k.ahlquist

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This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

In last week’s question about burning out doing work that you love, I wrote this:

I used to think the cure for burn-out was lots of downtime and relaxation — and sometimes it is — but what’s worked better for me personally is regularly using my brain for something completely different. Otherwise you’re just wearing the same grooves into it all the time and (at least for me) that’s been where my worst burn-out has come from.

In the comments, someone asked:

Would you be willing to do an entire post on this advice? This was mind blowing for me, and so useful! I’d really love to hear further perspective from you on it.

I’ve found it mind-blowing too. Here’s my experience with it.

Some years ago, I started a work advice column as a fun side hobby.

Then I accidentally monetized it.

Some time passed and the revenue grew enough that the column began to feel like a significant part of my work obligations. It was no longer just a fun hobby; it became a significant piece of what I do professionally, with deadlines and pressure to publish a certain amount of content on a certain (and frankly bananas) schedule.

It was also very similar to the rest of what I was doing professionally (management coaching — so in many ways the column was the written version of what I was doing with the rest of my time).

But I still really, really loved it, so all seemed okay. If anything, I felt like I was living the dream — everything I was being paid to do happened to be things I loved.

But somewhere around 2017, I realized I was overextended. I had constant deadlines, both here and for clients. I had to write on demand, every day, whether I felt like it or not.

And then I did many more years of that.

I was cranky, exhausted, and stressed out all the time. So I tried cutting back by jettisoning a bunch of clients. It didn’t work.

Every year, I would take the whole month of December off, thinking that a big chunk of time doing nothing would fix this. During that month, I could disconnect, relax, not think about work — logically, it felt like of course that should help. But every January 1, I’d realize that it hadn’t helped that much. I would try to figure out why; in fact, every year I’ve written myself a note to consult the following December, with ideas about how to make it more relaxing next time. But nothing worked.

I want to be clear: throughout all of this, I have loved my work, both here and for clients. I’m so happy to be doing it. It’s rewarding on a ton of different levels. So it was hard to understand why I was so exhausted, other than the sheer volume.

Then, early this year, I took on a new volunteer project that used a completely different piece of my brain. I don’t know why I thought this was a reasonable decision — I was already stretched so thin and didn’t think I had time for anything additional. But something in me really wanted to do it. (I can’t discuss this fully without saying that as a Jew I had been in a very, very dark place since October 7 of last year — very close to giving up on humanity in many ways — and this new volunteer work made me feel joy again, so I didn’t apply the “do I have time for this?” screen that almost certainly would have knocked it out of consideration otherwise.)

The volunteer work is weirdly perfect for me: I do it from home so I don’t have to go anywhere. It can be done at all hours of the day and night; I don’t have to commit to a specific schedule and can do it at 2 am if I want. It’s in many ways an F-you to big pharma, which I enjoy. It saves cats’ lives.

And it uses a completely different part of my brain than I’ve been using for years. I’ve had to learn a ton of new things, I have to do math, I have to think about science and medicine, I’ve had to learn to read bloodwork … it’s nothing like the rest of what I do.

And I haven’t felt burnt out once this year, even though I’ve added work to my life rather than subtracting it.

For years it seemed self-evident that I’d need to do less work, not more, if I wanted to feel less burned out. But somehow, after just adding something entirely different, I am no longer cranky, exhausted, or stressed out.

That’s what I meant when I talked about wearing the same grooves into your brain over and over. That’s the part that had run me down, not the busyness itself. I started some new grooves, and my brain feels … recovered. From adding work, not subtracting it — the exact opposite of what I had always assumed about burn-out.

I don’t think this will work for everyone. I think often downtime and relaxation is the answer. But I’d been trying that for years without success, and this worked like nothing else.

On June 26th, 2015, the United States Supreme Court ruled that bans on same-sex marriage violate the 14^th Amendment of the Constitution. This is your image of the week:

Source: Slate.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)