One friend admitted to crippling guilt if they weren’t working all the time. That they started work at home at 5am, and usually cleared emails for an hour or two every night after dinner, but still made sure they were at their desk by 8am, even if they achieved nothing except shuffling a few emails around.
They knew deep down that going to the gym or for a walk would have been infinitely better for them and their productivity. But they felt guilty if their staff didn’t see them at their desk at 8am putting in the mahi.
Sound familiar?
Honestly, I thought until that conversation that I was abnormally neurotic. I had no idea others felt exactly the same.
I had a conversation about this exact topic with my mind coach a couple of sessions back. I felt bad not going into work on Tuesdays and Thursdays, especially if I’d been travelling for work — I needed to "show face", otherwise people might think I didn’t care.
She wasn’t convinced, but I was being particularly stubborn.
So I turned up to work afterwards and my right-hand woman Shaz turned around and asked what I was doing there, "don’t you trust us to get on with it?" Jokingly but with an element of truth, of course. I was utterly wrong in my concern that the team would think I was slacking off. They felt empowered that I trusted them. Me hovering about took that away.
The problem is, the further down the burnout spiral you go, the less perspective you have. And the less perspective you have, the less productive you become, the less productive you become the more you lose control, the less control you have, the more you compile lists in your head, the more lists in your head, the less mind-space you have for anything else.
It’s now become a full-blown addiction, and the control freak is unleashed.
And the brutal reality is, nobody likes that person. Clients and prospects smell desperation, staff feel they can’t do anything right and suppliers feel whipped.
Your family probably feel like they’re living on eggshells, and one day your child will turn around and ask you why they don’t make you happy any more. Ouch.
I’m no expert, but I’ve done a fair bit of mind-coaching and listened to some great podcasts — here is my tool-kit for dealing with overwhelm.
- Don’t sweat the small stuff. Does everything actually have to be done right now? I have a "bounce or break" approach now — is it an egg or a ball? If I drop an egg it’ll break, but if it’s a ball it’ll stay bouncing/
- Don’t reply immediately. Set expectations on reply times low. If someone needs a reply urgently, it’s on them to highlight that or to manage themselves to email you with plenty of notice. We can’t do everything. If I tried to reply immediately to everything I’d never get anything done. I bulk "mark read" every few weeks, if I’ve missed something I apologise, people understand and the world keeps turning.
- 30-minute sprints — also known as the Pomodoro Technique. When I’m struggling to focus, I lock myself at my computer for 30 minutes at a time — no loo breaks, no phone, no email, no browsing, just complete focus for 30 minutes. Then I’ll wander about for 5-10 mins and have another sprint. The world will not end if you’re unavailable for 30 minutes at a time. It works.
- When you’re being unpleasant to yourself (you know like when you muck up and you berate yourself for being so stupid), check yourself and say three nice things you would say to someone who needed an empathetic friend for advice. I did this with my son at soccer. He was growling at himself for having a bad game. I asked him to pretend he was talking to one of his team-mates — what would he say to them if they were in the same situation.
- Get yourself a decent wireless headset to get through those really boring tasks that are just getting to you. Put on a random podcast, trashy novel or great music, it’ll stop your mind scrolling through the lists. And you’ll feel like a rockstar for doing the thing. After a while (maybe months) you’ll have de-stressed yourself enough to not need to drown out your thoughts with podcast distractions.
- Most importantly, make sure you’re getting your daily dose of dopamine. Do something that makes you smile — even if it’s just playing hangman with the children at dinnertime.
Since getting my perspective back, I’ve realised how much longer it took to do anything, how I was either doing 100 things at once and not achieving at any of them, or I was hyper-focusing on the wrong things. I have so much more time in my day now, because my ability to execute is so much faster.
There will always be times when we need to push ourselves though, and we’ll start going down the rabbit hole again. It’s important to notice that one of the earliest signs is "I don’t have time" — when you say that, check yourself and do the walk, or coffee date, or yoga, or new fun thing.
Just for fun, because when you’re brain is healthy, your mind can really go to work.
- Sarah Ramsay is the chief executive of United Machinists.
