A quick disclaimer: I’m not a medical professional, and this is not medical advice. I feel like I have to say that for legal purposes, but I mean every word. Also, this issue is meant to be heard, not read. I don’t have a podcast platform so for now, this is what I’m working with. Enjoy.
I’ve been trying to write this article for two weeks now. When I say I’ve been trying, what I actually mean is that I haven’t written a single word. The idea has been a pest in my brain, eating away at my mental energy. I would tell my friends and even my partner that I was writing this, even if I wasn’t. It would keep the brainworm at bay, if only temporarily. If I told enough of my friends every day, eventually I’d write about it out of pure responsibility. I had to, right? If I say I’m going to do something out loud, then I have to do it. And then I burnt out.
You wouldn’t believe it based on how often you see me around the internet. I tweet daily, mentor junior designers in my community, work with clients, livestream design events, walk my dog daily, cook dinner for my partner and me, and I’m trying to write my first book. I’ve become chummy with burnout, and you’d never even know it.
I can’t recall when I first felt burnout. I don’t think anyone can. It’s like a dream that you can't remember when it started, but you knew it was always happening. If I go back far enough, it feels like there was always a tired specter haunting my working life. That’s the nature of burnout; it’s cloudy and won’t let you remember its ghastly visage.
It’s difficult to know when the burnout starts. It’s not like depression where your therapist equips you with the tools to fight back. You can see the black hole before you, but you haven’t reached the event horizon yet, so there’s still time to escape. Burnout is the opposite, a slow decline with an infinite pull. What used to be a deluge of work and availability has since become a trickle of quiet retreat.
Burnout is a state of mental, emotional, and physical exhaustion that happens when you experience extended periods of stress and an inability to cope with demands in your personal and professional life. It creates a feeling of being overwhelmed. You’re suddenly unable to meet expectations and feel a lack of motivation or interest in activities you typically enjoy.
It manifests in different forms, and they all act differently and hint at the underlying problem. For me, the cause has never been immediately identifiable. But as I get older and go through the demanding motions, I come to conclusions faster. In this issue, I present two stories with opposing situations. In both, I become Icarus, fly too close to the sun, and reduce to cinders.
Part 1: Idle Hands Are The Devil’s Workshop
I mentioned in a previous newsletter an anecdote from when the company I worked for was being acquired. That was the second-worst burnout I’ve ever had. It’s not what you think. I didn’t work 12-hour days, didn’t come in on the weekends, and didn’t stay late to ideate with the CEO.
When the acquisition was announced, the C-suite told their respective teams that all future work toward new projects was canceled while all current projects could wrap up. Everyone felt a mix of relief, apathy, and panic. Relief because we’d finally cash out from working on this rusty behemoth of a dating app. Apathy because why bother with trying anymore if the deal is already done? Panic because this wasn’t an acquihire. The slurry of emotional states herded everyone into the same journey.
In order for us to look good to the acquiring company, the C-suite still required us to come into the office. To work on what? No one knew. I’d spend my days polishing the design system I knew the acquiring company would replace on day one. The one-on-one cadence with my manager increased to a weekly pace, and I think we both needed it. We’d check on how the other was feeling, exchange office politics, and talk about ‘what's next’. In the afternoons, my team would sunbathe in the only corner of the office with direct sunlight. Music would be blasting from a tinny MacBook speaker, and coworkers with dogs were encouraged to hang out.
It sounds like an ideal job when I read my writing again. I didn’t have to make anything? I would have a long lunch and be home by 3:00? In order for us to get our final payout, we’d have to stay on until the final gasps from HR. We had to wait to be fired, essentially. We didn’t know when the deal would finalize and we didn’t know when we’d be let go or if we’d have to interview for our jobs again.
When would I be fired? When would the deal be finalized? It would be months until we’d know for certain. In the meantime, there was nothing to do. The unanswered questions would lead to anxiety, and the lack of activity was driving me to frustration.
I couldn’t work on personal ideas because the company owned my laptop. I couldn’t stay home instead of coming in; our badges tapping in were tracked by the building. And we couldn’t build new features because our acquiring company wanted the product as-is. There was simply nothing to do but show face and pretend.
I would often slip away into a wingback chair to watch a TV show. The back of the chair was high enough that you’d have to stand on your toes to see what the person was doing on their laptop. But eventually, I’d run out of things to do at the office. No work, no play, no personal endeavors.
The shiftless nature of the company at this point brought on a timeless quality to my time there. It didn’t help that the sun was blocked by Salesforce Park and several other towers nearby. The light on our floor was a perpetual cloudy day. We were sitting on our hands in a gray office with an equally gray carpet, fluorescent lights, and a doomsday clock with two minutes to midnight.
I had reached burnout in this cyclic nothing. Not by doing the least by choice, but by force. While there’s a certain camaraderie in a situation like this, the shared fates of the coworkers you care about bring another level of stress you didn’t know you could take on. They would all likely be fired, and there wasn’t anything we had control over.
Post-acquisition, the doing-nothing phase of my life would bleed into my unemployment too. It felt like I couldn’t make a move for fear of what would come next. The idle periods of time would leave me with a lasting belief of imposter syndrome. Wading back into the job pool terrified me when I was overly comfortable treading water. With money dwindling and depression rearing its ugly head, I had to dive in and hope I don’t drown.
Part 2: I’m Only Your Paintbrush
After the acquisition, I worked at a tiny startup. We moved fast and shipped often, which was a refreshing change from what I was used to. If I wanted to design a feature or make a change, I was given the freedom to do it. Or so I thought.
The founder saw himself as a visionary. He had sold his last company to Microsoft for $100 million. That sum of money would change the way you view your own ideas and incoming suggestions. How could he be wrong when he'd already made more money than most people make in their entire lifetimes?
The startup was small enough that he touched every part of the work, and it felt like a relief when it wasn't your area of work. But when he did find his way to your part of the operation, you knew you were in for some trouble. He couldn't write code, he couldn't design, and he couldn't do marketing. So when he graced your workspace with his personal ‘expertise’, you were destined to make something that you knew wouldn't work.
This way of thinking was something he wanted to spread to his managers. If his managers adopted his way of thinking, he could step back and let the machine run itself. Over time, you could see each manager morphing into a version of him. I saw this transformation happen in my own product manager, spreading like a founder-parasite.
Working with him was ideal at first. He was the one who let me implement my ideas into the product. It felt like, for the first time, I was heard and told to follow my professional opinion. But over time, the managerial training that was being injected into the team was changing the way he spoke to everyone.
Problems in the product weren't questions anymore. He wouldn't come to me with the issue and ask me how I'd solve it. He'd let me work it out on my own and swoop in with his own ideas after the designs were done. I'll admit that sometimes it worked out, and his ideas were better.
His ideas were never direct orders either. They were said in a way that would imply that I was the one who came up with the idea first. This sleight of hand tricked me for a while when the pattern first began. I really did think the ideas were my own. Over time, this Dale Carnegie-esque method of inception became the norm. And the norm became obvious. The veneer of suggestion wore off, and his true intentions were revealed.
After that, every day I dreaded designing anything. I was designing something without any power or influence over the real product. I was treated as a production designer who was there to solve a problem only my manager knew how to fix. I had almost ten years of experience, and it felt like I was stepping back to my junior years. This experience damaged my passion for design in my professional and personal life.
Scrolling social media will tell you that you're not good if you aren't building your ideas in your spare time. But it's hard to build something for yourself when you're told for 40+ hours a week that your ideas aren't going to work. It makes you question your level of mastery and your ability to grow in the future.
Designing a new feature was no longer something I'd tackle solo. I knew what was coming if I put forth the effort: a slew of poorly persuasive hints that I was going in the wrong direction. In its place, I'd let enough time pass that would feel like I was giving it an attempt. Then I'd come to him with puzzled frustration. I wasn't stumped; I knew where this was heading.
Part 3: It’s Serious Business
Burnout is a serious issue that affects both mental and physical health. Here are some of the symptoms: increased irritability, difficulty concentrating, changes in sleep and appetite, and a decline in work performance. Unlike depression, burnout can be more insidious, forcing you to retreat into yourself and decrease productivity rather than seeking help. It can even cause a list of issues like an increased risk of heart disease, a weakened immune system, gastrointestinal issues, chronic pain, anxiety, depression, and a sense of hopelessness.
Those are the types of symptoms that warrant a WebMD doom scroll. You'd think with a list like that, we'd talk about burnout more often. Instead, we hold it as a trophy to make our peers revere in awe at our misery. It has become a self-soothing method like the word "busy". You're not actually busy; you use your time poorly and want sympathy in an indirect way. That's okay; I'm not going to fault you for that. I don't think I can fix you, but I think I can help you understand why you're spinning your wheels in the mud.
Over time, burnout becomes your new normal. It transforms from a pinch of the Sunday Scaries to a full-blown addiction. You spend every waking hour thinking about those moments that bring you to your limit. Like a hard drug, you've trained your brain to require burnout to function properly. It's that same drug that kills your motivation to move forward.
When friends hit burnout, they think a vacation will help. However, even amidst relaxing surroundings, they can't escape their association of self-worth with productivity, as email notifications continue to accumulate. Regardless of their physical location, their brains remain restless, primed to re-engage with the same stressors they tried to leave behind. To really beat burnout, we need to change how we think about it all.
Rebooting The Brain
When you find yourself on the verge of exhaustion, it’s time to look for your unique tells. They’re easier to notice when you’re already in the deep end, but the best time to look inward is now. The second-best time was last year when you felt the same way. Grab a notebook or open your favorite writing app.
Start by asking yourself where the burnout stems from. There isn’t always a reason to address at first, but there’s always a time and a place. For now, the reason might be initially imperceptible, like in my second story. In therapy, I’ve learned that understanding the ‘why’ will take time. For now, we’ll write down the other details. What happened the last time you dreaded work? Can you pinpoint a moment that you aren’t looking forward to? What specifically was said or what action was asked of you?
Sit with each of these moments you’ve written down. What are the similarities among each? How are they different? Your objective isn’t to find someone to blame, but to recognize the circumstances that create the conditions that break you. It’s death by a thousand cuts, and your goal is to remember each slice.
Finding commonalities will make it easier to also find ways to change your habits. If you don’t suffer from depression, then you’re not used to knowing your episodic triggers. Learning what sets you on that path is a new experience and it will take time to integrate this habit.
You aren’t making a to-do list you can check off and consider a success. You’re also not going to say, “Okay, that’s all finished now, I know my habits when I’m feeling burnt out.” This is an ongoing journey. You’ll find new ways to burn out and even more inventive ways to keep yourself stuck in that rut. The new normal is taking notes and referencing the cheat sheet. Think of it as a piggy bank that you’re depositing bad times into. The next time you feel yourself slipping, you can smash the porcelain pig and save yourself the pain.
What you’re attempting to do is rewrite the stressful moments so you can safely relive the moment as a third-party observer. You can’t prevent what has already happened, but you can create distance from experiencing the event. That distance will allow you to see the trigger for what it actually is and decouple your personal worth. That person who experienced that was you but isn’t anymore. The past you is someone else you can study with great interest. We do this for project post-mortems, so why not ourselves?
I want to leave you with some of my personal indicators for burnout. You might also recognize some of these indicators:
I post less frequently on social media. It feels like a burden to come up with new ideas and to interact with the replies.
I find cooking to be cumbersome.
I text my parents and my friends less. Depression shares this trait too. The difference is that with burnout, I think about those relationships as another responsibility to uphold instead of wanting to be alone.
I make excuses not to work out. I can’t lift weights; there’s work to do!
I become frustrated when I’m interrupted at my computer. If you bother me, it means I’m not getting the thing done that I probably wasn’t doing anyway.
I stop caring about the quality of my work. If someone I’m working with has a suggestion, I implement it without considering its effect on the project.
Tasks feel impossible to start. Any amount of progress feels small in the face of the whole problem.
That’s All Folks
Finishing this issue feels cathartic. I’ve been holding a mental space open for two weeks, and it meant that other tasks got a smaller amount of space. I can’t claim to fix your burnout, but I hope you feel the same catharsis reading this as I did writing it. I don’t know what the cure is, but if you find out, will you let me know? I’m in the middle of burnout, and this newsletter is my hand reaching out for yours. But take care of yourself first; we can’t both drown.
Special thanks to Tom Creighton for helping me improve this issue. Thank you forever to my brilliant partner Molly Stubbs who edits all of my awful grammatical errors and tense issues. And thanks to all of you for listening.
This issue of the newsletter is my longest piece of content yet, so if you are enjoying my newsletters, audio or textual, consider subscribing. My newsletter will always be free, and I offer a paid subscription if you feel like supporting my writing. If you liked today’s newsletter, let me know. Leave a comment or tweet me on Twitter @devinsfountain.
Until next time, thanks.