I saw something interesting on Facebook earlier about burnout \u2013 something about how people who are internally motivated and love what they do apparently are less likely to suffer burnout, while people who crave external rewards are likelier to. I thought this was technically accurate but also a little simplistic. I guess ultimately it really depends on the person and their context.<\/p>\n
First of all, it\u2019s not an easy feat to steer yourself into a life situation where you\u2019re internally motivated and love what you do. There are more than a few prerequisites for that. I think Cal Newport established quite clearly in So Good They Can\u2019t Ignore You that it takes a lot of work to get to the point where you love what you do. Internal motivation can also be really challenging to drum up, particularly when the circumstances of your life have not provided conditions that are conducive to that. I\u2019m reminded of a quote from Bojack Horseman \u2013 something like, \u201cHow do people do it? How do they wake up in the morning and go, \u2018yes, another day, let\u2019s do this!\u201d?\u201d Clearly, some people have that feeling, and some people don\u2019t. Some of it might be a predisposition, maybe genetic. Some of it might be conditioned, learned.<\/p>\n
I remember thinking very clearly once \u2013 \u201chistorically, I have no evidence to suggest that I should believe in myself.<\/strong> I have not succeeded at anything of significance. Every attempt I\u2019ve made at anything substantial has failed. If you look at the data, there\u2019s simply no way you could in good faith make the claim that life is going to get better, that it\u2019s worth working towards better things. It may have worked for other people, but it certainly hasn\u2019t worked for me.\u201d If I\u2019m not careful, I still fall into that \u2018trap\u2019. I don\u2019t even know if it\u2019s a trap. Internal motivation can look a lot like hubris, and it\u2019s hard to tell the difference. The line between madman and genius, etc.<\/p>\n For me, I think a couple of things that have helped are \u2013 lifting weights, and experiencing myself lift a weight that I wasn\u2019t able to lift a few months ago. It\u2019s visceral, physical proof that it\u2019s possible to grow stronger and do something that you previously weren\u2019t capable of doing. But even then\u2026 that worked for a while, until it didn\u2019t. I felt like I was on the verge of injury, and I fell off the weightlifting wagon \u2013 and right now I don\u2019t think I\u2019m very much stronger than when I started out. But I intend to get back on it, and try again. Because it\u2019s worth trying, isn\u2019t it? That belief itself is probably a privileged belief, one that I might have because I was told almost two decades ago that I was a gifted child \u2013 or maybe because I\u2019ve read so much about people who failed their way to success. Abraham Lincoln and so on. Persistence is key, I do believe that. But I can understand people who don\u2019t believe it.<\/p>\n Beyond that \u2013 I think a big part of burnout (for me, at least) isn\u2019t so much about \u2018craving externals\u2019 but\u2026 fear. Fear of not being good enough. Fear of not contributing enough, not carrying your share of the weight. Fear that you\u2019ll be accused of being an imposter. Fear of letting your teammates down. I carried these fears with me for years, and on retrospect it kept me from taking the breaks I needed in order to reorient. I was literally thinking things like, \u201cI have too much backlog and too many overdue tasks to take a break.\u201d Which, honestly, sounded very rational at the time. It always sounds rational if you\u2019re operating in that short-sighted layer, staring at whatever is 5 inches in front of your face. There\u2019s never a good time to take a break. So you have to schedule them in advance and stick to them. If things break and fall apart when you\u2019re gone, so be it. That\u2019s life. People will just have to deal with it. It\u2019s either you take a break, or you burn out, and when you burn out, things just get worse.<\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to say this. I\u2019m on vacation right now as I\u2019m writing this. And I\u2019m feeling strongly now this time that I\u2019m going to schedule the rest of my vacations and breaks for the rest of my life, and make sure I take them. Because there\u2019s a sort of rhythm that simply can\u2019t be negotiated with. It\u2019s like sleep deprivation (and indeed burnout and sleep deprivation seem to get along like a house on fire). If you need to sleep, you need to sleep. At most you can overclock your own system for a day or two before you start suffering diminishing returns. You start getting sloppy, you start zoning out, and while you might be sitting at your desk for twice as many hours, you\u2019re almost definitely not getting shit done. At least, that\u2019s what my experience has been.<\/p>\n If I could go back in time and live my professional life all over again, I would take more breaks. Looking back, it\u2019s painfully clear to me that there were periods of time where I simply should\u2019ve switched off to recover and recuperate \u2013 but instead I tried to work my way through it. My body and my subconscious simply wouldn\u2019t have it. So instead of having a healthy, nice cycle of working hard and resting well, I\u2019d sort of shoddily stumble through my work. And I would get distracted, and check social media for “a few minutes of distraction\u201d, and it would snowball, and I would basically be grumpily, unhappily working at a snail\u2019s pace. It would\u2019ve been far, far healthier to rest well and work hard. It\u2019s painful to realise that it\u2019s definitely had a cost on my social life. I didn\u2019t spend as much quality time with my wife as I could\u2019ve, should\u2019ve. I didn\u2019t get to meet my friends, or new people, I didn\u2019t write, I didn\u2019t do things that I cared about. I was just bumbling through my work in a really inefficient, ineffective way. It was sad. Never again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I saw something interesting on Facebook earlier about burnout \u2013 something about how people who are internally motivated and love what they do apparently are less likely to suffer burnout, while people who crave external rewards are likelier to. I thought this was technically accurate but also a little simplistic.… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[402,141],"class_list":["post-10755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-word-vomit","tag-fear","tag-motivation"],"yoast_head":"\n