Preventing Burnout
This morning we tackled burnout.
Burnout happens when you've been under stress for too long. When you've been flooded with those hormones some time, your body and mind become apathetic in self-defense.
But, stress isn't all bad! We need some stress to keep the mental knife sharp, to help us face challenges, boost our memory, and generally turn the volume up on life.
Like attending a punk concert, your ears (mind) need a break, or you go deaf. Think of burnout like concert-ear if the concert were stress and the silence/ringing/dampening from your stressed-out ears is burnout.
This morning one of our Cobblers talked about how the military addresses stress. The Operational Stress Continuum is a tool used to help identify the right amount of stress for the moment. You start pretty chill just latently aware of the things around you, and as you move through the continuum, there's a mid-point where you're situationally aware and alert. This is ideal stress. You are alert and making good choices. After this, you move ever into reactionary stages where you're not making good decisions or thinking of the team. You can learn more about it here, and just because it's for the Navy doesn't mean it can't apply to civilian life.
Another Cobbler is reading the Burnout book. In the book, they talk about the Stress Cycle. Stress isn't just in your mind. It is a physiological response to a trigger. This means that you can't just talk your way out of stress - you need to move it through your body to complete the cycle. You can move, be that dancing to Beyonce in your living room or going for a run. Your body wants to run away, let it! If that doesn't work for you, a 20-second hug might do the trick. It needs to be an active hug, not one where you hang on the other person. And don't count the seconds. When the stress breaks, you will feel it. Here's a quick video that covers how to complete the cycle and some other tidbits from the book.
And we did talk about the four burners theory. The biggest culprit of stress and burnout is doing too much. Entrepreneurs, small business owners, and just people, in general, are stereotypically famous for continually hustling. But the hustle is hurting us. There's a theory out there that has some different origin to the story, but here's the gist:
Imagine that your life is represented by a stove with four burners on it. Each burner symbolizes one major quadrant of your life.
The first burner represents your family.
The second burner is your friends.
The third burner is your health.
The fourth burner is your work.
The Four Burners Theory says that "in order to be successful you have to cut off one of your burners. And in order to be really successful, you have to cut off two."
And that's the worst.
No one wants to cut off a burner, let alone two. The first thing that goes is our health, even when we know "If you don't have your health, you haven't got anything." The next is our friends or family. The relationships closest to you are easiest to take for granted. Every Cobbler argues with this theory, saying "somethings could simmer." "I could keep all four burners going."
But you really can't.
James Clear has some ideas on how to deal with the fact that life is a series of tradeoffs. You have to choose between excelling at one quadrant and letting the others go, or try to balance them all out but never really reach your full potential.
Lastly, there's another little factor - that glass of wine/whiskey at the end of the day may be adding to your stress. Hanxiety is a real thing. When you drink you stimulate the Gaba receptors in your brain, making you chill out. However, your brain registers the imbalance when you sleep and turns the glutamate up and trys to bring the Gaba down. The result is you have unnaturally low Gaba function and a spike in glutamate – a situation that leads to anxiety. And it takes a day or two for your brain to return to normal!
So in short, try not to drink, exercise more, get your rest, say no to too many commitments, and while you're at it, you might as well eat that kale salad. I wouldn't hurt.