In this week’s episode, Crys and JP talk all about burnout, what can cause it, how to avoid it, and how to recover from it.
Question of the week: Have you been dealing with burnout recently? Share your answer here!
Show Notes
Transcript
Crys: Hello, friends. Welcome to the Write Away Podcast. It is Friday, January 7th, as we are recording our 77th episode. I’m Crys Cain with my cohost…
JP: JP Rindfleisch.
Crys: How’s your writing week been, JP?
JP: It’s been good. So I got this Pomodoro planner, to which I then realized it was only for six months so then I ordered my second one because I want to do this the whole year. And it’s been good to track my tasks. There are some bits of it I don’t like, but task wise it has been good. Which on a healthy note, every day I’ve done yoga and exercise, which is more than I did before.
And then I’m getting the writing done in terms of Pomodoro. Which I like Pomodoro. I like having the little tasks there. It helps me get the base minimum of what I want to get done every day. So that has been really nice.
And what else? Oh, I’ve been working on getting the Vella to publish as a novella and doing that in six parts. And so I was talking with you yesterday, you were coming up with some plans and strategies that I wasn’t thinking of. And that’s why I love my author community because I can reach out to author friends who know way more than me who can offer some expertise. So I thank you for that. And yeah, that’s where I’m at.
Crys: It might be fun to record a special session for our Patreon, for Jeff’s Patreon, about those ideas and what you guys end up deciding to do.
JP: That would be really fun just to explain what the strategy is, and then maybe come back later and be like, this is what happened.
Crys: This is what actually happened. My week, because I’m doing the 12-week year with my quarterly planning, I looked at what I needed to do each week to keep on task with that. And it is Friday, and I have done basically one of my four items that I need to get done this week to stay on task of my big things. Which I’m not too stressed about because I can just push myself to sneak in some time tomorrow and Sunday. And I took all day off Wednesday to run around and catch up on life things, mostly Small’s school things. So I knew that I would feel behind and I’d be slightly behind today, so it’s not too stressful, but it’s a little stressful.
We did get started on the new romance book and we’ve got the cover done. And our goal was to finish by the 10th. I don’t know if we’re going to hit that. That sounds really stressful to me in this moment, but I’m going to take a look at that after we wrap up and see where we’re at.
JP: Very nice. So you have three days.
Crys: Three days. Yeah, four days if you include today.
JP: We do have a comment from Marianne from our last episode on How to Plan for 2022. And she was going back to a finished book and working on it to get ready to query it. And she’s going to write a screenplay. And then she said for book club that we should read a screenplay book.
Crys: I do have a bunch on my Kindle that I’ve been meaning to go through. Except it’s less screenplay, and more just writing for TV and film. I don’t know if there are much different in terms of craft. I guess we shall find out sometime this year.
So you brought up a couple of possible topics for today. And one of them was about burnout. And can you frame that as a question to get us started?
JP: Let me ramble for half a second. And then we can think of a topic question. So the reason I’m approaching this is with the aspect of more self-care towards yourself, how to take care of yourself, both during burnout and like before burnout happens. Because I think a lot of times we don’t approach it with our actual selves in mind. So that’s my topic I want to talk about.
Crys: How do we not approach it with our actual selves in mind?
JP: Like how do we approach self-care or how do we approach burnout with self-care in mind?
Crys: Okay. But ramble a bit more on this. How do people normally approach it, that isn’t self-care focused? Because I’m very self-care focused with burnout. So I don’t know. Describe this a bit better.
JP: Yeah. So I guess the reason is both, I think, myself and I’ve just heard through the vine of our community, a lot of people focusing more on just getting back into the words, getting back into the grind or hustling through it, and not really taking time to reflect and focus on what’s causing those core issues and giving themselves the space to be like, it’s okay that this happened, and more about like, it’s wrong that this happened and I need to fix it because this is a major problem.
And the major problem is the not taking care of yourself part.
Crys: That makes sense. Yeah. So how do we get to the root of burnout, perhaps?
JP: Yeah, let’s do that.
Crys: Yeah, this is something that I’ve struggled with a lot, and even this week, like on a miniature scale And one of the problems about burnout is that you generally don’t recognize that you’re burned out until you’re really burned out.
JP: Definitely.
Crys: And often at that point, one of the only things you can do is rest. Now, one of the problems with this is that for most of us burnout, isn’t on a single level. It’s because multiple things have drained us and stolen energy from other places in our lives. And then we just don’t have any reserves left anywhere. And often, I’m thinking, especially the last couple of years with the pandemic, there’s something ongoing that we can’t stop, that we still have to continue to deal with.
Whether that’s a loved one’s illness, your own illness, a job that you can’t afford to quit. There’s something that you’re still gonna have to deal with. So you can’t just be like, “three months sabbatical time!” Which would be so lovely for all of us to just be able to be like, hey, you know what, every three years I take three months and do nothing except like swim in the ocean and read books. Very few of us in this world can do that.
But I think so finding the root of your burnout. One, just list out all your responsibilities, first of all. I think one of the things that we, especially when we’re burned out, we just fail to see the scope of what we’re doing. All we see is all the individual tasks that we’re failing at.
JP: Yeah, definitely.
And I think too, like there’s a piece of it that makes me, it’s not really an epiphany that I had, but it’s something that I was thinking about and realizing that I and many other authors, we want this to be our business. Some of us it’s, we’re still focusing on our day job and we also have this as the side thing. But when you are sick, when you need a day, you call into your office and you take a sick day, you take PTO, you take whatever you can, if you have the availability to do that. But you’re probably not doing that with your writing. And instead, you’re beating yourself up for the fact that you missed a day and that you’re mad at yourself because you missed a day.
And my rebuttal to that is if you had a boss that was beating you up for that, would you stay in that job? And the answer would probably be no, unless you were forced to be in that job.
Crys: I was like, I don’t know, up until this year, I feel like at least the U S culture, has been in a really like Stockholm-y situationship with work and their jobs. And so most people would stay at a terrible job where their boss was terrible to them and abusive to them. Sadly, it’s what we’ve been trained up to do. But that’s not healthy. And they’re calling it The Great Resignation right now, where people are realizing like, you know what, I don’t have enough life in my capacity to put up with this crappiness for any amount of time more.
JP: Yeah. And it makes me laugh thinking about that and thinking about how everyone always talks about how toxic work culture is in the corporate world and everything, but no one really did anything about it. And all it really takes is a starting momentum, and then other people realizing, you know what, it isn’t great here.
That person, they either were of equal or maybe even they had it quote unquote less bad than I did. And so why am I here? It was less of this, oh they’re just whining over here and I have it so much worse, and more of a, oh, if that’s not okay, what’s not okay here. And should I really be accepting that?
And I think that we need to consider that when we are talking about writing and how we are treating ourselves, because I don’t think people are. And you should.
Crys: Yeah I’ve come to have just a real surreal negative view of the cult of productivity and hustle culture. So many of us have been raised with this idea that you have to work hard to earn anything good in this world. And that is a flat out lie. And as I say that, I know that a lot of people like are internally being like, no, like you do have to work hard.
And I’m not saying that work is bad, at all. But the level at which, at least the Us, we think is working hard, is insanity to most of the rest of the world. Our baseline is most people’s “we got a crunch week and we have to work really hard.” And that’s unhealthy. That’s just a recipe for burnout. And it’s definitely not like it’s any better when we take that into entrepreneurship or writing. In fact, it’s 10 times worse because we don’t have someone imposing an external schedule that we can plug in clock in/clock out times.
JP: Yeah. And so I was looking up like several different articles on how other people are talking about burnout and how to get out of it. One on the list is always: don’t stop writing. And I almost want to counter that with, maybe you do need to stop writing. Maybe you do need to take that time to put yourself outside of that writing work bubble and focus on yourself. Because I think that, yes, this is what I want to do with my future, but I don’t keep working in my day job if I am like extremely ill or if I am having like very bad mental health or something like that. We have resources in those worlds to take care of that. But when we start talking about like our hobbies or interests and the career that we want to have moving forward that’s self-employed, we don’t even consider that as an option to stop doing it and really reflect on yourself. And I was reading these articles, I’m like, I strongly disagree. And I want to talk about that.
Crys: Yeah. I definitely think that there’s a time and place. And this very much depends on where you as an individual are and what you need. There’s absolutely a time and place to be like, okay, like I am going to decouple myself from writing. I’m going to decouple my writing from productivity. And that may mean, hey, I’m going to stop writing for a while. And the focus I put on myself when I get into these modes is lean into the joy. And readings one of the easiest ways of doing that for me. It’s like, okay, if you are still reading, you have not left your writing world. You are still continuing to build up your knowledge, your understanding, but you’re leaning into the easiest to joyful aspect of it.
There’s been times where I have not, I have been so exhausted and so overwhelmed that I have not been able to use my eyes to enjoy stories. I haven’t been able to read, I haven’t been able to watch TV, but I could lay in bed and listen to a book. And just leaning into those things that still keep me connected to what I want to do but are low energy and feed into the joy. Because the more, Becca Symes calls them energy pennies, the more you figure out what your energy pennies are and the more you let yourself do them, I mean, one of mine is like unfettered research. If I just let myself go down that Wikipedia rabbit hole then I often will have so much energy after that because I just have all these new ideas bouncing around in my head. And I leaned into that joy.
Would any of it be useful for a story? 99% of the time not. It’s just some random thing that I’ve followed down. And so I think the two things I’ve mentioned is like one, get a handle on your responsibilities, know exactly what it is you’re asking of yourself and ask, okay, is this reasonable? And just have a clear view.
Two, lean into the joy and know what gives you joy. And when you’re in the midst of burnout, that’s sometimes really hard to find because for some people it’s really hard to feel. Some people are overwhelmed with feeling. Some people just numb out. But you think back to pre-burnout and be like, what gave me joy then? And try and pick up those things.
JP: Yeah. And I think since the last time we talked about like routines or something, which was several months ago, I had talked about how I had found my quote-unquote working time, between 5:00 AM and 7:00 AM. And I still work to that time. And that has been like a wonderful way of respecting and being able to control one aspect of my life that I want to gear towards writing. And just by doing that, and just by saying, “this is the time that I will write,” or in some cases, “this is the time that I will podcast.” But then once that time hits seven o’clock, that was my working day for writing.
Anything else is fantastic. It’s extra. I love it. Because of having the day job and knowing that this is something that I want to move towards, anything extra is great and I welcome it. Someone else, somewhere else, may be thinking, that’s more work, more “hustle.” And it may be for them, they may need to just focus just on that little bubble of time and then not do the writing outside of that. And that should be okay. And that’s the thing I want to keep bringing up is, it’s okay. It’s fine that you missed a day. It’s fine that you missed a week. It’s fine that you missed a month. I think that having that like frustration and regret only takes away from your energy of like today.
Because the more that you’re like, oh, I didn’t write today. For example we’re recording now. I may be able to get in like a 25-minute Pomodoro after this before we hit seven o’clock instead of my normal three. Guess what? That’s okay. Because that’s how the day works. I’m not going to be angry about it. I know that it will be great if I can get two more in later today, but I’m not going to force myself.
Crys: I like the time frame limits versus tasks to get done for this kind of burnout. I do want to bring up just briefly folks with chronic illnesses, because a lot of times like they’ll hear all of this. If they’re leaning more onto like the self-help and recovery advice, they will often be like, this isn’t helpful for me because I’m in burnout all my life, and if I leaned into rest that wouldn’t help because I’m still going to be burnout. Like my body is just going to burn me out by existing.
And for folks who are struggling with that, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with understanding that’s where you are and still pushing through it. And, you know, sometimes exhausting yourself more because that’s a different, completely different realm, than I hope the majority of us ever have to deal with. And like you guys are troopers and like you’re not not taking care of yourself if you’re pushing through your exhaustion.
JP: 100%. Yeah, everyone is different. And in cases of chronic illness, that’s going to be a different level. And I think that the biggest thing is figuring out why you are doing this. And what things are you going to do for yourself to make sure that you can do this in the long run? For some people, yeah, that is going to be pushing through. But for other people, I just want people to know it’s okay where you are and it’s okay to take that little break if you need it.
I think that hustle culture really permeated deeply into the writing world and it’s not the best for everyone.
Crys: I’ve had this theory for quite a while now that the people who affect the most change in the world, whether it’s through research or social movements, they’re all insane in some way. And what I mean by that is that there is some part of their life that is in extreme deficit to give them the insane energy and focus that they put towards whatever it is, the thing that they change in life. And I don’t particularly want to be that kind of person. I much prefer being a sane person who maybe gets a lot done but enjoys life.
JP: Yeah. Yeah. I definitely think that there has, for me, for a very long time in the day job culture, it has been focused on moving up the chain, in both terms of like money and in terms of like position. And then when I took a manager role and people cried at me a lot for various reasons because it was a very toxic culture, I realized that was not the path that I wanted to take. And I think there is a strong focus on like monetary comfort and then like above that and just keep finding the quote unquote dollar until you are exploding at the seams, and this like dream that everyone’s going to be a millionaire.
And I don’t know. Do I really want to chase that much money? Is that going to make me happier? I don’t think it will. I think that monetarily speaking, where I am now is a comfortable setting. Of course it would be great to have more to be able to do things like move and find new locations, but not something that in the long term is going to be healthy or happy for me. And instead I think that there’s the daily life, the joys of being with my partner, being with the animals, of talking with my friends, that I don’t want to give up and I shouldn’t have to. And I think that should be the mindset for a lot of people.
But if you really want to chase money, go ahead. It’s not for me.
Crys: Yeah, I think that not understanding what your true priorities are is one of the really common pushes towards burnout. When you accept like what society has told you should be your path subconsciously most of the time. The unhappiest people that I have met have been those who have been trying to pursue someone else’s ideal for their life. And subconsciously they know they don’t want to do that. But until they consciously recognize that they can’t do anything to change it. And so they just get more and more miserable and more and more burnout because they’re wasting their energy on things that they’re not supposed to be doing.
JP: Yeah, definitely. Like what I was saying about moving up the ladder and moving up the salary chain, which was because that was an internal expectation as to what I was supposed to be doing with my life. And it wasn’t until I like really thought about it and I’m like, but why? That was just the question that like broke everything was just, but why? Surprising how much internal reflection and looking into like what you really want to do can really alter the things that you think were concrete for no reason. Because the only reason that was concrete is because that’s what I was seeing in those that were around me.
But once I asked that question, I realized that’s not what I want. And then I sought out the community that was the same mindset or similar mindset. And that’s when I really realized I have a very different why in life that is not focused towards busting at the seams with money, but instead focused towards enjoying the now, because now is way better than planning for the future.
Crys: Just the way you described that, this is how we do the character, part of our scene analysis is we ask, what does your character need and what do they want? So when you’re looking at your list of responsibilities, like you were saying, asking why. Look at your list of responsibilities and say, why am I doing this?
And if your answer for your day job, is like because I need money to pay the bills and buy food. Then say, okay, why do I need that? Ask yourself why again, because you want to drill down to what is the need that you’re getting out of that. And the need that you’re getting out of that as security.
So as you go through and you’re like, okay, why am I doing the things that I don’t love? Does it give me something that I still need? So with like day jobs, people who are in day jobs that they don’t love, like, why am I doing this? Because I need a paycheck to pay my bills and food and all the necessities of life because I need security. Like I need to feel safe, financially safe.
And then, with things that you know are actively burning out, like of course always push yourself to be like, is there a different way I can get the same thing? Day jobs, can you apply for another job? And when you’re in burnout, that’s really hard because you don’t have any energy to do anything new. Applying for jobs is something new, but it might be something that you’re like, okay, this is worth expending some energy on now to recapture a lot of energy sooner or down the road. And it’s this constant negotiation between what I absolutely need to do now to continue living as a human being on this rock flying through space and what I need to do to recover.
JP: Yeah. I definitely think the conversation we had with chronic illness, we can also have it like a really short interjection here about people who are not as well off, more or less they are working low paying jobs and they’re stuck in that position because they’re supporting multiple family members and having the idea to switch those positions is very difficult.
I totally get that. I also recognize that I am not in a place where that is my experience. And so it’s not easy for me to speak for those people and that’s okay. It’s just recognizing that this may not apply to you, that you may be in a position where you are far too focused on making sure that you can pay the bills and that this is not something that you can visit at this moment. And that’s okay too.
Crys: We’ve had this conversation between surviving and thriving before, and that you have to be like at a certain level of survival before you can even start to look at thriving. And when you’re in survival mode, you have to do what you have to do.
If it’s hustle culture or not even hustle culture, which is very much do more, do better, do greater. It’s like I generally see people who should be in the thriving category, like acting as if they’re still in survival mode, but like just actually just trying to make ends meet, that’s in survival mode and that often will take us to burn out. And sometimes it’s shitty, but like sometimes that’s all you can do.
JP: Yeah. Like the thing I was talking about earlier, where I like had that moment of why, that’s because I reached a level of financial security that I found to be stable. And I said, ” Do I need more? Or can I stop here?”
And the answer at that time was like, this is an okay level to look at other positions that are within this level that may have less expectations or may have a less like direct reports. And then I can focus on that writing. But it really wasn’t until I reached that level of comfort that I was able to even ask myself that question, because everything before then was just focused on making sure that everything can be done, that I can quote unquote pay the bills, that I can feel comfortable with where I am. So I totally understand that there is a level that people reach and it’s not until that level that you can even offer space for that question to come up.
Crys: Yeah. And this is just so many shades of gray as far as like where you find yourself at your situation in life. And it’s so frustrating when you hit that burnout. And for those of us in North America at least, I can’t speak to other cultures other than this happens far less in Costa Rica, we’re just aimed at burnout, like an arrow, like we’re an arrow aimed at burnout and then let go. And we’re going to get there sooner or later., I don’t know anyone in the U S who has not faced burnout at some point in their life by the time they’re 30, and that’s insanity.
JP: Yeah. I definitely scrape the edges of burnout because I really want to get my writing career moving forward far more than I plan to. So I have a lot of projects, I have a lot of things that I know teeter on the edge of burnout. So that’s why I have that little writing time bubble. And I accept the fact that everything outside of that is extra. And then I also accept the fact that maybe today I may not get anything done in that writing bubble. But I’m not going to feel guilty about it. Because there was various circumstances that happen. It can either be self-circumstances like sickness. It could even be burnout.
But regardless, I don’t want to feel guilty for the fact that I didn’t write. I want to feel happy that today was the day that I wrote. And I think that the guilt part is a trail off of the day job culture. And I don’t want that. That’s just not for me.
Crys: Yeah, I agree. My question for our listeners this week is simply: have you been dealing with burnout recently?
JP: And how are you taking care of yourself?
Crys: Yeah. How are you taking care of yourself? All right, friends. Thank you so much for joining us this week. We will be putting up voting choices for our next book club on our Patreon very soon. So if you’d like to help us choose that, please do check our Patreon out. The link will be in the show notes. We’ll see you next week.
JP: See you later.
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