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Chapters:
0:00 Cold Open
0:55 Show Intro and Today’s Topic: Burnout
3:26 How do we think about Burnout?
24:13 The Six Causes of Burnout
30:34 How do you know that you’re burning out?
36:04 How we create Burnout in our life
43:53 What do I do when I’m burning out?
1:00:26 Why Self-Care isn’t the cure for Burnout
1:05:20 Wrapup
It might be my line of work, but I can’t help but feel that we live in a burnout epidemic.
We are all burning out, all of the time.
Which begs the question: why? What is the source of this pervasive burnout? Why is is that we find ways to temporarily feel better, yet we always seem to burnout again?
Burnout is a vicious cycle. In this week’s episode of No Clear Answers, we try to get to the bottom of burnout. In our conversation, we explore:
Differentiating between burnout and other conditions like depression and seasonal affective disorder
Why you need to stop comparing and be honest about your personal capacity for burnout
How the sources of burnout differ for founders vs. solopreneurs vs. employees
The difference between resting and recharging
Techniques you can use to solve burnout for good
Why do we seem to be trapped in a never-ending cycle of burnout?
While there's a lot of advice on how to recover from burnout (up your self-care game), it is woefully inadequate when it comes to fixing burnout. That’s because almost none of the popular advice addresses burnout at the root.
You see, burnout is a cycle. It’s like being on a treadmill.
Traditional advice telling you to up your self-care is like telling you to step on the sides of the treadmill to recover.
Sure, you get a break. You may even feel fully recovered.
But if you haven’t changed anything about the root causes that are driving burnout in your life and work, all you’re going to do is step right back onto the same treadmill and burnout all over again.
If you want to end burnout, you need to step off the treadmill altogether. In this week’s episode, we discuss how.
Listen on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube.
Hope you enjoy!
-Justin
P.S.
I loved this quote from James Clear’s 3-2-1 newsletter this week. I’ve been trying to (un)learn this truth for what feels like a decade. It’s also highly relevant to our discussion on burnout:
“In theory, consistency is about being disciplined, determined, and unwavering.
In practice, consistency is about being adaptable. Don’t have much time? Scale it down. Don’t have much energy? Do the easy version. Find different ways to show up depending on the circumstances. Let your habits change shape to meet the demands of the day.
Adaptability is the way of consistency.”
If you enjoy reading the Leadership Lab, consider clicking the ❤️ or 🔄 button above so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏