A few weeks ago in a training I saw something that completely upended my understanding of burnout. It was a simple explanation: “chronic fatigue is also known as burnout.” I always thought those were different and independent, even though it should be pretty obvious they are not.
So you’d think it would be easy to reccognize impending burnout or patterns of behavior that will lead to it, right? I don’t know why it always comes as a surprise. And not just when it gets there. I’ll be fully burned out before, wondering what is going on, before I ever realize what the problem is or that there even is a problem.
Take yesterday for example. I was grouchy and exhausted, feeling overwhelmed. Hmm, I wonder why? I genuinely couldn’t figure out what was going on until I talked to my wife for a while. Suddenly it clicked: I was burned out.
You see, I had decided last week to help my wife by doing school with our oldest in the mornings because my wife was sick. School usually took about an hour, so it shouldn’t be too bad. But what I didn’t account for was helping with her morning routine and feeding her breakfast. Now we were at an hour and a half to two hours. Add on the time that my wife requested I spend with her and chores that I needed to get done. Then it was off to work for 12 hours and back just in time to eat and go to bed. Plus the baby is still not sleeping through the night, so my planned 7 hours of sleep was probably more like 5-6.
I did that for two weeks and couldn’t figure out why I was tired? It should be obvious, but every time it is not. I realize as I’m writing this that I was sick last Saturday and on Sunday we had people over so we didn’t have a good weekly planning meeting. Without that weekly planning meeting there was no opportunity to reevaluate my workload so maybe it actually should be no surprise.
Our solution was for me to do what I tell my wife all the time and stop worrying about things I can’t handle. That means I don’t have to do school in the morning. I can let my wife do it when she is able. I don’t have to ensure 0 screen time just because sometimes it happens.
So, the moral of the story: reevaluate your workload and capacity regularly and cut out the things that you can. (Tomorrow I’ll write about the juggling analogy my wife uses. I think it’s pretty great.)
Take care of yourselves, folks.