S3 Ep07 - Managing Stress & Burnout

Welcome to the Zen Habits podcast, where we dive into how to work with uncertainty, resistance, and fear around our meaningful work. This is for anyone who wants to create an impact in the world and cares deeply enough to do the work. I'm your host, Leo Babauta, creator of the Zen Habits blog.

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Hello, hello, hello. All right, let us talk about managing stress and burnout. Before you tune out, let me tell you why this is such an important topic. The things that lead to burnout—stress, overwhelm, and letting yourself get exhausted—are under-noticed.

Because they're under-noticed, we don't prevent burnout before we get to it. We don't prevent this feeling of exhaustion, of feeling really dull about life and our work, not being excited about taking it all on. We don't recognize all of that before we get to that point. Or even when we're at that point, we often don't recognize it.

These underlying causes—the things happening within us—actually have a bigger impact on productivity, procrastination, and everything we're talking about in this season. They have a bigger impact than we realize. So, hear me out. Give me at least one minute to explain that, and then decide if this is going to be an important topic for you to listen to in this episode.

I think people want to get to the tactics, but they’re skipping over these topics—stress and burnout. Burnout is the point where you've already exhausted yourself. You’re already like, "Ah, I can’t do any more," and your body and mind shut it all down. Like, "I just cannot keep going."

There’s a point where you just have nothing left, and you just can’t keep going. But that’s already way too far. If you want to run optimally—if you want to run the engine of your body, your mind, your life—optimally, you won’t even get close to that point because that's like, imagine if you owned a car and it was an amazing sports car, right? A Lamborghini. I don’t know much about cars, but imagine it’s a Lamborghini. And you run it without changing the oil, without attending to the engine, without doing any routine maintenance. You just keep running it and running it, driving it 24 hours a day without any maintenance, without letting it rest, without anything.

You’re going to run that thing into the ground, and not only will it eventually crash and burn, but for a long time before that, it’s not going to be running optimally at all. If you want your machine to run optimally, you need to understand the things that lead to burnout and stop them. Deal with them way before you get to burnout.

Burnout means that you’ve been running thousands of miles too long without actually addressing the underlying issues. So, what we’re really talking about here is not just how to prevent burnout (which is way, way down the road), but actually how to run optimally. If you want to run optimally, then this is the episode for you.

So, what are we talking about? Burnout is that end state. But what are the things that lead to burnout? The main thing is stress and tiredness, right? Stress. We work really hard. We stress ourselves. Stress, in and of itself, is not a problem. We want to stress ourselves, right? We want to be pushing into discomfort, into uncertainty, working hard, and challenging ourselves.

If we don’t have challenge in our lives, we’re not going to grow. We’re not going to learn. We’re not going to do anything interesting. We’re actually going to shrink ourselves. So, if you don’t want to shrink your life, then what we want is some challenge. We want some stress.

It means that we’re actually pushing ourselves to challenge. But we have to recognize that stress has a response. If we stress ourselves, we can actually get stronger from that stress. It’s like working out. If I lift weights, I can actually get stronger from lifting the weights. Or I can injure myself.

So, lifting a weight can have two different possible responses: one is that I get stronger, and the other is that I hurt myself. The difference is, am I overdoing the stressor, and am I letting myself recover?

For example, lifting weights—if you lift something really heavy, if it’s too heavy, you’ll hurt yourself. If you don’t give yourself enough rest, you won’t get stronger; you’ll get weaker over time. So, what you want is the right amount of stress and the right amount of recovery, not just for working out but also for the work you’re doing in your life.

This is what we want—to recognize that people overdo the stress. They’re lifting too much weight, and they underdo the recovery. That’s what leads to burnout. We don’t recognize the symptoms. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to overdo the stress sometimes.

What we need to recognize is, "Oh crap, I overdid it. I need to let myself recover."

Again, going back to physical training, let’s say you were training for a marathon, and you did a really hard run. The next day, you’re completely exhausted and sore, you can barely walk. Well, you overdid it. That’s not necessarily a problem if you recognize that you overdid it and give yourself more recovery time than you normally would.

But the problem is, if we use this analogy with our work and our lives, we’re doing the really hard run. The next day, we wake up sore and tired, we can barely walk, and we’re still doing the regular thing we would do without giving ourselves that kind of recovery.

That’s the problem. It isn’t that we’re overdoing it; it’s that we don’t recognize we’re overdoing it, and we don’t recognize that we need recovery, so we don’t adjust our load.

I think it’s helpful to talk about physical training because I’m really into it, whether it’s strength training or running or sports. It’s okay to stress ourselves, to overload ourselves sometimes, but we want to recognize the symptoms. In the case I’m talking about, it’s being super sore, barely able to walk, feeling really tired, or irritable.

If you were an athlete, or you had a good coach, your coach would tell you, "Hey, take today as a rest day, or just do a really easy walk, or a very, very slow jog, but don’t push yourself today. Go easy, back off for the next couple of days. Maybe do a little harder tomorrow, but nothing intense." Then, once you’re recovered, you can start doing hard stuff again.

So how do we take that and apply it to work and everything we’re doing in our lives? Well, recognize: what is my stress load? Am I taking on a lot right now? Great, that’s totally okay. But how am I feeling the next day? If I’m feeling exhausted—sore could be one thing, but it could be that my brain feels drained, I don’t feel like taking anything on, I feel irritable, easily irritated by other people or the world, I’m not feeling as energetic or excited about my life or my projects—if that’s the case, then I need a little bit of recovery.

What could that look like? It could mean giving myself a full rest day or a self-care day. Go get a massage, take some naps, do something with friends that feels regenerative, recuperative. Go to have a spa day. I like to get a massage once in a while. Another thing I like to do is go to a place that has saunas, steam rooms, hot tubs, and cold plunges. I like to do that, and it’s super relaxing. I feel restored afterward.

I don’t do that every day, but when I do, it really replenishes me. Another thing I like to do is go out in nature. Another is to just take some rest time and maybe read a bit more. I’m not saying I do zero work on those days—maybe I do a little—but I give myself a break. I might work fewer hours. I might move some calls if I need to. I might hang out with people who make me feel good and not stressed.

I lower the commitments, lower the stress, and increase the recuperative, regenerative activities—nature, space, peace, and rest. These are really good things for me. I like to have hot tea, take a hot bath or a hot shower—these things are good for me. Maybe go for a swim if there’s a swimming pool, lake, or ocean nearby.

Honestly, I will take naps. So, the day after stressing myself, maybe I need two days like that. Sometimes, I’ve been working really hard for several weeks in a row, and I recognize that I need more than a day or two. I need a whole week. And I also build these kinds of rest times into my year.

I might have a couple of months that are either full-on rest months where I don’t do very much at all, or they’re half, where I don’t do a lot of calls in those months. Maybe I do more writing than anything else, and that’s restorative to me. A couple of months are built into my year—June and December are the months that I take. But you might think for yourself, what would be a year-long structure that would really serve you?

Even in the other months that aren’t June and December, what can I build in there? Do I take weekends fully off? Do I stop working at six o'clock, or seven o'clock, or five o'clock, or whatever would be helpful for me? Do I take breaks during the day on a regular basis?

These are things I think about, and I encourage you to do the same. What are you going to do to help make sure you're getting the right recovery for the amount of stress that you have? And how do you recognize how much stress you're putting into it? Are you constantly stressed and running yourself into the ground every day? Are you working 12-hour days, 14-hour days, those kinds of things? Are you shutting off your computer or getting away from your phone at night, or are you constantly plugged in? Do you have any kind of social time? Do you do anything alone where you have space, where you’re not working but actually have some alone time?

Do you have recuperative time with others?

Think about these things and figure out what you need. There’s no fixed answer here where I’m going to tell you, "Here’s the formula." Of course, we all want a fixed formula, but that’s not how this works. We have to learn how to respond to our individual needs.

What you need to do is a cycle of experimentation. So, what that means is every week and every month, have reflective time. In fact, I’d say even better is every day. So, some reflective time either in the evening or in the morning. If you can do it daily, great. If that's too much, then at least have one day a week—Sundays or Mondays, something like that—where you reflect: How am I feeling right now? Am I really stressed out? Am I feeling overworked? Am I feeling overloaded? Do I need more rest? And if so, how can I take responsibility for that?

A lot of times, people think, "Oh, I can't rest because I have so much to do." If that's the case, take responsibility for the fact that right now, you don’t feel like you can rest. And that’s either your own fears or your inability to let others support you.

For example, if it's your fears—you just cannot shut off, you cannot say no to things, you cannot reduce your commitments because you're afraid that if you don’t, something bad is going to happen—then look at that. That's your own fears. How do you calm your fears so you can actually say no to people? So you can say, "Hey, you know what? My plate is actually too full. I need more space." Or, "No, I can’t do that." Or, "I need to shut off at a certain time every day."

So, those are fears. The other thing is being unwilling or unable to let people support you. Do you have things on your plate that you can ask others to do or say no to? Do you have things that you’re taking on that others could help with? We often don’t want to do that because we’re worried about overburdening others, or asking for help, or even admitting that we might need help.

But that’s a broken model—to say, "I have to do everything on my own, and I can’t ever admit that I need help," as if needing help is a weakness. Actually, asking for help is an act of leadership and an act of generosity. It’s leadership because leadership isn’t doing everything yourself. It’s inviting others to be on this project with you, to help make this amazing. So that’s leadership.

And then, generosity is like, "You know what, if I take all the tasks and I don’t let anyone else do it, it’s kind of like saying, 'I’m the only one who’s able to do this, and you guys can’t.'" What if I share the journey with you? What if we could all row this boat together, grab an oar and paddle together? That’s actually an act of generosity. I know that when people let me help, I feel really good. I feel like I’m contributing in some way. Why would we want to stop others from contributing?

So, fears and not letting others support you are the things that keep us from giving ourselves the recovery we need.

The next thing I want to talk about is how we can recognize the signs. What I'd like you to do as you listen to this is check in with yourself right now. How does your body feel? How does your mind feel? Does it feel excited about life? Does it feel rested? Does it feel open, spacious, and peaceful? Or do you feel overwhelmed? Do you feel super stressed out? Do you feel run into the ground? Do you feel frazzled? Do your nerves feel frazzled? Do you feel irritable?

Do you feel super tired and exhausted? Do you feel dull and not excited about things? These are some things to ask yourself. As I’m asking you to check in on yourself right now, just notice—what are the symptoms? What are the signs? There’s nothing wrong with having them, but what if you could check in with yourself more often and just do a little bit of a pulse check, a temperature check, an oil check for the engine?

That’s what we’re doing here—we’re getting some vital signs. How is my outlook on life right now? Do I feel excited, joyful, full of wonder and gratitude? If so, that usually means you’re well-rested and recuperated. Or do I feel like, "Ugh, I’m a victim, everything is a burden, I feel not excited, everything feels dull, I feel tired, I feel drained, I feel frazzled, my nervous system feels fried, I’m easily snapping at people?" These are signs that I’m not well-rested, that I’m overstressed, and I’m not letting myself recover.

Then I just need to notice that and adjust. If you had someone training you, they would ask you these things and then say, "Okay, here’s how we’re going to adjust your training plan. You’re going to have a lower load today and tomorrow, and then we’ll check in with you in two days and see—can you increase the load from there, or do you need more rest?"

So, your coach would do that, but I encourage you to be your own coach. Check in with yourself daily. When you feel overloaded, adjust the load for today and tomorrow, and then check in the day after that. You might need more than a day or two of rest, and that’s okay. We give ourselves the amount of rest we need until we're back to at least a decent amount of battery charge, and then we can take on the world. That’s what we’re looking for—do you feel ready to take on the world, take on challenges? Then you’re in the place you want to be.

But if you're constantly running yourself into the ground, you won’t be able to take on challenges. You’re lowering your resiliency. Stress can actually increase our resiliency over time if we manage the stress load, don’t overdo it too much, and give ourselves recovery time. If we do that, stress increases our resilience, and that’s what we want.

We don’t want zero stress, where we're reducing our resilience. If we have zero stress in our lives, we’re shrinking our lives down. We’re actually reducing our resilience over time. What we want is more resilience by being willing to actually stress ourselves at an appropriate level and then recover. By doing that, we increase our resilience, increase our capacity to take on challenges, and actually improve the capacity of our engine so that we can do more. We can take on more in the world. We can learn more. We can love more. We can play more. But definitely, we can bring the full force of our life into whatever we’re facing.

That’s what I’m encouraging you to do—check in with yourself more regularly. Adjust your load so that your resilience is increasing instead of decreasing over time.

That’s what I’ve got for you today. If you have questions, please email me. If you're listening to the audio version of this podcast, email [email protected]—I get that in my inbox, I read every single one, and I reply to a lot of them. If you're watching the video version of this on YouTube, which I highly recommend because I look amazing, put a comment below and let me know if this helped you, if you have questions, if you struggle with this, and what your struggle is. I'd love to hear. I reply to every comment—even if it’s sometimes just with a heart emoji or something like that, I reply to every comment.

Have an amazing day. Please take care of yourself. Get yourself to full capacity, increase your resilience over time, and feel pumped and psyched about life.

Thanks, my friends.

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