Burnout
Yikes! It's been a long month at work. I definitely put in too much time in July and stopped feeling like I wanted to do anything productive since a few days ago, as a result, I took two days off to recover.
Since the beginning of this year, I've started viewing burnout as an awareness problem. This perspective has helped me out a lot – even in times where I don't feel like I'm burning out, or times when I thought I'm having some unrelated issues, taking a break still usually managed to fix everything anyways. Over time, I feel like I started getting a better sense of what actual burnout feels like.
This particular burnout was pretty interesting though – I did recognize that I was burning out halfway through the month, but the work timeline was planned such that I couldn't really take a break before all the work was done. In other words, this particular burnout not an awareness issue, but a planning one.
I think this type of issue generally comes up as a part of Parkinson's law (where “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”) and the fact that the last 10% of work usually ends up being more like 20% instead. Planning for it can be kind of tough though. Even if I channel some wisdom and reserve vacation days in advance, there will usually be a few weeks where I would constantly hear the devilish whisper “it's ok... you can just finish in on your vacation day” 😓.
Maybe I should just always book something out of the city, this way I can't force myself to not take a break?
— Categorized under: #psychology, #irl