Life is hard. Sometimes it is only one thing, like an upcoming product release at work. And sometimes it’s a lot of things happening at once such as grad school, a family emergency, and a personal health situation. When things get too a certain level of overwhelming it can lead to burnout, which can be incredibly hard to recover from.

What is Burnout?

Small things can make you weary and worn out. But burnout is a different level of tiredness where you have trouble recovering and getting back to normal.

I think of it like your bank account. When you have extra money in your account, things are good. Everything you take on drains from the account. Sometimes, for big events when you don’t have any money you may need to rely on a credit card that you pay down later. (In life, “paying down” may take the form of taking a few days off or treating yourself to a nice dinner.) The problem is the credit card has interest. Burnout happens when you have such a large balance that the interest accumulates faster than you pay it down and you can’t get back to adding money to your checking account.

Know When Things Are Going to Get Rough.

The first step to avoid burnout is to recognize what can cause it. For some people they can work 18 hours a day on code each and every day, but if they have 2 hours of meetings, it completely drains them. Once you find your tolerance level, you can use this to anticipate when hard times are coming.

For example, when I started grad school, I knew that finals were going to be a place I needed to be careful to avoid burning out. I also knew when my daughters were born, I would be sleep deprived and needed to make space for that (I am heavily sleep dependent).

Sometimes things happen by surprise, maybe a medical emergency or an accident. When this happens, it’s important to be realistic with yourself and prepare from the outset to make space. Be kind to yourself and don’t hold yourself to unrealistic expectations. Give yourself the space to take care of yourself and know what to put down and come back to later.

Set Expectations, Get Support

One of the best things you can do is tough situations is to set expectations and get support. Talk with your manager and let them know what is going on. For example, when I started grad school, I let my manager know that I had class on Wednesday evenings. I tell my team when I have final exams and tough assignments and ask them for a bit of time and space.

You can also use these conversations to get support where you need it. Maybe there is something you can delegate to someone else. Or maybe for a period of time you manage one less project to help balance your load. Teams that are invested in you for the long term should be supportive of your long-term health, but even if they aren’t, it is still important to have the conversation so that you can set expectations with no surprises later. Clear communication is important, so people understand what is going on. Sometimes in the absence of information, people can fill in the gaps and their assumptions aren’t always flattering. They may think you are flakey when you are leaving work early, and not know that you are dealing with a sick parent at home.

Try and Find the Light at the End of the Tunnel

Another thing that can help is to know where the end is. Is it when the project ships? Is it graduation? Or maybe it’s when your kid finally sleeps through the night? This is important for a few reasons.

First, knowing when the end is helps you watch your endurance. If you are 2 months into a 12-month project and already struggling to keep your head above water, you have a problem and you need to get help as soon as possible because this is a sign that things aren’t sustainable.

Second, it helps you stay accountable to ending the situation leading to burn out. If there is no end in sight (a project on a death march for example), it’s a bad sign and it can be impossible to avoid burn out since you’ll constantly be draining your reserves.

Finally, it helps you set expectations. For example, for a period of time I was managing two teams at once. I let members of both teams know that while I was managing two teams and that until we could hire a second manager, I would sometimes not be able to pay as much attention to each individual as much as I’d like. The key was that I explained the process of hiring, how long I thought it would take (along with updates if there were delays) and communicated clearly with each team member.

The Juggling Metaphor

When dealing with multiple things in life you can think of it like juggling different types of balls. There are some things that are rubber balls. If you drop them, they bounce right back, and you can pick them back up as if you have never dropped them. These should be the first things you drop. An example of a rubber ball might be a volunteer assignment or mentoring someone. You may need to let them know that you need to step away for a bit but will return once life calms down. Note that in this metaphor I don’t mean you should “drop the ball” in the common meaning. Whenever you put something down you should inform everyone and let them know that you are actively managing your workload to prevent burn out. Don’t just let something crash.

Other things are like wooden balls. You can drop them, they might dent, and it will be a bit hard to pick them back up but at the end of the day, with some recovery, they may be fine. With these types of things, you will generally need to put a plan in place to aid recovery. Maybe this is graduate school. If you get overloaded because of work and need to skip (or not put a ton of effort) into an assignment, you will need to put in extra effort in the long run to catch up and not hurt your grade in the long term.

Some relationships can fall into this category too. You might have a friend group that you spend a lot of time with, but you have gotten to busy to hang out. You may need skip the weekly hang out, but you should make sure you don’t let the relationships go too cold so that you can recover it later. In all of these cases communication and setting expectations is key. It helps others build empathy for what you are going through, and they may be able to help.

“Wooden balls” can be great candidates for delegation. Can you hand a semi-important project off to a team member? Can you delegate bug triage to a direct report? This could turn into a good chance to improve your skills at working through others.

Finally, there are glass balls. These are the critical things that you cannot drop. For me, this is family. It’s something that I prioritize over work and school and try and put the most attention on. Note that this doesn’t mean that if I had to, I couldn’t deprioritize family for a bit (say by skipping a kid’s school concert). It means that I don’t want to, which is just as important. This also isn’t a blanket statement. If I had a final exam on the day of a small school event, I might decide to skip that event.

Personal health is something that should also generally be in this category of glass balls. It can be tempting to put your health on the back burner, but one of the keys to avoiding burn out is to stay healthy and make sure things don’t bubble up into crisis level.

It’s important to know going into tough times what falls into which category so that you can quickly and explicitly prioritize events as they come along.

Manage Your Attention Spotlight

An important aspect of managing burnout is managing your attention. I do this by treating my attention like a spotlight, pointing it at what needs to be done, but recognizing that I can’t spread the light too thin or else everything will go dark. This is especially true in cases where you are asked to run multiple projects; you need to know what needs your attention and what can operate on its own.

When I was running multiple teams, one project was pretty straightforward and had a Senior Developer on it, so I generally didn’t pay too much attention to it. The key here is that I communicated what I was doing. I told the developer explicitly that my lack of attention was not me ignoring them but a sign of trust and an explicit choice. It also set expectations that if something did go wrong, they should let me know and that I would make time if I was needed.

Another project I was working on at the same time was more complicated and had high visibility. This was somewhere I had to pay close attention to make sure it stayed on track and was something I stayed more involved in.

This is a great example of when to ask for support. In this situation I asked my team for help, letting them know that I was spread thin and telling them that what they could do to help me is to explicitly tag me on things that really needed my attention, and to poke me if it seems like I might be missing something critical. That extra support from the team really helped me make it through that difficult situation.

Set Aside Time for Micro-Recoveries

When times get tough you may not be able to take an extended vacation, but you may be able to fit in some time to do little things to recharge.

In normal times, when I have days full of meetings, I try to get something productive done during the small gaps. When I’m in burnout avoidance mode, I may take those 30 minutes to read, breathe, or meditate. These little micro-recoveries help me to stay charged.

Vacations also don’t have to be weeklong. If you are on a long tough project, taking a random Friday off to breathe can go a long way. Maybe schedule a fancy dinner date one evening and treat yourself to a great dessert. Know what recharges you and don’t feel guilty for spending time recovering.

Recovery

When things calm down, it takes time to really recover. Plan a vacation, or at the very least don’t take on another large project for a while. This is especially true if your workload can be unpredictable; you want to make sure you prepare just in case something else comes up.

As usual what’s important is to be kind to yourself and take care. Remember to invest in yourself for the long term and that life is a marathon not a sprint.