You're Not Burned Out, You're Doing Work You Don't Give a F*ck About
The work-life balance and self-care movement will hate this.
Hey quick note before we get going.
(Because I gotta check in with my people).
How is your online writing going?
Good? Bad? Uglier than my hair at 5:45 A.M.?
Take 20 seconds and give me the blunt truth
The more you share, the more I can help you. Now to today’s post…
Burnout is a lie.
It’s a misunderstood buzzword. It’s propaganda. It’s a myth invented by modern productivity culture that still can’t answer the question “Why do you want to be productive, though?”
A to-do list for the sake of productivity is stupid.
The self-care lovers and work-life balance superheroes peddle the burnout myth all day on platforms like LinkedIn.
We’re all just one step away from burnout, apparently.
The burnout boogie monster could strike any one of us while asleep in our homes underneath our warm woolen blankets.
But I don’t get burned out anymore. It’s been 3 years. And my experience reveals a transformative idea about burnout that you MUST read.
The 90-second story of my hidden burnout
While working in banking, I felt this mystical feeling of burnout.
Monday morning became a nightmare. I’d feel tired on the way to work. I’d try to reclaim my energy with a coffee. It never worked.
I got a high followed by a crash two hours later.
I’d look at my Outlook Calendar and see a wall of overlapping meetings. I bounced from one meeting to the next, like a fragile ping pong ball that could be crushed by an accidental human foot walking on it.
I kept up this clown show for nearly 10 years. Then the 2020 bat virus hit.
I found myself stuck at home, sleeping throughout the day, and taking lots of grandpa naps. My wife made fun of me. “It’s like you’re 99 years old.”
Then my online game reached a point where I was making enough money not to need my IT banking job anymore. So I quit. Within a few weeks this burnout feeling started to disappear. I didn’t feel tired or exhausted anymore.
So what the freaking hell happened?
Well, it boils down to this…
The feeling people call burnout isn’t exhaustion at all. It’s a sign you’re doing work you don’t give a f*ck about.
That’s right. I hated banking.
It made me bored. Talking about interest rates put me to sleep. Trying to help more people get into debt to buy a home felt boring (even cruel).
But when I got out of the rat race and wrote full-time, and helped others do the same, everything changed.
The official definition of burnout (I call B.S.)
Burnout is a state of complete mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion.
These are the official burnout symptoms:
feeling exhausted and unable to perform basic tasks
losing motivation in many aspects of your life, including your work, hobbies or relationships
feeling unable to focus or concentrate on tasks
feeling empty or lacking in emotion
losing your passion and drive
being easily irritated by small problems
experiencing conflict in your relationships with co-workers, friends and family
emotionally withdrawing from friends and family.
The symptoms are correct but the cause is wrong.
Without knowing the cause you can’t treat the real problem. We don’t have a burnout epidemic. No. We have an “I hate the work I do” epidemic. And an “I have no meaning for my life” epidemic. And an “I don’t know why I wake up every day” epidemic.
It’s a crisis of meaning.
And no one wants to talk about it.
The fact people mostly hate their jobs and are unhappy is a taboo topic no one wants to touch with a 50-foot pole. But I will because I don’t have tape across my mouth.
The common solutions to burnout are laughable
I’ve heard them all.
“I need to reclaim myself.”
“I need to get better at saying no.”
“I need to be less focused on status.”
“I need to value myself and honor my worthiness.”
“I need to block my ‘doer energy.’” (WTF is this…seriously.)
All the above solutions came from a viral article titled “How I Got Into And Managed to Walk Away from Burnout.”
After I read it, I was left thinking, “None of this is actionable and it sounds like woo-woo Law of Attraction mumbo jumbo.”
Here’s my reply to the author:
No madam, wrong. You need to stop doing things you don’t give a f*ck about and building other people’s dreams instead of your own. That’s the problem and until you understand that, there is no solution.
The simple formula to avoid burnout forever
After I quit my job and conquered burnout, here’s what I learned.
The mislabeled feeling of burnout shows up when you don’t have an obsession. When you’re lukewarm ‘interested’ and descending into the world of woo-woo and the unexplainable, looking for signs and gurus that don’t exist.
Life is simple. We either follow what we’re obsessed with and go all in, or we get distracted with fake goals attached to shiny objects and please others.
Don’t worry, I’ve been there. We arrive at this mediocre place when we resist these three things:
Fear
Rejection
Failure
These are the three counterintuitive keys to #success. The more you avoid these three things, and therefore not lean into your true obsession, the further you get away from a life you want to live.
I’ve been obsessed with writing online for 9 years. But I wasted 6 of those years working in banking full-time because I was too fearful to follow my obsession.
People told me “writers are broke.” Or “making money online is risky,” or “you need an MBA to run an online business.”
So I believed them. I didn’t follow my obsession. The truth is when you have an obsession success is automated.
You don’t need motivation.
You need to feel like it.
You don’t need permission.
You don’t need higher education.
You don’t need gurus.
You don’t need to wait for the right time or be less busy.
Nope. You can just go all in because you’re playing a forever game that you’ll happily do until the end of your life. Obsession is internal. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy unlike a career, purpose, passion, or interest – which all eventually lead to burnout.
Obsession is potent. It’s powerful. It’s a life force. So exhaustion and burnout are non-existent because the level of energy is on a totally different level.
When a goal has you fired up, you won't worry about burning out – Zach Pogrob
Takeaway
If you ever get tricked into the feeling of burnout again, I want you to question it.
I want you to stop thinking your burnout problem is a productivity issue or can be solved by saying “no” and doing more self-care. This whole burnout movement is ridiculous and it’s taught by people with mystical woo-woo qualifications.
When you do what you’re obsessed with, the world makes a lot more sense. Decisions are easier to make and fear becomes energy to be used, not avoided.
So…if you don’t have an obsession then it’s time to get one. And if you do have one, it’s time to go all in and stop snow-flaking your way through life with excuses and copes.
Only do things you give a f*ck about and the world will make more sense.
And life will get easier.
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Yep gotta agree. I thought I was burnt out from my executive job - trying hard to rediscover my mojo. Everyone said that after a cancer diagnosis and a bad (and I mean bad) marriage breakup, I needed to take some time off. Nope. Turns out I just needed a new focus and challenge. Nothing like starting a new business to rekindle the spark 😀
Tim, excellent message. Two comments from me:
1). I was a postdoc obsessed with solid-state physics. I'd work 7 days a week and loved it. Yes, I did feel tired on Monday on the way to work but I was looking forward to it. I did give a f*ck about what I was doing in the lab.
2). Your articles on Medium always have a clear message. But your pieces on Substack go even beyond that. Awesome writing. So clear. Not a single redundant word. Gotta learn from you.