How a computer game can help better understand burnout
lessons learned from playing Civilization
Burnout is this phenomenon where people seem to mysteriously become dysfunctional. Sometimes it creeps up upon us and we miss the signs or we shrug it off because we are so used to a societal mindset that preaches the virtue of working ourselves hard.
How did it happen, when did it start? Questions we ask ourselves when burnout occurs. It is not as simple as working too much or too hard, and it is closely tied to recovery time.
I was playing my favourite game Civilization when I realised it is a great metaphor to explain burnout. In some cases I think it is more helpful to think using metaphors as it allows us to step out of ourselves and form a more objective view. Some of us seem to develop a form of blindness when it comes to ourselves.
The metaphor works for most computer/video games, but even if you’re not a gamer, it should be simple enough to follow along.
Good health is invisible
Imagine our health is like a city. It is a complex system and most of the time it chugs along silently. Health is so invisible that we don’t know how precious our health is until we fall sick.
In Civilization (or most games), there is a health bar. You can see it below (where it says “Rome”). The city is in good shape when the bar is green and filled:
The health bar is made up of health points. At this point when the city suffers an attack, health points are deducted which makes the bar shorten a little but it recovers quickly.
This is most of us in our daily life. We get the occasional flu or fatigue from the occasional all-nighter, but we recover quickly and it doesn’t have any long-term effects.
Timely recovery is important
But if the attacks keep coming, the health bar drops more points and becomes yellow:
This is when the recovery rate starts to slow, it is slightly harder to get the health bar back to its full green state. Productivity is lowered and there are some signs of visible damage. But if the city is given a rest, it will still recover quickly enough.
In the game, this is when we will try to erect defensive walls and shore up our defences so the city can withstand later attacks better. Amateur players like me would realise I should have done it before — right at the beginning when the city was all healthy and undisturbed. But well, I was too busy improving the other parts of the city.
Sometimes life happens and we don’t get the time or the opportunity to recover when negative events happen. Maybe we’re caught in a situation where the attacks are relentless.
Chronic damage
This is when the health bar turns red:
We hope that the attacks stop coming, because if it continues the city will be utterly destroyed.
In Civilization, when the city is in this shape, each turn only allows the city to recover just a little bit, and we have to wait many turns before it gets back to the yellow state again. At this stage there is not much point trying to erect new defences or raise new armies. The city has suffered too much damage to produce anything and it can only try to recover.
However, if the attacks keep coming — the rate of recovery is slower than the rate of attacks — the city will inevitably be destroyed and be taken over by the enemy. If it reaches this stage, we can only hope to raise enough troops from another city to try to win it back.
This is similar to late-stage burnout. There comes a point when the individual can do very little except rest. If the person is lucky, support from family and friends is important in the recovery process.
A lot of people only realise they are burnt out at this stage, when it is too late to prevent it from happening.
Lessons learned
Prevention is better than cure
Don’t wait for signs of bad health to appear before implementing defensive measures in our routines: exercise, good diet, meditation, deliberate recovery periods.
Balance short-term vs long-term needs.
It is always more tempting to go for short-term gratification like eating a sugary dessert after a long hard day. On the other side, there are some routines that will only demonstrate positive effects after a long-term investment, such as exercise. In Civ, building walls and raising troops seem like a waste of time…until enemies arrive. But we can’t ignore answering to the short-term needs too, because they too, will build up. For some of us, ignoring the call to eat sugar desserts may result in a binge instead. The answer is to find a delicate balance.
Awareness of our own bodies is important
Many of us ignore the signs of burn out until it is too late. Learn to recognise the patterns: insomnia, compromised immunity like having regular infections, digestive issues, etc.
Intervene and recover in a timely manner
We’re always trying to hit one more deadline, do one more thing, achieve one more milestone, without realising how close we are to the edge. It is hard to remind ourselves that taking a conscious break that may halt progress in the short-term is better than suffering chronic damage in the long-term. The tortoise wins the race.
Burnout is a vicious cycle and has cascading effects.
In Civilization once a city is under attack, food production is lowered, the citizens work a lot slower and hence repairs become slower — everything becomes slow. The city in turn becomes more vulnerable to attacks and recover slower. Sometimes there is no recovery: it is just trying not to suffer further damage.
Depression is a symptom of burnout and it is argued that it could be an evolutionary adaptation. It is forcing our bodies to shut down and be incapable of doing nothing except recover. However, if we keep subjecting ourselves to the same sources of stress, we end up in an unending paralysis.
Maybe: don’t put ourselves in the position of constant damage
Sometimes we can try to do everything right but still burn out. The rate of damage may be higher than our rate of recovery. Perhaps it is better to bite the bullet and make a drastic change to our lifestyles rather than relying on short-term fixes.
Damage may arrive invisibly and internally
Having enemy attacks is not the only way for a city to be damaged in Civilization. It could suffer from not having amenities for the citizens, or slow food production among other reasons. We forget that nourishment is important too. We could burn out simply by not having enough self-care or having a positive image of ourselves. It is very possible to be self-sabotaging.
Professional work is not the only source of burnout. Stress may come from relationships, emotional labour, post-traumatic stress disorder, illnesses, all of the above. We tend to ignore the “softer” aspects of stress.
Burnout can manifest in a variety of ways
Extreme fatigue and depression are not the only manifestations of burnout. We could be hyper and yet have anxiety attacks, develop auto-immune diseases, be ultra-prone to infections, the list goes on. Our bodies cope in different ways and it will find a way to express that it is failing.
Burnout is real and every human is susceptible to it
It seems ridiculous that I have to state this, but so many times I have known of people (and myself) to dismiss our symptoms, feel guilty for not being as strong as our hardworking peers. Our bodies are not machines. Civilization is a game but it is designed with real-world principles. If mighty civilizations have been broken down throughout history, why is it so difficult to accept our mere human bodies will breakdown with unrelenting stress?
I wrote this post because I kept suffering from burnout myself. I didn’t understand how important was the relationship between timely intervention and rate of recovery. I was a person who would push myself until I’m off the edge and wonder why I recover so slowly when I finally get burnt out. People seem to recharge from a 2-week vacation and I get wiped out for months. I only saw the end, the breaking down but wasn’t aware of the chronic damage leading up to it.
These days, I find myself trying to explain the concept to fellow workaholics because I see the signs before they do, but mostly it is a futile attempt. It is still a societal stigma to work less and blindness to taking better care of ourselves.
I hope this post can be helpful, if not, feedback is appreciated.
Further reading
Being the Patreon of my life’s work with $1 a month. :)
