Avoiding burnout as a manager
Managers wear a lot of hats. Sometimes we are coaches, other times mentors, accountability buddies, dispute resolvers, message deliverers, project managers, etc. As a result, we context switch very quickly throughout the day as we move on from one conversation to another, often every few minutes.
It’s no wonder that burnout is quite common among managers. While there are tons of articles addressing individual contributor or team burnout, it was quite surprising to me how few articles addressed the topic of managerial burnout.
Over the years, I have personally adopted a few practices that have helped me avoid burnout as a manager. With the lack of articles addressing this topic, I thought I’d share some of my tools in the hopes that it will help some of you as well.
(Please note that I am not a mental health professional, and that what I share here is a set of tools that have worked for me personally. If you are experiencing any clinical anxiety disorders, or need additional help, please seek the help of a mental health professional.)
1. Plan for different phases of the day
There are two realisations that I wish I had come to earlier in my management career:
- Not all hours of the day are equal
- Not all work you need to do is equal
Your attention and energy fluctuates quite drastically throughout the day. Anyone who’s experienced post-lunch drowsiness will relate to the truth of that statement.
Along with these peaks and valleys, your ability to do certain types of work also changes throughout the day. This means that when you do something has a huge impact on the cost of getting that thing done.
In her widely popular course Learning how to Learn, Barbara Oakley talks about Focused and Diffused modes of thinking. In Focused mode, your brain is concentrating intently on one thing you are trying to accomplish. In Diffused mode, you let your brain wander and make associations between seemingly random ideas to create new connections and generate new insights.
A key learning for me was that I was transitioning from Focused to Diffused mode organically depending on the time of the day.
Early in my management career, I fell into a common trap that most new managers fall into. I scheduled all my 1:1s on Mondays, thinking that if I could start the week with a bunch of meetings out of the way, I could spend the rest of my week focused on deep work.
This went as well as you’d expect. Monday morning, I found myself too impatient to listen, and hijacking 1:1s to discuss something that was at the top of my mind. Towards the end of the day, I was too exhausted to pay attention to anything that was said.
Instead of treating the day as 8 equal hours, take some time to introspect how your energy and attention varies as the day progresses. When are you able to do more focused work vs diffused work?
Personally for me, mornings are full of focused attention. Because of this, I find it easier to respond to messages, put together documents, or plan for upcoming work during the early hours of the day. Afternoons tip me over to more diffused thinking, and work much better for me when it comes to ideating on upcoming work, identifying potential future streams of work, etc.
Take a look at your own calendar, and try to schedule work into blocks that give them the best chance of success.
Rapidly switching back and forth between focused and diffused modes of thinking carries a huge energy cost, and can lead you to burnout quickly. Lining up the right type of work with the right time of the day is key to avoiding this.
2. Daily 3
Many of us start the day at the top of a bottomless pit we call a todo list, with a plan to finish it all by the end of the day. Not only do we not succeed in doing this, most days we end the day with a larger todo list than we started with.
Instead, commit only up to 3 things you want to get done, and make room in the calendar for that work.
Each night before heading to bed, I make a list of 3 things to aim to get done the following day. The idea is that if I complete these, it will move the needle in some way on the most important things I have to get done over the next few days.
It’s important to make sure that these are bite-sized, doable actionable items, and that you create space on your calendar to do that work.
Be careful not to commit to things like “Finish project X” or “Figure out Y” in your daily 3. Instead, commit to smaller tasks that’ll help you get there. Some examples might be as simple as “Book meetings with x, y, and z to gather more context”, or “Generate questions about x that I can dig into”.
Once you have these bite sized tasks, make sure to schedule them on the calendar where it makes most sense (see above section).
3. Be less reactive
Reacting to the firehose of everything that comes at you and attempting to constantly switch your focus to the latest thing is a sure-fire way to get burnt out.
Push all incoming things into an “inbox”.
This is an idea I adopted after reading David Allen’s book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
As new emails, slack messages, and stray thoughts pop up throughout the day, instead of reacting to them as they appear, push them into an “inbox” where you can capture them. This could be as simple as a text document or an app. Unless something is truly on fire and needs your immediate attention, make capturing it your default.
As you finish one thing and move on to another, scan the list. If something can be done in a minute or two, just do it. Otherwise delegate, or schedule things as appropriate. Prioritise whatever is left so that the next most important thing is at the top.
The goal is not to get absolutely everything done, but it is to make sure that all the important things are done in the right order. It’s inevitable that you’ll drop a few balls as you juggle all that you need to do. Focus on dropping the right ones.
You can use tools like the Eisenhower Matrix to figure out how to prioritise what to do next. Or simply ask yourself the question “What’s the future cost of not doing this work today?”.
Having a trusted system to capture what’s coming at you, and trusted habits to process what you’ve captured can play a huge role in keeping your stress levels down.
4. Fight ambiguity
Ambiguity is often another big source of stress and anxiety. This can come in many forms.
If you are feeling unsure about your impact, or whether you are performing as expected in your role, bring this up in your next 1:1 with your manager. Work together to set clear goals and expectations around your role.
If you are feeling uncertain about the projects that you and your team are taking on, book meetings with cross-disciplinary stakeholders to explore the purpose behind the work you are doing. See whether you can quantify the impact your work will have once it’s delivered. Having this clarity will help you prioritise and plan your projects, and figure out what to cut out of the scope if necessary.
You pay quite a high tax on ambiguity if you let it linger. In general, whenever you identify ambiguity that affects your work, be ruthless about chasing it down. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to do the work yourself. Assigning someone on your team to do this is also an option depending on the situation.
5. Make room for your health
When there’s a lot coming at you, health related activities are usually the first to go.
Keep dedicated blocks of time on your calendar for activities related to both your mental and physical well being. These could be anything from physical workouts, to meditation, to well deserved Netflix time.
Physical exercise is not just about stamina and muscle size, it also plays a huge role in the pool of energy you have available to draw upon. Meditation and mental downtime will help you focus better and tackle things with less mental exhaustion. This will result in more attention capacity to tackle work, leading to less stress and burnout.
These are some of the tools that I’ve used over the years to keep my stress levels under control. Try a few of these as experiments, and see what impact they have on your day to day work.
