Prevention is better than burnout
March 13, 2025 11:48 PM Subscribe
What actions can I do to give myself enough of a reserve in energy or resilience such that when I hit the last straw on a pile of problems, I am not immediately catastrophizing and end up in burnout? [Modifier: am autistic/ADHD]
I am doing an exercise right now which involves asking a few trusted people about what is one thing they think I can do that could significantly make my life better. One person suggested getting better at navigating the late-stage panic or overwhelm during a creative project - which is an accurate observation. There have been many times when we're getting towards the later stage of a project, then a bunch of things break or fall through and everything feels really chaotic and I'm firefighting on the outside while I am dying inside.
Part of the exercise involves listing out behaviors I do or don't do that enable that observation (i.e. in this case, what it is I'm doing or not doing that's leading to the late-stage project panic). One thing that came to mind was that by the time I hit that panic, it was the last straw in a pile of things that have gone wrong beforehand and which I've spent all my energy trying to resolve or fight - so when I don't have enough energy anymore, I'm exhausted and vulnerable and sensitive, and that's when the panic comes in, and eventually that leads to burnout.
I was diagnosed with autism a few years ago and that diagnosis put into perspective a lot of the burnout I've had to deal with before: firefighting & crisis management & "being flexible" are really forms of masking for me (usually because I'm in situations where I have no option but to be flexible and deal with the fire), but there's only so much of that I can sustain before I crash out - and hard. Like, I've been holding myself together for so long, probably longer than people expect (this gets annoying in medical settings because my default is to be chatty and affable even when I'm feeling like death, which has lead to doctors telling me I seem "bright and responsive" or "stable" and maybe not take my medical concerns seriously enough, but that's a separate matter), and by the time I can't hold on anymore it's a way bigger fallout. I can be pretty resilient in that a lot of times, I still accomplish the project anyway or get through the other side one way or another, but it costs me a lot.
This got me thinking: what can I do to build better reserves of energy, space, and time such that when the late-stage chaos comes in, I can handle that better? Sure, it's usually because I've been pushed to that point (rather than freaking out the first time something goes wrong) and I do have to take my neurodivergence into consideration, but it would be good to not go straight to Aaaahhh The World Is Collapsing when I hit my limit.
I know therapy is one - I do see a therapist fairly regularly, though she is on medical leave at the moment so that option's gonna have to wait. There's likely health things like being better at diet and exercise - the rub there is that I do have some other health issues (beyond the neurodivergence) that makes physical activity difficult to sustain sometimes. I could also stand to be better at delegating - though usually the problems that lead to the catastrophizing are because I had delegated something to someone or am relying on something from someone else, that someone falls through at the worst possible moment, and so now I have to take over the gap they left on top of my own personal responsibilities with very limited time and energy. So any methods that I would have full agency on would be good.
I am doing an exercise right now which involves asking a few trusted people about what is one thing they think I can do that could significantly make my life better. One person suggested getting better at navigating the late-stage panic or overwhelm during a creative project - which is an accurate observation. There have been many times when we're getting towards the later stage of a project, then a bunch of things break or fall through and everything feels really chaotic and I'm firefighting on the outside while I am dying inside.
Part of the exercise involves listing out behaviors I do or don't do that enable that observation (i.e. in this case, what it is I'm doing or not doing that's leading to the late-stage project panic). One thing that came to mind was that by the time I hit that panic, it was the last straw in a pile of things that have gone wrong beforehand and which I've spent all my energy trying to resolve or fight - so when I don't have enough energy anymore, I'm exhausted and vulnerable and sensitive, and that's when the panic comes in, and eventually that leads to burnout.
I was diagnosed with autism a few years ago and that diagnosis put into perspective a lot of the burnout I've had to deal with before: firefighting & crisis management & "being flexible" are really forms of masking for me (usually because I'm in situations where I have no option but to be flexible and deal with the fire), but there's only so much of that I can sustain before I crash out - and hard. Like, I've been holding myself together for so long, probably longer than people expect (this gets annoying in medical settings because my default is to be chatty and affable even when I'm feeling like death, which has lead to doctors telling me I seem "bright and responsive" or "stable" and maybe not take my medical concerns seriously enough, but that's a separate matter), and by the time I can't hold on anymore it's a way bigger fallout. I can be pretty resilient in that a lot of times, I still accomplish the project anyway or get through the other side one way or another, but it costs me a lot.
This got me thinking: what can I do to build better reserves of energy, space, and time such that when the late-stage chaos comes in, I can handle that better? Sure, it's usually because I've been pushed to that point (rather than freaking out the first time something goes wrong) and I do have to take my neurodivergence into consideration, but it would be good to not go straight to Aaaahhh The World Is Collapsing when I hit my limit.
I know therapy is one - I do see a therapist fairly regularly, though she is on medical leave at the moment so that option's gonna have to wait. There's likely health things like being better at diet and exercise - the rub there is that I do have some other health issues (beyond the neurodivergence) that makes physical activity difficult to sustain sometimes. I could also stand to be better at delegating - though usually the problems that lead to the catastrophizing are because I had delegated something to someone or am relying on something from someone else, that someone falls through at the worst possible moment, and so now I have to take over the gap they left on top of my own personal responsibilities with very limited time and energy. So any methods that I would have full agency on would be good.
Maybe it would help to introspect on whether you're accidentally enabling the "last minute panic" by the way you handle earlier phases of the project.
For example, if you're avoiding managing volunteers well because it's hard (it is!), then they're more likely to get overwhelmed and flake out, and you're less likely to find out that they're overwhelmed until it's much too late. Maybe you've internalised some beliefs around micromanagement that aren't helping you, maybe you're chickening out of the management work a bit because it's socially awkward to start with (it can be!).
Maybe you get some psychological benefit from last minute chaos that leads you to subconsciously self-sabotage, and avoid doing the work that would make the project more boring but less stressful. It's easy to tell yourself stories about how last minute panic/heroics are completely inevitable and also somehow valuable and exciting in a way that say, bookkeeping isn't.
Are there people you know who run similar projects and don't have last minute chaos? You could try shadowing them to see what practical things they do to plan more thoroughly or mitigate risks. Surrounding yourself with people who are calm and organised can rub off on you (and vice versa, it's harder to stay calm if the people around you are in a flap).
One thing that helps is to learn to spot the signals in yourself that you're "holding yourself together". Take that as a sign to press the "pause" button on your project and assess whether you need to move from a reactive mode to a proactive mode.
posted by quacks like a duck at 3:12 AM on March 14 [4 favorites]
For example, if you're avoiding managing volunteers well because it's hard (it is!), then they're more likely to get overwhelmed and flake out, and you're less likely to find out that they're overwhelmed until it's much too late. Maybe you've internalised some beliefs around micromanagement that aren't helping you, maybe you're chickening out of the management work a bit because it's socially awkward to start with (it can be!).
Maybe you get some psychological benefit from last minute chaos that leads you to subconsciously self-sabotage, and avoid doing the work that would make the project more boring but less stressful. It's easy to tell yourself stories about how last minute panic/heroics are completely inevitable and also somehow valuable and exciting in a way that say, bookkeeping isn't.
Are there people you know who run similar projects and don't have last minute chaos? You could try shadowing them to see what practical things they do to plan more thoroughly or mitigate risks. Surrounding yourself with people who are calm and organised can rub off on you (and vice versa, it's harder to stay calm if the people around you are in a flap).
One thing that helps is to learn to spot the signals in yourself that you're "holding yourself together". Take that as a sign to press the "pause" button on your project and assess whether you need to move from a reactive mode to a proactive mode.
posted by quacks like a duck at 3:12 AM on March 14 [4 favorites]
Are the things that happen often things, or types of things, that have happened before on other projects?
If so that can help, both in terms of learning to prepare for those things in advance and hopefully preempt them or equip yourself better to deal with them, and also in terms of telling yourself "I've been here before, I've done this before, I know from my own experience that it'll be okay."
I wonder if some kind of budget metaphor would also help, just psychologically. You say a lot of times you have to take over for someone at the last minute with limited time and energy. So you could literally budget some extra time for that kind of stuff, but also mentally budget some energy for it. Don't see the end point as the end of your original schedule and your original set of tasks, and then find yourself in mental distress because you promised your brain you could collapse at that point, and it was counting on collapsing at that point, and suddenly you have to keep going. See the end point as all your stuff plus X amount of extra, unexpected stuff, from the very beginning. So that when this stuff happens it's expected, you've already budgeted for it, and your brain doesn't start revolting in response to delayed relaxation.
posted by trig at 3:58 AM on March 14 [1 favorite]
If so that can help, both in terms of learning to prepare for those things in advance and hopefully preempt them or equip yourself better to deal with them, and also in terms of telling yourself "I've been here before, I've done this before, I know from my own experience that it'll be okay."
I wonder if some kind of budget metaphor would also help, just psychologically. You say a lot of times you have to take over for someone at the last minute with limited time and energy. So you could literally budget some extra time for that kind of stuff, but also mentally budget some energy for it. Don't see the end point as the end of your original schedule and your original set of tasks, and then find yourself in mental distress because you promised your brain you could collapse at that point, and it was counting on collapsing at that point, and suddenly you have to keep going. See the end point as all your stuff plus X amount of extra, unexpected stuff, from the very beginning. So that when this stuff happens it's expected, you've already budgeted for it, and your brain doesn't start revolting in response to delayed relaxation.
posted by trig at 3:58 AM on March 14 [1 favorite]
Also if there are any relaxation exercises you can do, like breathing exercises or floating in a pool or meditation or whatever works for you, trt to start doing them regularly now, when you don't actually need them that badly. It's easier to get your body and hopefully brain to relax when they already know the way and can do it automatically.
posted by trig at 4:01 AM on March 14 [2 favorites]
posted by trig at 4:01 AM on March 14 [2 favorites]
If possible due to the health things, a walk at lunch every day. Right in the middle of your work day. It breaks the stress day into two 4 hr ish stretches instead of a long 8.5 hr stretch.
My other secret to really stressful work projects is paradoxical but I occasionally (like 1-3 times a year) schedule an appointment around the early show time at the movie theatre and go see a movie like the day before the big presentation. I call it the Don Draper method. There’s something about sneaking out* to be transported in the actual movie theatre during the work day (so that I’m re-attacking things after) that short circuits my panic mode.
* obviously do this responsibly
posted by warriorqueen at 4:25 AM on March 14 [6 favorites]
My other secret to really stressful work projects is paradoxical but I occasionally (like 1-3 times a year) schedule an appointment around the early show time at the movie theatre and go see a movie like the day before the big presentation. I call it the Don Draper method. There’s something about sneaking out* to be transported in the actual movie theatre during the work day (so that I’m re-attacking things after) that short circuits my panic mode.
* obviously do this responsibly
posted by warriorqueen at 4:25 AM on March 14 [6 favorites]
I've been holding myself together for so long, probably longer than people expect
I'm going to guess you've been holding yourself together longer than even you're really giving yourself credit for here. Try contemplating a totally normal "non-stressful" day and noting what you're having to cope with even under those circumstances. Annoying noises, flickery lights, internal bodily discomfort, uncomfy clothes, bad smells, bad vibes (an OT once described empathy to me as being a sense like all the others, and it was a revelation), unpleasant textures? Is your commute rough on you in ways you've decided you just have to deal with, is there a regular meeting you just hate, etc. etc.? Probably you can't fix all that, but maybe some can be improved upon or at least compensated for (fidgets, white noise, weighted lap pillow, etc.), and just realizing it's there can help. For example, maybe on a day you know will be a lot, you deliberately get a ride to work and sip on something pleasant with your eyes closed. Maybe you keep earplugs in whenever you're not actually talking to someone. Little tweaks can buy you a lot of "extra" capacity sometimes, if they shore up slow but steady leaks.
I also find it helpful to pull back and not be as good at things as I could be right out the gate. It's pacing, just like a marathon. It seems trivial to be super helpful and super competent when things are easy, but if I dial that back to like 90% and am merely extra-helpful/competent or even just regular-helpful/competent, then as things get rougher I'm still fresh and haven't expended myself on a million little things. I also think it encourages others to take on more at the early stages, which sets them up better to be involved and supportive as the project goes on, and often even makes a crisis less likely because there are more of us working together doing okay, instead of it just being my show that I have to do perfectly until I can't. This isn't exactly the same as delegation; it's more that I consciously leave room for others. I do work that's good enough on my own, such that even if nobody else does anything it'll be fine, but often other folks genuinely do notice that things could be more perfect, sometimes in ways I wouldn't have thought of. I'm not 100% sure this translates to the average office environment, if that's what you're talking about, but it's the case where I work and in a lot of activist projects I do that there is actually true support out there, if only I don't inadvertently squash it by either holding the project too close, or leaning too hard on others when they can't actually bear the weight.
posted by teremala at 4:55 AM on March 14 [15 favorites]
I'm going to guess you've been holding yourself together longer than even you're really giving yourself credit for here. Try contemplating a totally normal "non-stressful" day and noting what you're having to cope with even under those circumstances. Annoying noises, flickery lights, internal bodily discomfort, uncomfy clothes, bad smells, bad vibes (an OT once described empathy to me as being a sense like all the others, and it was a revelation), unpleasant textures? Is your commute rough on you in ways you've decided you just have to deal with, is there a regular meeting you just hate, etc. etc.? Probably you can't fix all that, but maybe some can be improved upon or at least compensated for (fidgets, white noise, weighted lap pillow, etc.), and just realizing it's there can help. For example, maybe on a day you know will be a lot, you deliberately get a ride to work and sip on something pleasant with your eyes closed. Maybe you keep earplugs in whenever you're not actually talking to someone. Little tweaks can buy you a lot of "extra" capacity sometimes, if they shore up slow but steady leaks.
I also find it helpful to pull back and not be as good at things as I could be right out the gate. It's pacing, just like a marathon. It seems trivial to be super helpful and super competent when things are easy, but if I dial that back to like 90% and am merely extra-helpful/competent or even just regular-helpful/competent, then as things get rougher I'm still fresh and haven't expended myself on a million little things. I also think it encourages others to take on more at the early stages, which sets them up better to be involved and supportive as the project goes on, and often even makes a crisis less likely because there are more of us working together doing okay, instead of it just being my show that I have to do perfectly until I can't. This isn't exactly the same as delegation; it's more that I consciously leave room for others. I do work that's good enough on my own, such that even if nobody else does anything it'll be fine, but often other folks genuinely do notice that things could be more perfect, sometimes in ways I wouldn't have thought of. I'm not 100% sure this translates to the average office environment, if that's what you're talking about, but it's the case where I work and in a lot of activist projects I do that there is actually true support out there, if only I don't inadvertently squash it by either holding the project too close, or leaning too hard on others when they can't actually bear the weight.
posted by teremala at 4:55 AM on March 14 [15 favorites]
I’m gonna read and take in all of these, but step one, how’s your sleep? I have unusually high sleep and rest needs due to the AuDHD and all that.
posted by lokta at 5:02 AM on March 14 [1 favorite]
posted by lokta at 5:02 AM on March 14 [1 favorite]
For the acute situation of being in a pile of problems and avoiding burnout, two thoughts.
First, I believe there is a minimum level of self care that you need to be able to avoid burnout (sleep, healthy food, movement/exercise, entertainment, etc.). You can neglect self care for a short period of time and be ok, but when the period of stress is extended, you will eventually hit your limit and burn out. So, self care has to be in the mix in the "pile of problems" that have deadlines and can't be neglected.
If you are asking for specifics, for me sleep is very important. I try to have 7 hours available for sleep every night. I try to have at least one healthy meal a day. For me that primarily is trying to eat unprocessed food (meat, vegetables, fruit, bread) not from a restaurant. I keep apples and oranges around and eat some every day. I'm out of routine on exercise, but I was feeling my best when I was going for a 20-30 min walk every day. For entertainment, I generally just recognize that I can't be "going" every minute that I'm awake and I'll need some time to unwind every day.
Second, when you are in the middle of it, there will likely be times when you think of something that you need to do for yourself, but you may be in the habit of ignoring. For example, in a stressful crunch time, you may feel the need to take a 10 min walk and you may tell yourself, "yeah, that'd be nice but I can't because of this big pile of problems!!!" For me, I've learned these are alarm bells that I'm getting close to my limit. Likely, I'll still be unproductive even if I ignore the need, so I try to just take the break if I need it.
For the long term, I like what quacks like a duck was saying, about looking at planning / execution / avoidance as factors that are leading to situations where you are dealing with a pile of problems in the first place.
posted by bruinfan at 7:11 AM on March 14 [2 favorites]
First, I believe there is a minimum level of self care that you need to be able to avoid burnout (sleep, healthy food, movement/exercise, entertainment, etc.). You can neglect self care for a short period of time and be ok, but when the period of stress is extended, you will eventually hit your limit and burn out. So, self care has to be in the mix in the "pile of problems" that have deadlines and can't be neglected.
If you are asking for specifics, for me sleep is very important. I try to have 7 hours available for sleep every night. I try to have at least one healthy meal a day. For me that primarily is trying to eat unprocessed food (meat, vegetables, fruit, bread) not from a restaurant. I keep apples and oranges around and eat some every day. I'm out of routine on exercise, but I was feeling my best when I was going for a 20-30 min walk every day. For entertainment, I generally just recognize that I can't be "going" every minute that I'm awake and I'll need some time to unwind every day.
Second, when you are in the middle of it, there will likely be times when you think of something that you need to do for yourself, but you may be in the habit of ignoring. For example, in a stressful crunch time, you may feel the need to take a 10 min walk and you may tell yourself, "yeah, that'd be nice but I can't because of this big pile of problems!!!" For me, I've learned these are alarm bells that I'm getting close to my limit. Likely, I'll still be unproductive even if I ignore the need, so I try to just take the break if I need it.
For the long term, I like what quacks like a duck was saying, about looking at planning / execution / avoidance as factors that are leading to situations where you are dealing with a pile of problems in the first place.
posted by bruinfan at 7:11 AM on March 14 [2 favorites]
I find deep pessimism works for me. We know that it's all going to end in tears. It always does. If the project you are trying to manage for your job actually does get completed this go-round, it is still just a matter of time before that client drops your company. There is small chance they will be with you in five years and far less that they will be with you in ten. Your current job position is not going to be around in fifty years, guaranteed. No one you work with will even be alive still in seventy years. The culture you grew up in is going to change in that amount of time so that everything that now feels comfortable and decent and familiar will be regarded as grossly unethical, as stupid looking as Marie Antoinette's hair, and quite obviously as foolish as the tulip bulb crazy. If you were even still around, nobody would understand or value the things that are important to you now. The cup is already broken. And beyond that, the heat death of the universe will ensure that no precious archaeological remnants, and no DNA will survive in any form. It ALWAYS ends in tears. That's the definition of life - everything is going to die.
It's not if, or even when, it's how soon it's all going to go pear-shaped.
On the way to the end of the universe, what matters is all the little ephemeral things. When the client sends you a horrible e-mail, well of course he did. Meanwhile your quality of life is all based on getting something nourishing for breakfast, hearing something that makes the stress ebb, such as birdsong, or whatever is on your playlist, seeing someone smile, that painkiller knocking off the edge of the pain, a feeling of accomplishment or content, hearing an interesting piece of trivia, and the absence of crumbs on your mattress.
Millions of people have jobs where the upper managers have made decisions that make it impossible for the people doing the work to actually do it. They promised undeliverables, laid off half the staff, provided no training, went with Microsoft, and are now requesting that you answer three phone lines simultaneously and retain three resentful clients, all of whom just want what they paid for, which is something that doesn't exist. Then, come the end of the week you'll be told that your performance is lacking because you weren't able to take on more shifts to cover for your co-workers, AND that you are working too many hours in violation of the work and safety regulations so you need to take your vacations, which won't accrue, but you can't take any days off this month, or the next one because we are short staffed.
The reason you are reaching the last straw on your problems may be that the people setting you the problems to solve are setting fire to the haystack.
At some point you need to step back and say, "You know what? Fuck it." Either your managers know they are asking you to walk on water, or they are sadly stupid people, desperately pretending that every one of their team who are all doing the dog paddle and going under for the fifth time is Our Blessed Saviour, the Only Begotten Son of God, Very God of Very God, to whom the laws of physics don't apply. But keep in mind that they are very likely pretending you can do the jobs that are going down in flames because their jobs are dependent on pretending to their bosses that they think you can dance like Fred Astaire on the surface of the company's sewage lagoon. They are using some kind of double think to get through their day. Most people do. Life is too painful otherwise.
The point to watch for is the point where you first start to think, "I may not be able to do this..." and accept that no, very likely you won't. The point you want to change direction is the point before you think "This is impossible!" because by the time your thought carries the emphasis of incredulous desperation, you're already getting upset and it will be much harder to adjust your thinking to contingency plans and accept that you need to do half-assed work and pass it off as good work.
At some point you need to be thinking, not of salvaging the situation, but on what you need to do between now and bedtime so that you will be able to sleep. At some point you need to switch from thinking, "How do I make this work?" to thinking "Can anything be salvaged from this situation?" Going into a doomed project, whether it be managing your own medical care, or appearing to be a good little worker drone, requires you not to be looking at making it through all the hoops that are being thrown up in front of you, but figuring out where you want to end up standing after the last hoop has been tossed. If you make it through all the hoops, they are going to start throwing even more. Don't jump through all the hoops.
A lot of the time we take things really seriously. It's all too easy to accept what life throws at you, and try to do what is asked with loyalty and determination. But if you accept all the shifts at the hospital they want you to accept you end up so tired that you become a crummy nurse who resents the patients, and ignores them as much as you can, even though you initially accepted those shifts only out of concern that the patients would be neglected. If you are being more responsible and more realistic than anyone else then they don't deserve you. You're giving so much you are being exploited.
"You've got one heck of a problem. How are you going to solve it?" is a really good response to remember when things start coming at you too hard. You don't say that to yourself, but to the person who expects that you will step up and rescue them, or do their work for them. The words you say to yourself are, "Now, how am I going to take care of myself during all this?"
By the time you are down to your last straw you have already been burning resources you should not have been burning. Your last straw needs to be reserved for life and death survival situations, like walking out of a burning city under bombardment. For just about any other situation you need to keep a reserve. No, a bigger reserve. No, MUCH BIGGER than that. When you start thinking of how to get through a situation by drawing on reserves that will erode your mental health or quality of life it's time to switch from dealing with that situation to considering it as a problem secondary to our own self care.
You can generate a lot of frantic activity by going short on downtime, or on sleep, or by eating unhealthy food, or by dosing yourself with something whether it be antihistamines or chocolate or caffeine. The next time you find yourself trying to get through something by drawing on your strategic reserves, ask yourself if that something is actually worth the damage you are taking. For example there is a good chance that needing to go to work sick is a sign that the project is too precarious to be successful. If they haven't included time for their personnel to be sick, then either they don't actually care if the project succeeds or not, or it isn't going to succeed anyway. You can't change that by coming in to work and breathing germs on your coworkers OR by staying home and doing self care. It's still a clown show, whether you lurk off stage, or prance out there enthusiastically squeaking your very red and runny nose.
At times like these it can help to think of meeting your responsibilities as being like a steward delivering clean towels after the Titanic hit the iceberg. Clean towels are very important and people who end up in the ocean off Greenland undoubtedly will need to be warmed and dried off. It makes perfect sense to get those towels into the hands of the passengers!
Once a job starts cutting into your mental health reserves, or reducing your self care you can assume that someone, somewhere is sabotaging the project. I am sure the Captain of the Titanic did not think he was sabotaging the ship, but there is not a lot of difference in results between running full tilt into an iceberg, and taking off your wooden sabot and throwing it into the mill machinery. The difference only lies in the plausible deniability granted to the captain.
A lot of the time other people are giving lip service to the Very Important Project, and have convinced themselves that they are striving mightily to make it work, but in fact all their efforts are going into looking good and positioning themselves for better employment security. They are all going to get laid off when the company gets sold, the same as you are, so they haven't hit on a winning strategy that you missed. Your probably don't want to look like a slack off, and perhaps there are things you can do to make your own life and the lives of people who are good to you better, but for the most part you are probably in a sick system.
It would be nice to think you can walk on water and put out fires in your bare feet. You'd feel much safer if you could keep believing that if you only try a little harder this time this project won't turn into a debacle. Yet if you end up desperately trying to salvage a project that is a debacle juggernaut, you are forgetting how absolutely valuable and worthwhile your real self is. You don't have to be in control and save the day to be worthy of respect. All you have to do is not be a saboteur. Someone may tell you that you are a saboteur if you don't stick your hands into the machinery to try to pull out the sabots that other people have thrown in there; if anyone tells you something of that nature you have just got the data you need to identify THEM as a saboteur. Being willing and kind, and trying to learn and being useful and helpful is more than enough. Immolating yourself is too much.
The hard part of stopping this cycle is learning to listen to yourself, and figuring out what the fleeting thoughts that scamper through your mind indicate in terms of the projects. Those thoughts are how you know that for you the project is working, or not working, or has turned into something actively harmful to you.
Green light thoughts:
This could be fun
How do I do this?
This will be a lot of work
This is difficult
I don't understand this
This is important
What should I do first?
Who can help with this?
But it's time to step back, slow down and start working on self care when you start thinking:
This makes no sense.
This isn't working.
They never said that.
This is too hard.
This is no fun.
This is urgent.
This deadline is getting close.
They've changed it.
They're not doing the work.
Burning Straw, you are taking damage now:
Maybe he can do it.
Maybe he can do it if I help him.
This is stupid.
I can't do this.
I don't want to do this.
I'm going to miss the deadline.
I can skip a personal plan to do this.
I can skimp on a personal need to do this.
Someone else working on this project let me down.
I can't tell my manager.
I have to hide this from my manager.
What is wrong with me?
They've changed it again.
This is unfair.
We can't let the customers down.
I need to do this.
This is awful.
I hate this.
I want to stop doing this but I can't.
It's almost done. I can keep doing it.
Why can't I do this?
I'm so tired.
I'm sick of this.
They need me.
There's nobody but me to do it.
I can't stop thinking about this.
I'll feel better when it's over.
I just have to get through it.
They've stuck me with this.
Why isn't anybody pulling their own weight.
They're going to think I'm not pulling my own weight.
What is wrong with me?
What is wrong with them?
If you get into the second stage it's time to stop work on the project and try to figure out if there is actually any way to do it. That's when you need to slow down and figure out what the realistic end goals are, and if other people's goals are running counter to yours. That's the stage where you want to think about if delegating to other people is actually going to help, or if your team actually has insufficient resources. Keep in mind that if the person you delegated something to gives you something cruddy and incomplete, you can always throw them under the bus by using it, and saying sorrowfully, "I really don't like the work that Donald did very much, but this is all he was able to come up with." It's possible that both your manager and the person who did the work will think that it is perfectly up to standard. You may be trying to meet standards that your managers don't need you to meet at all.
If you get to the third stage, you need to stop trying to do the project and consider it a failure, and consider how you can handle the failure. You'll need to only do a partial project, or get an extension on the deadline, or turn in an incomplete project. You see this a lot with software development - the code is beyond appallingly bad but they release it anyway. You coworkers or clients might not see it as a failure, (your managers are even more likely to be oblivious) but you should fully aware that a crummy result is the best that can be produced in your circumstances, or you will keep trying to do the impossible, and they will keep trying to get you do the impossible.
Keep in mind that paid work is not real work. Paid work is what you do to gain money, and job security. The end goal is not to actually get useful things done. Often you can do useful things while doing paid work, but the goal of earning is primary and the actual useful stuff is secondary. When you wash your own dishes you are really working. The goal is to have clean dishes. When you are doing paid work, the goal is to keep your wages or your salary coming in and to be acknowledged a top employee. There's a significant difference. Paid work is actually closer to a competitive game, where a ball is being carried across a field. People who concentrate on being useful while doing paid work often get very frustrated because they are working at cross purposes with their coworkers. Businesses frequently pay people to look useful, and consider that looking useful is much more valuable than actually doing things that are useful. The larger the business and the more complicated the ownership chain, the more likely they are to do this.
posted by Jane the Brown at 7:57 AM on March 14 [22 favorites]
It's not if, or even when, it's how soon it's all going to go pear-shaped.
On the way to the end of the universe, what matters is all the little ephemeral things. When the client sends you a horrible e-mail, well of course he did. Meanwhile your quality of life is all based on getting something nourishing for breakfast, hearing something that makes the stress ebb, such as birdsong, or whatever is on your playlist, seeing someone smile, that painkiller knocking off the edge of the pain, a feeling of accomplishment or content, hearing an interesting piece of trivia, and the absence of crumbs on your mattress.
Millions of people have jobs where the upper managers have made decisions that make it impossible for the people doing the work to actually do it. They promised undeliverables, laid off half the staff, provided no training, went with Microsoft, and are now requesting that you answer three phone lines simultaneously and retain three resentful clients, all of whom just want what they paid for, which is something that doesn't exist. Then, come the end of the week you'll be told that your performance is lacking because you weren't able to take on more shifts to cover for your co-workers, AND that you are working too many hours in violation of the work and safety regulations so you need to take your vacations, which won't accrue, but you can't take any days off this month, or the next one because we are short staffed.
The reason you are reaching the last straw on your problems may be that the people setting you the problems to solve are setting fire to the haystack.
At some point you need to step back and say, "You know what? Fuck it." Either your managers know they are asking you to walk on water, or they are sadly stupid people, desperately pretending that every one of their team who are all doing the dog paddle and going under for the fifth time is Our Blessed Saviour, the Only Begotten Son of God, Very God of Very God, to whom the laws of physics don't apply. But keep in mind that they are very likely pretending you can do the jobs that are going down in flames because their jobs are dependent on pretending to their bosses that they think you can dance like Fred Astaire on the surface of the company's sewage lagoon. They are using some kind of double think to get through their day. Most people do. Life is too painful otherwise.
The point to watch for is the point where you first start to think, "I may not be able to do this..." and accept that no, very likely you won't. The point you want to change direction is the point before you think "This is impossible!" because by the time your thought carries the emphasis of incredulous desperation, you're already getting upset and it will be much harder to adjust your thinking to contingency plans and accept that you need to do half-assed work and pass it off as good work.
At some point you need to be thinking, not of salvaging the situation, but on what you need to do between now and bedtime so that you will be able to sleep. At some point you need to switch from thinking, "How do I make this work?" to thinking "Can anything be salvaged from this situation?" Going into a doomed project, whether it be managing your own medical care, or appearing to be a good little worker drone, requires you not to be looking at making it through all the hoops that are being thrown up in front of you, but figuring out where you want to end up standing after the last hoop has been tossed. If you make it through all the hoops, they are going to start throwing even more. Don't jump through all the hoops.
A lot of the time we take things really seriously. It's all too easy to accept what life throws at you, and try to do what is asked with loyalty and determination. But if you accept all the shifts at the hospital they want you to accept you end up so tired that you become a crummy nurse who resents the patients, and ignores them as much as you can, even though you initially accepted those shifts only out of concern that the patients would be neglected. If you are being more responsible and more realistic than anyone else then they don't deserve you. You're giving so much you are being exploited.
"You've got one heck of a problem. How are you going to solve it?" is a really good response to remember when things start coming at you too hard. You don't say that to yourself, but to the person who expects that you will step up and rescue them, or do their work for them. The words you say to yourself are, "Now, how am I going to take care of myself during all this?"
By the time you are down to your last straw you have already been burning resources you should not have been burning. Your last straw needs to be reserved for life and death survival situations, like walking out of a burning city under bombardment. For just about any other situation you need to keep a reserve. No, a bigger reserve. No, MUCH BIGGER than that. When you start thinking of how to get through a situation by drawing on reserves that will erode your mental health or quality of life it's time to switch from dealing with that situation to considering it as a problem secondary to our own self care.
You can generate a lot of frantic activity by going short on downtime, or on sleep, or by eating unhealthy food, or by dosing yourself with something whether it be antihistamines or chocolate or caffeine. The next time you find yourself trying to get through something by drawing on your strategic reserves, ask yourself if that something is actually worth the damage you are taking. For example there is a good chance that needing to go to work sick is a sign that the project is too precarious to be successful. If they haven't included time for their personnel to be sick, then either they don't actually care if the project succeeds or not, or it isn't going to succeed anyway. You can't change that by coming in to work and breathing germs on your coworkers OR by staying home and doing self care. It's still a clown show, whether you lurk off stage, or prance out there enthusiastically squeaking your very red and runny nose.
At times like these it can help to think of meeting your responsibilities as being like a steward delivering clean towels after the Titanic hit the iceberg. Clean towels are very important and people who end up in the ocean off Greenland undoubtedly will need to be warmed and dried off. It makes perfect sense to get those towels into the hands of the passengers!
Once a job starts cutting into your mental health reserves, or reducing your self care you can assume that someone, somewhere is sabotaging the project. I am sure the Captain of the Titanic did not think he was sabotaging the ship, but there is not a lot of difference in results between running full tilt into an iceberg, and taking off your wooden sabot and throwing it into the mill machinery. The difference only lies in the plausible deniability granted to the captain.
A lot of the time other people are giving lip service to the Very Important Project, and have convinced themselves that they are striving mightily to make it work, but in fact all their efforts are going into looking good and positioning themselves for better employment security. They are all going to get laid off when the company gets sold, the same as you are, so they haven't hit on a winning strategy that you missed. Your probably don't want to look like a slack off, and perhaps there are things you can do to make your own life and the lives of people who are good to you better, but for the most part you are probably in a sick system.
It would be nice to think you can walk on water and put out fires in your bare feet. You'd feel much safer if you could keep believing that if you only try a little harder this time this project won't turn into a debacle. Yet if you end up desperately trying to salvage a project that is a debacle juggernaut, you are forgetting how absolutely valuable and worthwhile your real self is. You don't have to be in control and save the day to be worthy of respect. All you have to do is not be a saboteur. Someone may tell you that you are a saboteur if you don't stick your hands into the machinery to try to pull out the sabots that other people have thrown in there; if anyone tells you something of that nature you have just got the data you need to identify THEM as a saboteur. Being willing and kind, and trying to learn and being useful and helpful is more than enough. Immolating yourself is too much.
The hard part of stopping this cycle is learning to listen to yourself, and figuring out what the fleeting thoughts that scamper through your mind indicate in terms of the projects. Those thoughts are how you know that for you the project is working, or not working, or has turned into something actively harmful to you.
Green light thoughts:
This could be fun
How do I do this?
This will be a lot of work
This is difficult
I don't understand this
This is important
What should I do first?
Who can help with this?
But it's time to step back, slow down and start working on self care when you start thinking:
This makes no sense.
This isn't working.
They never said that.
This is too hard.
This is no fun.
This is urgent.
This deadline is getting close.
They've changed it.
They're not doing the work.
Burning Straw, you are taking damage now:
Maybe he can do it.
Maybe he can do it if I help him.
This is stupid.
I can't do this.
I don't want to do this.
I'm going to miss the deadline.
I can skip a personal plan to do this.
I can skimp on a personal need to do this.
Someone else working on this project let me down.
I can't tell my manager.
I have to hide this from my manager.
What is wrong with me?
They've changed it again.
This is unfair.
We can't let the customers down.
I need to do this.
This is awful.
I hate this.
I want to stop doing this but I can't.
It's almost done. I can keep doing it.
Why can't I do this?
I'm so tired.
I'm sick of this.
They need me.
There's nobody but me to do it.
I can't stop thinking about this.
I'll feel better when it's over.
I just have to get through it.
They've stuck me with this.
Why isn't anybody pulling their own weight.
They're going to think I'm not pulling my own weight.
What is wrong with me?
What is wrong with them?
If you get into the second stage it's time to stop work on the project and try to figure out if there is actually any way to do it. That's when you need to slow down and figure out what the realistic end goals are, and if other people's goals are running counter to yours. That's the stage where you want to think about if delegating to other people is actually going to help, or if your team actually has insufficient resources. Keep in mind that if the person you delegated something to gives you something cruddy and incomplete, you can always throw them under the bus by using it, and saying sorrowfully, "I really don't like the work that Donald did very much, but this is all he was able to come up with." It's possible that both your manager and the person who did the work will think that it is perfectly up to standard. You may be trying to meet standards that your managers don't need you to meet at all.
If you get to the third stage, you need to stop trying to do the project and consider it a failure, and consider how you can handle the failure. You'll need to only do a partial project, or get an extension on the deadline, or turn in an incomplete project. You see this a lot with software development - the code is beyond appallingly bad but they release it anyway. You coworkers or clients might not see it as a failure, (your managers are even more likely to be oblivious) but you should fully aware that a crummy result is the best that can be produced in your circumstances, or you will keep trying to do the impossible, and they will keep trying to get you do the impossible.
Keep in mind that paid work is not real work. Paid work is what you do to gain money, and job security. The end goal is not to actually get useful things done. Often you can do useful things while doing paid work, but the goal of earning is primary and the actual useful stuff is secondary. When you wash your own dishes you are really working. The goal is to have clean dishes. When you are doing paid work, the goal is to keep your wages or your salary coming in and to be acknowledged a top employee. There's a significant difference. Paid work is actually closer to a competitive game, where a ball is being carried across a field. People who concentrate on being useful while doing paid work often get very frustrated because they are working at cross purposes with their coworkers. Businesses frequently pay people to look useful, and consider that looking useful is much more valuable than actually doing things that are useful. The larger the business and the more complicated the ownership chain, the more likely they are to do this.
posted by Jane the Brown at 7:57 AM on March 14 [22 favorites]
I may print the above comment out and save it at work for daily reference. Wow.
posted by Vatnesine at 2:32 PM on March 14 [1 favorite]
posted by Vatnesine at 2:32 PM on March 14 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Thank you all for your comments.
I don't (usually) work in a conventional office environment with such a clear hierarchy, nor do I have regular working hours as such. My projects ebb and flow. Right now I'd say it's an ebb because I've spent the last 2-3 years in some kind of crisis mode - 3 bouts of COVID, dad being sick and then dying, managing an international estate and all the pitfalls of that, dealing with hostile Government agencies demanding inconsistent nonsense, trying to figure out family care, my own health issues, working on a 1-year Masters, getting laid off from one job and stepping down from others due to life factors plus messy management, etc etc. I'm not sure if I'll be as busy creatively in the near future as I have in the past, but it'd be good to at least have some things in place because Jesus just writing this past paragraph is exhausting.
A lot of the time (not all to be fair) the situations that push me in Aaaaahh Catastrophe mode is when a key partner or someone along those lines, someone I'm not in a management relationship and is usually an external party that I'm collaborating with (or sometimes someone official like a Government agency or the courts) either drops the ball or throws a curveball at me while everybody else is reliant on them and there are tight deadlines. I can't do anything about this other party but I have to respond, often quickly, to what they do/don't do otherwise things fall apart. Or it is something who technically is my manager who's dropped the ball on something and that something isn't originally my responsibility but because I'm the only one there at the time it's now my problem and it's now on me to fix it otherwise things don't happen. I get very hyper competent in the moment but then crash out hard. If the situation is my responsibility from the start then sure, it's on me, but when it's people I really have no control over, that gets super tough.
My sleep is weird. I found that every time I try to push or force an early sleep, my body just will not have it and I stay up all night. But if I let myself sleep naturally, even if it's "late", I do get more sleep overall.
posted by creatrixtiara at 6:14 PM on March 14
I don't (usually) work in a conventional office environment with such a clear hierarchy, nor do I have regular working hours as such. My projects ebb and flow. Right now I'd say it's an ebb because I've spent the last 2-3 years in some kind of crisis mode - 3 bouts of COVID, dad being sick and then dying, managing an international estate and all the pitfalls of that, dealing with hostile Government agencies demanding inconsistent nonsense, trying to figure out family care, my own health issues, working on a 1-year Masters, getting laid off from one job and stepping down from others due to life factors plus messy management, etc etc. I'm not sure if I'll be as busy creatively in the near future as I have in the past, but it'd be good to at least have some things in place because Jesus just writing this past paragraph is exhausting.
A lot of the time (not all to be fair) the situations that push me in Aaaaahh Catastrophe mode is when a key partner or someone along those lines, someone I'm not in a management relationship and is usually an external party that I'm collaborating with (or sometimes someone official like a Government agency or the courts) either drops the ball or throws a curveball at me while everybody else is reliant on them and there are tight deadlines. I can't do anything about this other party but I have to respond, often quickly, to what they do/don't do otherwise things fall apart. Or it is something who technically is my manager who's dropped the ball on something and that something isn't originally my responsibility but because I'm the only one there at the time it's now my problem and it's now on me to fix it otherwise things don't happen. I get very hyper competent in the moment but then crash out hard. If the situation is my responsibility from the start then sure, it's on me, but when it's people I really have no control over, that gets super tough.
My sleep is weird. I found that every time I try to push or force an early sleep, my body just will not have it and I stay up all night. But if I let myself sleep naturally, even if it's "late", I do get more sleep overall.
posted by creatrixtiara at 6:14 PM on March 14
You might want to explore the concept of overfunctioning (and how it can lead to underfunctioning in others, creating a worsening loop).
I think this in particular is important:
I think this in particular is important:
Recognize and accept that overfunctioning is a form of self-soothingposted by lapis at 5:03 AM on March 15 [3 favorites]
Overfunctioning works. When we step in, it briefly lowers our anxiety. Until the next situation comes along and it rises again. Instead of focusing on jumping in or worrying, notice and take responsibility for your reaction. Take your focus off the other person or situation, and turn it compassionately on yourself.
And it's worth noticing, with the framing of your question, that you've identified a problem where you're doing too much and causing harm to yourself by it, and so your brain decided that the way to fix that is to figure out how to do more. That's the cycle to interrupt. You're beating yourself up rather than taking care of yourself.
posted by lapis at 6:09 AM on March 15 [1 favorite]
posted by lapis at 6:09 AM on March 15 [1 favorite]
People think I'm being arch or ironic or some damn thing when I talk about the dangers of procrastinating when there's lolling about to be done, but I am dead serious.
Regularly lolling about and achieving nothing is vital for maintaining good health. There is no substitute for it. It's as necessary as sleep, from which it is quite distinct. We build and carry a lolling-about debt at our peril.
That panicky, squeezed, world-collapsing sensation is a super reliable symptom of a chronic lolling deficiency, as is the characteristic denial that I have no time for anything so frivolous. The correct internal response to that denial is: Bullshit! If I feel like I'm at the end of my tether then there has been something occupying my time that is less important than lolling about, and I need to identify that and duck-shove it onto somebody else.
posted by flabdablet at 4:15 AM on March 16 [5 favorites]
Regularly lolling about and achieving nothing is vital for maintaining good health. There is no substitute for it. It's as necessary as sleep, from which it is quite distinct. We build and carry a lolling-about debt at our peril.
That panicky, squeezed, world-collapsing sensation is a super reliable symptom of a chronic lolling deficiency, as is the characteristic denial that I have no time for anything so frivolous. The correct internal response to that denial is: Bullshit! If I feel like I'm at the end of my tether then there has been something occupying my time that is less important than lolling about, and I need to identify that and duck-shove it onto somebody else.
posted by flabdablet at 4:15 AM on March 16 [5 favorites]
Oh man, we are so similar (and as a fellow autistic, this project has such an autistic energy for me, I love it). For years in therapy I was hitting a wall of "I'm great, like top ten in mental health when I'm not in a crisis, and then when I'm in a crisis suddenly I can't function, wat do?" And of course I was not top ten in mental health.
This leads me to: what do you do in your spare time, and does it enhance your mental health or push you further down the line toward burnout?
I definitely think in a lot of creative vocations there is a blurring of the line between "work time" and "spare time", so you might be operating on Hard Mode here. So step one might be establishing a brighter line between those two and carving out times when you are not thinking about your creative work at all, even though that might feel painful at first.
Step two is becoming hyper-aware of what you are doing and how it makes you feel. Do self check-ins on your mood and your thoughts. Realize what behaviors and thought paths are bad rabbit holes for you and start giving yourself the power to stop doing them. For me this was everything from "my sibling insisting on choosing the music every time we're in the car and being rude about everyone else's music" to "watching Game of Thrones before bed" to "political tweets" to "rehearsing in my head what I'd say if someone got into an argument with me about topic XYZ" to "trying to wear pants that don't fit because I've gained weight". The solutions are always different and tailored; it can be as simple as deleting twitter or saving Game of Thrones for the next day, or as complicated as shifting my mindset so that I can just remember I don't live with my sibling anymore and I'm in the car with them what, like twice a year? and allowing myself to buy fast-fashion pants even though I'm opposed to it on a societal level because it feels like less of a sunk cost when I have to donate a pair I grow out of.
posted by capricorn at 1:47 AM on March 19
This leads me to: what do you do in your spare time, and does it enhance your mental health or push you further down the line toward burnout?
I definitely think in a lot of creative vocations there is a blurring of the line between "work time" and "spare time", so you might be operating on Hard Mode here. So step one might be establishing a brighter line between those two and carving out times when you are not thinking about your creative work at all, even though that might feel painful at first.
Step two is becoming hyper-aware of what you are doing and how it makes you feel. Do self check-ins on your mood and your thoughts. Realize what behaviors and thought paths are bad rabbit holes for you and start giving yourself the power to stop doing them. For me this was everything from "my sibling insisting on choosing the music every time we're in the car and being rude about everyone else's music" to "watching Game of Thrones before bed" to "political tweets" to "rehearsing in my head what I'd say if someone got into an argument with me about topic XYZ" to "trying to wear pants that don't fit because I've gained weight". The solutions are always different and tailored; it can be as simple as deleting twitter or saving Game of Thrones for the next day, or as complicated as shifting my mindset so that I can just remember I don't live with my sibling anymore and I'm in the car with them what, like twice a year? and allowing myself to buy fast-fashion pants even though I'm opposed to it on a societal level because it feels like less of a sunk cost when I have to donate a pair I grow out of.
posted by capricorn at 1:47 AM on March 19
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One thing that's worked for me is going straight to Aaaahhh The World Is Collapsing well before I hit my limits so I'm still finding it hilarious every time I think that.
That way, when I do hit my limits and suddenly nothing is hilarious, Aaaahhh The World Is Collapsing just feels completely inappropriate and it becomes possible just to keep doing the next thing and then the next thing and then the next thing until all the things are done and I can collapse properly.
Which it is important to do. It's essential not to procrastinate when there is lolling about that remains unattended to. Nobody can stay productive while carrying a big lolling debt.
posted by flabdablet at 2:41 AM on March 14 [6 favorites]