It’s Happy! It’s Burnout! It’s… Happy Burnout! (cc sizumaru)
I love the controlled chaos of entrepreneurship. I love writing, marketing, scheming, reaching out to people. I’m a pop-outta-bed kinda girl, always looking forward to the big adventure.
Except lately.
Lately, there are days when I just can’t muster up the energy to choose what to tackle. Lately, when I sit down to write, it feels like a funeral dirge, not a jig. Lately, there are days when I can’t stomach the idea of adventure at all.
The confounding thing is, everything’s going so well. I could barely ask for more. I’m electrified, joyful, and glad… and very clearly burnt out.
Yes, folks, that’s right — I’ve got a bad case of Happy Burnout. Burnout caused by, as it were, an excess of awesome.
Happy Burnout Happens
As a stoic workaholic, believe me, I know burnout. Burnout knocks me on my ass, makes me wanna scream “screw you!” to the world, drop all obligations and go into hiding.
But not Happy Burnout. Happy Burnout looks different, and feels different.
Any questions? (cc mike9alive, curt deatherage)
Burn yourself out on things you love, on intrinsic motivation rather than external obligation, and the core symptoms will be similar — listlessness, disinterestedness, lack of creativity. But the psychological icing is a different flavor altogether.
With Happy Burnout, there’s no rotten, spiraling self-talk. You don’t hear that venal little whisper to damn it all to hell. For me, at least, that voice only appears when I’m doing work I shouldn’t be doing in the first place.
Happy Burnout hard to spot, for that reason, and these:
- Happy Burnout lacks vicious and destructive thoughts
- Happy Burnout can arrive one hour, and leave the next
- Happy Burnout leaves you very functional, most of the time
- Happy Burnout sneaks in, rather than announcing itself with a crash
- Happy Burnout leaves you puzzled why you don’t want to do the things you love
Happy Burnout is different.
Happy Burnout is a sneaky little bastard
Regular old familiar burnout is like a game of One More Thing KABOOM!.
Suddenly, a client asks for one more thing… one more thing goes wrong… one more thing piled on… and it all comes tumbling down. Kaboooom!
Happy Burnout is One More Thing — hold the Kaboom.
You can imagine how this change in pattern disrupts your coping strategies. Or, at least, disrupts mine, because typically, I skirt burnout, waiting for that big kaboom, feeling it build up. So I’ve been chugging along happily, taking on big, lofty goals — and when things went well, with no blow-up pre-shocks, I took on more.
No kaboom. Never a kaboom.
I was waiting for an advanced notice, but it never came. Even my stress level didn’t seem noteworthy. I was enjoying it.
Entré the sneaky little bastard.
Happy Burn-Out looks (and feels!) like great success, like everything’s going just right… up until the point where it isn’t. But then it can get better again. Until it isn’t (again).
I’m in it now, and I can tell you that it sucks. I’m overjoyed one hour, and totally whatever the next.
That’s nothing like Angry Burnout, where I was furious at all the external obligations, and the people associated with them. It’s nothing like Rebellious Burnout, where I want to tell the whole world, “Fuck you — I want off!”
And it wasn’t even Constant Burnout, where I was totally incapable of getting into anything, ever.
Happy Burnout can come in waves, alternating even minute by minute.
I didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late.
A Recipe for Happy Burnout
Here’s a foolproof way to create Happy Burnout, a recipe I can guarantee since it’s worked so well for me:
- work late into the night
- work on weekends
- crash every few weeks and veg — instead of taking true breaks
- withdraw from friends because you are busy and/or apathetic
- travel a lot
- take on a lot of different types of projects at once, e.g. building a new product and also remaking your apartment
- take the “I’m sick!” messages from your body literally — you have an infection, not a stress problem
And, finally, the last, most critical step:
- really love what you’re doing
Because it’s this last one that changes Rebellious Burnout, Angry Burnout, Constant Burnout into Happy Burnout.
Happy Burnout can only come about when you really enjoy your work. When your work fires you up — and burns you to a crisp.
I’m not special, and neither are you
I thought burnout was a thing of the past for me, because external obligations that made me sick were a thing of the past for me. (Well, except tax prep.)
Heck, we’d even just hired an intern — and a crackin’ good one at that. We had help. I was different. I wasn’t making the mistake that other entrepreneurs make. And I was only doing what I loved.
Yep… my work has been passionate, autonomous, intrinsically motivated, emotionally rewarding, and aligned with my Core Values.
And therefore, I thought I was immune to burnout. I thought I was different.
Bet you’ve never heard that one before.
What to do about it
Well, I’m not totally out of the woods yet, but I can tell you what’s helped me so far:
Not working all the damn time… Or working all the time, and spending all of the rest of the time with friends, or on other projects, or consuming media.
… Even if you love it.
I started taking weekends off, almost by accident, and wow, what a difference. I can feel the Happy Burnout symptoms fading away, and I’m excited to write again, and scheme again, instead of throwing up my hands.
Tearing yourself away from work you love is hard. Trust me, I know. I’m great at avoiding work I don’t love, and very, very bad at avoiding work I do love.
But you know that phrase, “Find the work you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”? Clearly that’s not the case: Work is work. It uses up our ability to think critically and manage ourselves… even if we enjoy it.
I’ve certainly learned that even if it feels like I’m “never working a day in my life,” I still need to take the weekend off.
Are you in Happy Burnout?
Or have you been? Please chime in. I want to hear about it. If we share our experiences, we’re all that much richer and better prepared for it.
I’d love to hear…
- what got you into Happy Burnout
- what it felt like, how you realized it for what it was
- what you did to counteract it
- how that worked
- what you’re doing differently now
Do you know the “flow”? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)
Hi Roland, Yep! I’m an armchair pop psychologist so I definitely know about Flow. Very smart of you to bring it up. There’s good reason to believe that you also have to have sufficient Executive Function available, because that’s what’s required to tune in / tune out… so if you work all the time without giving yourself good breaks, you will not be able to enter Flow. That might have been part of why I was miserable!
Okay, NOW you’re starting to freak me out. I was just writing about this (to myself) last night after the smell of burnt toast woke me up at 1am, because my fellow likes to make himself toast when he gets home late, and since I too have happy burnout, I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I decided to write until 3am. I have no clue how to stop happy burnout, but I’m not trying to. I’m just RIDING THE WAVE! This won’t last forever, so might as well let the productivity run through me. SUPER PRODUCTIVE!!! WHEEEE!
Kelly, That IS a couple of creepy coincidences! Or just awesome coincidence. Yeah… I’m going with awesome!
So you have insane bursts of creativity followed by burnout?
Awesomeness buffer under run. Got too much cool stuff going on to manage it all and so I find myself shutting down, I just distract myself with anything I can and withdraw from interacting with people.
I used to think it was some kind of over-stimulation, which it might be, and could be a product of my ADHD. When it happens I just have to start killing projects and re-prioritize, but first I have to get past the ennui. Switching to tasks that are brain dead simple, like cleaning html, organizing email, or reading too many blogs (like this one ;p) helps keep full on depression from settling in. I just try to turn down the noise until the fire can come back.
Thanks for sharing <3
What’s a true break? I suspect I’m suffering from Constant Burnout, I have depression so I spend every waking moment either trying to build up my self-worth or in a vegetative state (tv/games). Is it possible to… rest harder?
Hi Alexis, I’m really sorry – that sucks. When you’re actually depressed, just resting won’t do as much to help you get better as it does when you’re “only” burnt out. My best advice is to buy a copy of “Wherever You Go, There You Are” by Jon-Kabat Zinn, and “When Things Fall Apart” by Pema Chodron (preferrably the audiobook). If you only pick one, pick When Things. Vegging out with media, games, etc., is just one very tempting way of distracting yourself from what can really help you. They’re not really restful… and if, when you’re not playing/reading/watching, you’re always trying to talk yourself into feeling different than how you really are, that’s not very restful either.
I can say that because I’ve been there, right there with you. The only thing that ever made me better was learning to listen to myself, be alone with myself, and be kind to myself (emotionally, not with treats & things).
I wish you the best of luck!
When I was struggling with the unhappy burnout variety, self-help books (though not those in particular) actually confounded the issue, giving me excuses and strategies to keep vegging. One suggestion was to work just one hour a day, feel the accomplishment without pressuring myself too much. It failed terribly because it boiled down to me doing one thing a day and still talking down on myself for the rest of it.
What I would suggest to somebody so entrenched is to swap sceneries, even the entire life if necessary. I closed shop and moved 400 miles to start my new life as a graphic designer and while that was a rocky road, too, I feel much more empowered after I burnt my proverbial ships and cut my cords.
On the topic of happy burnout, in my opinion it’s important to spend a little extra time at work in a startup phase, but equally as important to take that time back, step away from the PC and go outside. We are social creatures, after all.
In my past, I had the fortunate situation of little external obligations, aka employed work, and lots of need to do something meaningful. So I started a lots of projects in my spare time. Which I had a lot of. It was all stuff I loved and cared about. I worked a lot on it and eventually encountered happy burnout. Although I’d never thought so much about it as to discern it from other forms of burnout.
I actually solved the situation by developing a very sensitive intuition about when I need rest and recreation. This rest is actually about doing something that recharges my batteries. Go swimming, read a book, lie in the sun. It’s about smelling a forrest after the rain, about watching a sunset or listening to birds. Its about relaxing and turning your head off, without going into sensory overload mode.
I actually liked to play videogames and watch movies. I always tried to pick games and movies which looked very promising and which I thought had a lot of quality, but still this wasn’t the right way to turn my head off.
I can’t exactly generalize what works. I usually stumble upon it and some of it proves as working over and over again. But the biggest common factor for me is actually the lack of commitment and responsibility. To kind of drift through the day, but drift in a regenerative way. Not just doing nothing, but simple being and recharching ones batteries.
Lately I learned that this is especially hard when external obligations come from other directions then work. Obligations coming from family, partnership, etc. This can all combine to create happy burnout, as for me happy burnout is simply doing so many things you like, that you’re constantly so exhausted (albeit happily exhausted) that the quality of your decisions and doings is just very low.
Absolutely. Even family/friend-type obligations… even going to parties… even traveling to places you love can do it.
Happy burnout. I like it (even though I hear it to the tune of Happy Birthday…and that annoys me)
What you’ve described feels very familiar to me – just like Kelly said: waves of intense productivity followed by…happy burnout.
I have a tendency to just keep on going as long as I feel creative and productive. Which means working long hours and through the weekends. Joyfully.
Until the cycle ends. And I feel all the symptoms of happy burnout that you wrote about.
While I can buy into the idea of taking regular breaks as a method of avoiding this…when I’m in a productive cycle, I’m afraid to stop. Afraid that come Monday, I won’t be able to recapture the flow – and I’ll have missed out on whatever I could have accomplished if I hadn’t stopped on Friday afternoon.
Right now, I’m working on recognizing the point where the cycle ends and actually taking the down time I know I need. Ideally, I’d just like to follow my natural rhythms. Easier said than done. Despite having complete control of my own schedule, something feels “wrong” about taking, say, a Tuesday off.
Thanks Amy, I’ll pick those up ASAP. I’m so sorry you’ve also had to deal with this. Your “Year of Hustle” really inspired me and I’ll be having a go myself when I’m in a better place.
Hi Amy,
I believe I’ve experienced what you coined as “happy burnout”. Usually, this is when I have an new project idea and I go on my merry way trying to realize it – there’s nothing more fun than green-field projects. However, when I burnout, I find that I lose my enthusiasm, to the point that sometimes I don’t revisit the project anymore.
Regarding taking breaks, Pomodoro has taking regular breaks worked into the routine, so I believe it’s a nice technique to learn ideas from, even if you don’t do everything literally.
Also, after seeing Giles’ video on developing habits. I’ve recently started to use a regular weekly schedule – which I make known to my family – for doing my personal projects. For example from 6:30 – 8:00 on weekdays, I am working, but I take a day off on Thursdays, for example. Since unlike you, I actually have a day job, I now have homework in addition to work-work. This has been working pretty well, and has relieved my anxiety of always thinking about and working on those projects every second of the day, but when I AM working, I have good assurance that I get a good-sized chunk of time to do it.
A yes, the bane of working solo. You start out doing the stuff you like, essentially eating the kassler schnitzel. Then you move on to the potatoes, because they have to be eaten, too. Soon, however you realise that all that is left for you to eat is potatoes and sauerkraut, and you don’t care much for sauerkraut.
So you have two choices: Find somebody who does like sauerkraut and let them have it. Or, make a plan to eat the sauerkraut, and stick with it. If you can, eat the sauerkraut first, so you have the kassler schnitzel to look forward to, or divide it evenly, eating some with the taters and some with the schnitzel.
In programming terms, bugfixing is most people’s sauerkraut. But with a little versioning early on and continuous runtime tests, the bugfixing at the end of the project isn’t anywhere near as overwhelming as without.
Incidentally, I love sauerkraut and I haven’t had breakfast today. so. there.
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Love this post. I’m definitely having some happy burnout. I love what I’m doing so it’s hard to put it down…easy to take on more. I’m just starting out with my Web design business and so with that I’m trying to gauge how much I can do. My take away from your post is…even though I love it I need to take breaks. Thank you!