Take Time Off (or it’ll take you down)
For all you eager beaver go-getters out there, how familiar does this sound?
The last year and a half for me has been one long scramble to keep ahead of a to-do list that seems to multiply exponentially on its own. Working my day job, evenings and spare time to set up a new software venture, not to mention trying to finish a novel after 2 years of effort. Mix into this my training and teaching schedule, family life, the usual litany of domestic tasks, and you get a pretty good idea what my life had become.
Unless you’re a blob who spends all their spare time sitting on their ass binge-watching shows and eating like the dickens, you probably have a similar tale to tell. Maybe not quite as manic as mine became (I was, at one point, working between 80 and 90 hours a week), but you know the feeling.
Get shit done. Get shit done. Get shit done.
I could launch into some tirade about the state of modern humanity, how we work too much, as a society we put too much emphasis on success and career, blah blah blah, but I’ll spare you the tired rhetoric.
Yes, sure, society does put a lot of pressure on us to succeed. That is true. But in my case (and I imagine more than one of your cases, if you’re still reading), society isn’t to blame: my lack of self-control and unwillingness to slow down was.
I am an eager beaver. I am a go-getter. I like having a lot of stuff on the move. I like taking nothing and turning it into something. I love startups, projects, working on things, pushing myself. I admit it. I would be bored stupid if I didn’t keep busy with a cornucopia of projects. I’ve always been this way to some extent, and don’t ever imagine I’ll fully change from this way of living. I am a creative. I love the act of creation in the same way I love breathing air.
Now, in most times, I seem to manage this madness pretty well. However, this situation in which I found myself for the past 18 months was the perfect storm of work to get done, all of it facing some looming deadline. I was driven day on day to work more and more, to hit more and more deadlines. I was living work, I was thinking work. Hell, at nights, I was dreaming about work. That’s how bad it got.
And then it happened. Suddenly, and with no help on my part, I just stopped.
I didn’t intend to stop. I didn’t even really WANT to stop. But I stopped alright. And the thing was, for the next three months, I found that no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t start again.
I hit burnout.
We all know the word, but if you’ve never experienced it, then let me fill you in: You feel exhausted all the time, even after a great night’s rest. You feel sick to death of everything. Even the most menial of tasks feel like pushing boulders up hills. You have no interest in anything, particularly anything which has led you to burnout, and no matter what you do to “jazz yourself up” (pep talks, more coffee, endless lists to get yourself ‘organised’ etc), you are stuck.
And this is where I found myself. I had hit burnout like a bug hits a windscreen, and I had to just, well, give up. I spent the next two months in a sort of limbo, where my inability to accomplish any of my tasks battled in my skull with the mounting frustration that I wasn’t getting the stuff done which needed doing.
And then, at long last, I did what I couldn’t let myself do for so long, and I just stopped. I stopped trying. I stopped, and lay down, and sat on my ass and binge watched shows while eating like the dickens. I cried, and I drank, and I slept a LOT.
After a month now, I am finally feeling human again, and am ready to get moving once more.
Let me lay it on the line: If you feel yourself being driven by a slavemaster in your skull to keep going, consider it a warning sign. If you think maybe you have taken on too much, more than likely you have. If you are teetering in the 70–90 hr a week area, you are in a stratosphere of dysfunction which is bad for your soul. If you’re there (or even close to there right now), then take my advice: Stop, and don’t start up again until that inner slave master shuts his/her fucking mouth.
Burnout is very real, and in my case, I got off light. I have known people who have had such horrific burnout before that they never recovered. They were never able to pick themselves up and carry on. I once spent a year struggling to recover.
I am a creative, and as I said, creation is my bag, so if you’re like me, then take some sagely advice: Creation is amazing, but not at the price of your health or your sanity. Make sure to take time off as needed to salve your soul. Waste more hours to ensure you don’t get overwhelmed. Give yourself the time you need to recharge, or the universe will do it for you, and the universe is not all that kind in how it brings the hammer down.
I’m back to my work again. The novel is being tweaked. The startup is going again, and I’m back to training, and to work. I am clearly back at it again, but this time, I intend to watch myself, and keep a clear head for the warning signs. That inner slavemaster can kiss my ass.
