The burnout scapegoat
Oddly enough, a leaf blower just might be a metaphor for how we think about - and misunderstand - burnout.
I’m sure if I used a leaf blower all day, I’d be pretty tired at the end of the day. I’d sleep great that night and the next day my arm would be pretty sore.
But I wouldn’t be burned out.
When you go about your daily business, doing whatever it is you’re doing (reading, working, cooking, etc.) but with the constant thrum of a leaf blower in the background – now that’s burnout. It’s grating. And when it finally stops, you realize your stomach has been clenched, all your muscles tight, and your jaw locked the whole time. And THAT is truly exhausting.
Burnout. Overwhelm. Exhaustion. These words are thrown around on the daily but it seems to me there is a crucial misunderstanding of what it’s actually all about. Usually it’s pinned to things like long hours, demanding clients, taking care of kids, the day-to-day grind…and the remedies always follow the same tired track: cut back on working hours, self-care in the form of naps or bubble baths, some dark chocolate or a glass of red wine…
Sure, occasionally burnout is merely overdoing physical activity, but the kind of weariness brought on by burnout comes even more so from constant energetic leaks. Things like broken commitments, misunderstandings that lead to re-doing work, having the same conversations over and over again because you’re not addressing the real issue…those are the things that fry our nerves and leave us feeling unrelentingly worn down.
Burnout is telling us to clean up our lives. Keep our commitments, or stop making them. Say what we mean instead of saying what’s easy and then worrying about what to say when it comes to light. Take the time to be clear because if you don’t have time to be clear now, how will you have time to clear it up later?
The only way to TRULY get rid of burnout is to eliminate the energetic drains that are stealing our lifeblood bit-by-bit. And while that may seem tiresome…is it any more tiresome than feeling burned out, overwhelmed, and exhausted, every single day?
