I am the Queen of planning. I just need a vision or a big picture idea and I can’t seem to help it. For instance, if writing a book is the goal, we need to start with a blog, then some webinars, writing obviously, and research others’ ideas… If I have the plan, I can always reduce it to the steps required to get there.
I’ve read several articles on burnout this last year or so, and they seem to follow the same trend. You start with the goal- not feeling burned out, and follow with the execution- here are the steps you need to follow. It’s a common way of approaching things nowadays.
But the more I think about burnout, the more I realize it doesn’t fit well into that mold. Changing burnout doesn’t start with rules, it actually should start with our own expectations.
Burnout is very clearly routed in the organization you are employed by. Recent studies say that 50% of doctors are now experiencing burnout for instance. Your employer clearly controls factors that cannot always be changed by the person. But either way, the way that we react in those situations still has to come back to us.
For instance, I promise you, if you put me in a room and say “fold the t-shirts”, it may sound like a simple job. But once I’ve added in a special fold, organization by color and size, and a system in which to store said folded shirts, I guarantee you I could eventually burn myself out literally folding shirts!! It’s not the task that determines my tendency, it’s my expectations of myself. I am going to push my ability and my influence as far as I can in every job I take because it’s how I think.
There are many great recommendations about how to practically prevent burnout with our actions. But unless you use these steps to change your expectations for yourself, you will still burnout next time or in the next job or in another way. You cannot meditate daily and still work 16hr days for over a decade and not run dry.
So, here’s some ways to work through our expectations:
1)What expectations have you placed on yourself that are not required for your work? My first year of residency, I had recently been ill with meningitis. I was notably weaker than usual and made it a plan to go to the gym to build up my energy. However, I started having significant dizziness when I would try to exercise, and when to my doctor. Her recommendation? Don’t worry about exercise this year- worry about your work. Running wasn’t a love of my life, so I let it go for a year or two. It made my schedule much lighter while I was recovering from burning out and again, wasn’t required for me to be better in my office.
2) What expectations has your career put on you that are not necessary? During my entire medical school training, I was inundated with professors suggesting that we needed to get extra degrees. We weren’t even done with medical school yet, but were often told that “in this day and age” it was best for your career. Yes, getting an additional career in law or business may be helpful for you in thinking through your medical career, but is it required for you to be good at your job? Absolutely not! That just places additional stresses on people who would sometimes be great doctors without additional letters behind their names. Make sure your expectations for your career are related to your own goals and not anyone else’s.
3) What problems are you working around that you need to address? My first run of burnout was a few months after having meningitis. I had to do my job but also had to work around brain damage- the exhaustion, the headaches, and the slow thinking that that brought. While I can drop exercise, I needed to implement additional work to make my job easier. That involved getting to work earlier, having lists of requirements for particular parts of the hospital, and being patient with myself. I had to put in additional work to address something that otherwise would have taken me out of my career entirely. This looks different for others- a difficult relationship with a coworker, trouble with a particular subject in school, a boss that needs to be more decisive- etc. You have to put in extra time to address what weaknesses are in your life that need to be moved past and which ones you need to focus on to make yourself better later.
4) What goals have you set that you need to place in a more realistic framework? I had a goal to pay off my loans in five years unless I had a financial catastrophe before then. During that five years, I had a $80,000 hospitalization, had to replace a computer, a car, and had surgery. Why on earth did I continue to try to pay off my loans by age 30? Because I had set a goal that was unrealistic, contributed nothing to my wellness, and contributed nothing substantial to my life. Moving this to paying loans off in 10 years rather than 5 years was perfect and hurt nobody. But I had to commit to the new goal and stop overworking myself to the original one.
And here’s the harshest part- I fixed everything that was within my framework to fix. But then I was still a resident working 80+ hr weeks, still depressed and burned out, and still physically and emotionally exhausted. Burnout didn’t develop overnight. And it also wouldn’t go away overnight. And over the next year as I continued to focus on the right goals and as I became more experienced at my job, feelings of burnout slowly drifted away.
Next week we’ll talk about the aspects of burnout you can’t control at all- namely, your workplace! We’ll think through how your own strategies and your workplace strategies against burnout work best together.