Dealing with Burnout… For a second time

I’ve dealt with burnout once before, when I caught myself checking my work emails at uni despite a no work rule I had when attending classes.

I was studying for a MSc and working on managing 2 complex projects at the same time. I experienced burnout when these projects and the coursework I had to write consumed me at the same time, when I had a coursework deadline and knew I wasn’t going to hit it, when I went to ask my tutor for an extension with tears in my eyes from the emotion that had welled up inside my chest seemingly from nowhere.

I knew at this point I had reached burnout, fortunately my tutor was very understanding and granted me an extra week, this was all I needed and I utilised the extra time to finish the coursework. However I knew what I was experiencing having read posts here on Medium and promptly booked a 4 day stay in Barcelona where I met with a friend (Sam Hutchings a great freelance copywriter) and spent 4 days wandering the city with no aim, no purpose other than to try and take great photos. The goal was to almost forcefully try and get my brain back into a creative mindset.

It worked and I came back feeling refreshed and ready to work, glad to be back and kick start the projects I was working on with more vigor than I’d felt before. I really felt that I had achieved something, I had reached burn out but had applied the healing salve.

However it didn’t last.

To add some back story, my MSc was a part time course over two years, where I had to use my holiday allocation (here in the UK it’s 23 days not including public holidays so 4 weeks) to attend class (which was also 4 weeks of teaching per year). Which I knew was going to be tough but with my team and function making a transition during that time I underestimated how tough. The story above was from my first study year where I had managed, through working “hard” and doing many evenings and weekend days I accumulated 5 days of lieu time which I took and used for my trip to Barcelona.

In my second year I was better able to manage the two but it did not help. Not being able to take actual holiday and use it for an actual holiday was having an effect on my mental state and even now despite having finished my MSc a month ago and submitting my dissertation in January I still regularly tell people when they tell me I have done well or achieved something great:

“It still doesn’t feel like it’s sunk in.”

The truth is it’s because burn out has been steadily creeping back up upon me I’ve been driven now to the point where in the last month it jumped on me. It has now taken me beyond the emotional point to the ‘lack of caring and want to just stay at home in my pants’ point. Unfortunately due to a packed schedule I haven’t got the capability to book a last minute getaway to try and bring my brain back to a creative state.

This time dealing with burn out is going to be a lot tougher, the allure of staying in bed, playing Xbox and ignoring Outlook is growing greater each day. The feeling of not caring about work and the output of any work is starting to affect my project management skills and attitude. Although I recognise these issues and the effect on my work, getting to the change point, the proverbial ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ feels like the hardest thing to do at this point.

However, to me the first step was writing this article. The next step, well that is going to likely be a weekend where my camera and I take a local trip with no distractions other that what is at the end of the lens, no deadlines to think about and certainly no projects to manage.

Hopefully that will take me to a good place, a creative place, a rested place.