RingoI spend a lot of my time thinking about burnout. Mostly because my life is pretty much constantly on the razor’s edge of toppling far into the territory of wash out and used up. I’m a big believer in burning the candle at both ends and fueling the raging fire of my life takes more fuel than I can possibly manage. If we take that analogy further, my ability to gather firewood, chop it, split it and stack it is far worse than my ability to burn it and I’m constantly lagging behind. I often throw green saplings or even handfuls of dirt, hell maybe even plastic, just to find something that I hope will keep it burning a few minutes more while I try to prepare the fuel for the next month, or week, or sometimes even the next day.
Possibly because of this I get asked about burnout a lot. Or how I’m able to keep living a busy life without quitting. Or how to recover, stave it off. Unfortunately I can’t ever really answer those questions because, well. I burnout all the time. I give up and quit or far more projects than I ever complete. And maybe that’s why I get asked about it alot. Because I go through it so much people think I’m an expert? I don’t know. But I do know there is no easy answer.
The shitty part about motivation is that there is no clear easy fix. Which is pretty self evident because if there was we’d all be fucking gods of getting shit done. When you look around and see that most people are lazy assholes(myself definitely included) it should be obvious how hard motivation is.
The nice thing though? It’s pretty fucking simple. The truth is the way to beat burnout is just to keep doing shit despite being burned out. The way to not quit is, wildly, to not quit. The way to get over and recover from a drop is just to get the fuck back on the wagon and do it. One day at a time. AA style baby. I don’t agree with a lot of the philosophy behind 12 step programs but got damn are they effectively designed for building(or breaking) habits. Don’t believe me? There’s some good scientific literature you can find on it. You can also read The Power of Habit by J Charles Duhigg, which I honestly recommend anyway to anyone interested in building a lifestyle of productive work. I’ll probably put a list of my favorite resources at the end of this too.
But yeah. Every time I burn out, I basically just keep on keeping on. It sounds simple because it is. You can ask how, but really there isn’t any more how to it. My brain sends a message telling me I shouldn’t do the thing and then I tell my brain to fuck off and “Do it Anyway.” There are certainly tricks and tips I’ve learned over my years of pushing myself beyond my limited capacity but they are hardly more than 10% improvments on what I’m already doing. They won’t keep me doing it if I’m already fucking up(as I learned for the fucking thousandth time this fall) and they wont prevent a falling off. They make the work I do a bit better, a bit easier, and help me go a little longer before my inevitable crash and burn. But that’s all they do.
The better question is not how, but Why. Why do I keep doing it? Cause that’s what keeps me moving. The goal. The desire. They say that discipline is better than motivation and that’s true AF. But if you’re already disciplined than you don’t really need motivation or a reason. You can just do it anyway without a driving purpose. If you have that, if you are a gritty person, to use Angela Duckworth’s words, you don’t need a raison d’etre. Me though? I need that shit. I work out because I love being good at the sport I’m in and working out is important to it. I keep doing school work because I know someday it will lead to more financial freedom and greater flexibility in job choices.
Pretty much everything else though? That falls off. My RPG games don’t last. I can’t keep a streak of writing longer than a few months. My video production hasn’t been touched in a year. I struggle to keep reading every day. I can’t save money for more than a few k at time before I go popping bottles. My attempts at building morning and evening rituals are at best decent attempts but closer to abyssal failures. I can’t maintain a teaching/coaching gig without pulling a prima donna and walking away. My lifting/pell routines are success if I keep it up for more than 5 weeks. I’ve been trying to write an app for close to 4 years and I barely have two screens coded. My follow through to abandonment ratio is 1 to a dozen if I’m being generous.
When I lack that reason, that thing to fall back on it, it becomes so hard to push through. I just find that I fall off with no direction. It’s not that I need to have a long term goal in the moment of struggle. I don’t think about gold medals in between sets of pushups. When writing essays I don’t dream of being able to work remote while I travel the world. No, in the moment I focus on the next goal. The next possible end point and keep pushing. But when I get there, when there’s a moment to rest, to think and second guess, do I really want to keep doing this? Do I really want to keep waking up at 5:00AM to get extra training in? Do I really want to spend my lunch breaks sitting by myself reading technical documentation? In those moments when I want to tell myself no, that’s when I think on the goal. And when my alarm goes off the next day and I have to leave the warm embrace of my bed, I’m ready for it. I’ve prepared. And all I have to do is think of that next goal. Getting my shoes on so I can get out the door. Just get that done, and everything else will fall into place.
I don’t like this cycle I’m on though. I want to find a better way. I want to be able to keep a steady pace, to watch my burndown come and have months to prepare. I want to know how to take a break and actually recover instead of watching everything fall apart as I give up and have to pick the pieces back up and keep rebuilding my habits every few months. I get a little better each time but 2 steps forward, 1 back is still fucking slow progress. I have some thoughts on how to do it, but none of them have been tested yet.
I believe in “foundational habits.” Things that you can fall back on when everything is too much, but you won’t give up on regardless. For many people they may be simple bullshit things like brushing your teeth and showering everyday. When in the midst of depression(which to my completely non-clinical eye is what burnout mimics with terrifying accuracy) people appear to have trouble with basic tasks, getting food, cleaning themselves or their stuff, sometimes going to work or seeing friends. These are all behaviors/habits that make you feel human. My limited understanding is that while its hard to do these things, many of the people who can manage to knock out a few during a big depressive episode find it to be alot better. It’s my theory that that works for “productive” habits too. Things that go beyond making you feel human and right but make you feel accomplished and proud.
For me those are working out, tracking my tasks in a todolist(double bonus here in that it by tracking it I am better at getting shit done anyway) and doing morning and evening journal entries. The more I’m working out, the better I do everything else. The more I keep track of my todolist, not only do I do better at knocking things off it, but the better I am at the side tasks I forget to put in and the more focused I am on the tasks I do have. And lastly, I can see a marked change in days where I do a morning reflection and those I don’t. And I’ve I’ve done an evening reflection for a week straight my next week is almost always a baller productive one.
Finding those habbits has been and I think will be one of my keys to not burning the fuck out as bad, or at least recovering better. Another is not beating myself up for failure or saying no. There’s always something more you can do for your goal. And everytime I say no or miss one I know it hits my will power like a fucking dementors kiss. The solution? Be ok with failure. Be ok with saying no. This is another simple but hard one, but I’ve been working on it all year(longer really, since I started reading Seneca). I know I’m gonna fuck up and over book. I know I’m gonna not hit every commitment I’ve made. I just need to learn to say, sorry I fucked up can’t do that. Learn to say when I miss something, oh well, there’s a 1000 more. It’s ok. When I’m too tired to perform to my standards, remind myself there’s another at bat coming up. This ain’t Casey at the plate. The game don’t end till it ends.