Does Burnout Exist?

Yes, duh. But....

In my space, most of the biggest names will yell on social media that burnout isn’t real! And they believe it when they say it, too.

I disagree. Burnout is as real as gravity. Just because you don’t want it to be, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

The real question is - how do you manage around it? How do you achieve peak productivity without ruining yourself in the process? This is a better approach than denial.

Let’s examine.

Expectation Effect

The expectation you bring into the thing can largely influence how that thing effects you.

An example is people who actually sleep poorly but think they sleep well have better health markers than people who sleep well but think they sleep poorly. (The book Expectation Effect breaks this down nicely).

And you see it over and over again. People who think stress is a good thing tend to be able to focus and perform better than people who think stress is a bad thing. The body changes how it regulates stress just based on how you define it.

How we believe something effects us actually influences us at every level - emotional, mental and physical.

But there is limits. If I jump off the building expecting to fly… no amount of expectation will stop me from kissing the concrete.

People who actually sleep well and think they sleep well outperform people who only think they sleep well but actually sleep poorly.

The gurus have it right in the sense that expectation greatly effects how quickly burnout can get to you - and how much or little it will harm you, how quickly you recover from it, etc. - but it’s playing with fire. You can cross a real boundary that is hard to recover from.

I get it though… most people don’t even come close to touching the actual limit of what they’re capable of before hitting burnout.

Actual vs. Perceived Limits

Push harder to go further, to find those reserves, re-examine those expectations - that’s a good thing - but it’s not as simple as “burnout isn’t real.” A better approach is to realize most limitations are perceived but to have a healthy respect for the actual limits - because if you cross them, the cost is high.

I write this because I just recovered from a burnout I pretended didn’t exist. My last post talked about how I hit 3 different speaking engagements in 9 days (one of which is a mastermind I co-run and is three hard, full days of work).

When I came back, I had to prep for my Goat Webinar Coaching program and then deliver the first session. I’m also working on a a client that paid me $65,000 to do a webinar outline. And I had a family emergency I had to tend to this week. By Wednesday I was a walking zombie. Life wasn’t fun anymore and my overall production was down.

The upside is I wasn’t so hard on myself like I used to be. I took it with grace. The old me would have thought I was weak for not pushing through. Like I did something wrong. The now me accepts that sometimes the cost of exceptional is you push too far.

It’s an opportunity to adjust.

The recovery is quicker - in part due the expectation effect but also because of the acceptance of it - the less energy you spend beating yourself up, the quicker you can recover. Plus, gone is the guilt of being unproductive. That also kills your energy and recovery. I felt perfectly content doing NOTHING because that was the most productive thing I could do in the circumstance.

Now I’m recovered and ready to continue on with my mission. Let’s go.