By the end of this issue, you’ll have a few questions to help you you work out whether you’re going through a genuinely hard season, or whether the way you’re working has become the problem.

I’m slightly embarrassed to admit this now, but I used to think burnout was a bit made up.

Not completely. I knew people could get exhausted. I just thought a lot of us were tired, busy and stressed, and some people were better at getting on with it than others. I had always been someone who just kept going. If there was too much to do, I stayed later. If something went wrong, I fixed it. If I didn’t know the answer, I found one.

That approach was useful for a long time. It helped me build a career. It also made it very easy to miss the point where being good at coping became the reason I kept accepting things I probably shouldn’t have been coping with.

I think high performers can be particularly bad at this. When being reliable becomes part of your identity, stopping feels strangely like failing. You don’t want to be the person who can’t handle it. So you keep handling it.

And for quite a while, you can.

You still show up. You still hit the deadlines. People may even tell you how calm you seem. Meanwhile, you get home and have absolutely nothing left. The weekend becomes time to simply recover.. or attempt to. Things you normally enjoy start to feel like effort. You’re technically functioning, but your life gets smaller because work is taking more and more of you.

This is where I think productivity advice can become almost comical. I love a list. I love a spreadsheet. I have absolutely tried to solve being overworked by becoming even more efficient at being overworked.

There is a point, though, where a better calendar is not the answer. You can’t organize your way out of needing rest. And you can’t keep treating your ability to survive a situation as proof that the situation is fine.

I still care about ambition. I still want to build things, do good work and make progress. What has changed is that I no longer think “career success” is very impressive if you have to give up most of your actual life to maintain it.

01  How long has it actually been like this?

A brutal week is one thing. Six months of telling yourself it will calm down after the next deadline is another. I’d look at the pattern, not the excuse for this particular week.

02  Do I recover when I get the chance?

If a normal night’s sleep, a quiet weekend, or a day off genuinely resets you, that tells you something. If you’re constantly trying to get back up to zero and never quite getting there, that tells you something too,

03  What has quietly disappeared from my life?

This one was more useful to me than asking whether I felt “burnt out.” What stopped happening because there was no energy left for it? Exercise? Friends? Hobbies? Cooking? Patience? Wanting to do anything after work?

04  Is the workload temporary, or is this simply how the job works?

Some hard seasons are worth pushing through. But a season should have an end. If every finish line is replaced by another one, I’d stop saying the pressure is just temporary.

05  If nothing changed for the next year, would I choose this?

Not tolerate it. Choose it. That distinction matters. You don’t need to resign tomorrow because the answer is no, but it’s useful information to plan what’s next.

ONE IDEA TO KNOW Recovery is information.

Pay attention to whether rest actually restores you. Sometimes the clearest sign that something needs to change is that the usual ways you recover have stopped being enough.

THE ADVANTAGE Don’t let competence trap you.

Being the person who can handle a lot is useful. It shouldn’t become a reason to build a life that requires you to handle too much forever.

It makes me laugh a little that so many of us spent years wanting bigger careers, bigger jobs, and more responsibility, and now you hear people talking longingly about quiet morning, time with their kids, and a regulated nervous system.

I don’t think that means the earlier ambition was fake. I think something you have to get closer to what you thought you wanted before you can see the trade-offs for what they are.

I still want to achieve big things. I’m just much less interested in achievements that require me to be permanently exhausted to keep them.

What are you very good at carrying that you’re starting to wonder whether you should keep carrying?

Hit reply and tell me. I read every response.

Charlotte
Founder, The Redhead Advantage  ·  Build a life you’re proud of.