALONGSIDE your MHFA trained employees. This goes double for ‘we have an Employee Assistance Programme’ and triple fold for ‘we have a yearly bake sale for Mental Health Awareness’. Go and have a word with yourselves and then message me to book a Burnout Prevention training session if none of these resonate already.
Look, I’m not trying to be unduly negative and Iove that people are trying to create solutions (except you ‘join my team’ friend and you bossbabe femmetrepreneur with the pink fluffy swirly font, you can all go stand on the naughty step with ‘we have MHFA trained employees and have ticked the box’ employers). But I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t share the wider context of these ‘solutions’ and help save you a whole lot of pain and heartache by telling you in advance that these are not the whole story.
I have been there. Ask anyone who worked with me 2013-2015 and they will tell you that I regularly had disgusting pond scum looking drinks on my desk, was forever trying to give up the Percy pigs and taking odd days off work here and there to ‘hit the reset’ button. They will also tell you about the holiday I went on where I logged in to my emails 6 times a day and had to be firmly told to sit down, shut up and leave the team alone when I was going on and on about my cases whilst sitting poolside admiring the sunset over the ocean because I just couldn’t let go.
I came in early to get my filing done for fear people would realise what a failure I was. I logged into my emails before I got out of bed each morning. I burned out. Hard.
The solution to burnout doesn’t lie with a new technological development (yet) or a superfood or a bake sale at work. It definitely doesn’t lie with having options like an EAP because we are in the most technologically advanced, hyper connected age with information as currency and constantly available at our fingertips.
You are not burning out because of a failure to keep on top of your work or because you just need to do a few more late nights.
You are burning out because of the way you think, feel and believe about yourself and your work (and yes, you are often enabled by hyper-demanding clients, excessive demands on your time and a desperate need to keep up with the Joneses, the Kardashians and your mother’s dreams for you).
Whichever way you slice it, a downward dog by the pool as you take an hour off work isn’t going to solve it. Stop selling yourself short, you’re smarter than that and you deserve more than a sticking plaster solution over a broken leg situation.
PS Next week I am running a live workshop taking you back to the basics - what burnout is, how you can recognise it and most importantly - the meaningful and impactful changes that you can implement straight away to manage and reverse burnout.
I’m not going to pretend that you just have to swallow a pill and all will be well - it takes work. but my job is to make it easily digestible, time-limited and implementable as possible and that’s what I’m going to be doing.
This workshop is taking place live but will be recorded and yours for life, together with the pdf workbook of my notes that I will be creating to run alongside it.
It’s also a ridiculously low cost workshop with a limited number of places available.
Isn’t it time you started really dealing with this burnout situation, instead of pretending it’ll all go away and you’ll be fine? Click here to find out more and join us