One was a scale of perfectionism and the other was a scale of burnout. Perhaps unsurprisingly there is a strong correlation between the two.
Now, for those of you where the idea of a "psychologist" is triggering, we’ll use my more palatable term "mind coach".
Mind coaching is something I’ve done on and off for the last 15 years. It has been the single best investment for my executive functioning — I apply what I’ve learnt daily to my logical reasoning, stress management, prioritisation and negotiations. And that’s just with my 8-year-old.
I asked my mind coach why someone would ever score less than 100% on the perfectionist test, as it was simply foreign to me that anyone would do anything to less of 100% of their ability by choice. It turns out there are humans doing things even though they suck at them, and enjoying it — sounds like a total oxymoron.
So my homework was to do lots of different fun things I wanted to do, even if I may not be good at them. And I should absolutely not force myself to "commit" to any of them as a challenge to be overcome and conquered. Commitment is another issue of mine. I overdo it.
So, I went surfing today, I absolutely suck at it. But I laughed the whole time and felt awesome afterwards.
The burnout is a trickier issue — and it’s rampant at the moment. Up and down the country in my work travels this year discussion has turned to burnout. People are quite simply exhausted.
The positive thing is that we’re talking openly about it. And when we do, I see palpable relief from people that they’re not the only crazy lazy ones.
Lazy? I know it seems an odd term in the context of a condition brought about by working too hard, but here’s the thing — for us perfectionists, if our output isn’t up to our usual standards then we assume we must just be lazy. It couldn’t be that we’ve exhausted ourselves to the point of cognitive impairment — literally changing how our brains function. We are guilty of laziness and must work harder!
And so the spiral of burnout is perpetuated.
Doing something about my burnout was triggered first by my son, and then closely followed by some self-observation:
On the way to school drop-off one morning my then 7-year-old asked me why I never smiled any more. I kept forgetting things, everything. Including an increasingly concerning number of times I’d walk into a room and forget why I was there. My entire attitude changed from unfailing optimism, to not being able to see the opportunities right in front of me for the catastrophes waiting to happen.
Our brains are muscles. For a muscle strain we know if we take ibuprofen it will take the pain away, but it’ll come back unless we stretch and massage it. The brain is the same. We can take a long weekend, have a few wines, escape into a book or watch an entire season of telly one weekend — which might alleviate the immediate pressure, but you’ve got to do the stretches — do the work, to fix the root cause.
Burnout is a full-blown strain on your brain. Prolonged chronic stress causes depression-like symptoms including decreased motivation, lowered performance and cynicism. If you’re like me and you like a technical explanation, when our bodies are under stress we release a hormone called cortisol — this was really helpful when we were cavewomen in fight or flight mode running away from saber-toothed tigers, but in the office or workshop it’s overkill.
The theory is that if we’ve been under chronic stress for too long, we simply use up our cortisol reserves, and because cortisol counteracts happy hormones of dopamine and serotonin — we end up all out of balance.
The treatment is really simple, you just need total rest from work stress for 3-12 months so your brain can retrain itself. Yeah, right.
Instead, my mind coach and I came up with a really simple plan to get myself "daily doses of dopamine":
Play with Fin — we’ve taken to family sessions of hangman or Uno after dinner; laugh with friends or family — in person, or pick up the phone (ditch the booze, go for a walk/surf/coffee/show/class together); at least 30 minutes of movement — not to be fitter, skinnier, faster, stronger, or better at all, just to feel good; minimum seven hours of sleep; maximum 45-hour week, two days from home to work on strategy or projects, not business admin and more "I want", less "I should" stuff.
You don’t realise what you’ve lost until you find it again — and I can honestly report after three months that I have my "relentless optimism" back, my imagination and my passion for work, family and friends.
I’ve also become one of those crazy cold water plungers — a cold water immersion can increase your dopamine for the next six hours by 250%. The only other drug that can do that is cocaine, and that’s not recommended as a viable health supplement alternative!
I realise this ripple is quite a big deviation from the last issue about productivity. But it does tie in, we can’t be great leaders if we’re not in the right headspace.
As leaders we need mental clarity to inspire confidence, make good decisions under pressure and respond creatively to opportunities. Most importantly, we need to be our best selves to support our people — you can’t be what you can’t see, what are they seeing when they look at you?
- Sarah Ramsay is chief executive of United Machinists.
