YOU'RE NOT WORKING HARD ENOUGH, and other lies.
Unpacking the difference between working hard, and burning out, based on a lil' bit of research and a whole lot of journaling.
Before we dive into today’s letter, I wanted to quickly thank everyone for subscribing to and supporting New Motives, sharing it with your friends, and privately DMing me or texting me your reactions to my first published piece. I was reassured seeing how much of my story resonated with so many of you, but also a little heartbroken. It seems like A LOT of readers are actively struggling with or teetering on the edge of burnout, and all I can hope is that this weekly, semi-organized brain-dump helps you in some way. To all - thank you for reading, and to those who have reached out 1:1 - thank you for trusting me with your experience and being vulnerable. I am a perpetually vulnerable person, often too much so (see: this entire newsletter concept!), but I know it’s not easy to hit someone up and be like, “hey! I’m falling apart a little bit!” So I’m glad we’ve opened up a conversation here, and that you feel comfortable being vulnerable right back.
Ok, now onto the pulp. The JUICE.
I want to talk about the difference between pushing yourself / working hard and actual burnout, or what being on the verge of burnout might look like. I made a handy LIST for each that to me, clearly outlines the thin-but-apparent line between a healthy GRINDING SEASON (we will talk about life ‘seasons’ in a later issue) and an unhealthy BURNOUT CHAPTER.
I love working hard. I love setting a goal and GOING FOR IT with animalistic fervor. I love feeling in flow, so much so that I forget what time it is, whether it be when I’m writing, putting a content strategy together or running an event. I am ALL about a good grind. Because no one is going to wave a magic wand and make you ‘successful.’ You will not suddenly wake up one day with the resources you need to build the life you want. Working hard, and working smart, is the only thing you can do to control your ultimate life outcomes and have full ownership of what you earn.
But working hard is NOT the same as burning out. I want us to be in alignment, early on, both on what I mean when I talk about ‘burnout,’ and also what I cherish about doing taxing, deep, but ultimately fulfilling work. I am not a soft-life girlie. I am not a quiet quitter. And I may even be a capitalist! Who’s to say! This newsletter will never be about bashing productivity or bowing out of the competitive, challenging, and yes, broken system we all find ourselves in. It will be about how we can live within that system, thrive in that system, without breaking down ourselves.
I am not a soft-life girlie. I am not a quiet quitter. And I may even be a capitalist!
I dug into a few yummy podcasts and pieces this week that informed the lists you’ll find below. This episode from The Happiness Lab was a huge help. And I poured through my own journals, dated 2017-2023, to revisit what burnout felt like in real-time, versus eras where I pushed myself in what I consider a healthy and sustainable way. If you have anything to add to these lists or disagree with anything I’ve outlined, I’d love to hear from you!!!
Recovery Resources
Pushing yourself: what it looks like
You feel focused, or you find yourself capable of periods of focus.
You feel confident about your efforts or work ethic. You feel that both are good enough.
You have the discipline to “turn-off” - not just manually, but mentally. You can detach from your work to recover, with no guilt.
You’ve given yourself some direction or a certain set of goals. They can be vague or specific, but you have some sort of vision of yourself, your life or your career that you are actively trying to realize.
When doing work, you feel aligned to those ultimate goals, whether they be personal or professional.
You feel “agentic,” as my therapist likes to say :) Meaning, you feel you have agency. You are not an NPC (non-player character) in the life you lead, as if you’re at the whim of larger forces. You feel in-choice. You feel like you are actively doing and designing your life as you go.
You see the end in-sight. Even if you’re in a “sprint” and pushing harder than you might normally, there’s some light at the end of the tunnel.
You feel comfortable and capable setting boundaries. What does that look like? “Thanks, Manager, but my plate is actually full this week. Is it alright if I have that over to you by next week? That’s how I’ll do my strongest work.” “No friend, I can’t take that [personal ask] on right now. I have a ton on my plate as-is and I am at capacity, but I’ll let you know when things lighten up.” You can set these boundaries because you know the work you ARE doing or the way you’re showing up is already enough.
You can regulate your emotions. You feel the ups and downs in your body, of course, but you’re in control of your reactions, comments and how you show up in the world.
You practice “self-first” recovery. You know what you need to recover from your hard work, and you either give that to yourself freely (if you don’t have kids and control most of your free time), or you ask your people (spouse, partner, family, etc) to do XYZ so you can pursue that recovery. You experience minimal guilt in giving yourself this recovery or asking people to help you facilitate it.
You approach life with some degree of flexibility. If a friend or partner changes plans, or a work project gets shifted, you may experience a ping of frustration but you do not proceed to spiral.
You approach people and situations with some degree of understanding. You are not triggered into taking things too personally and can feel, process, and recover from disappointment.
You feel connected to your body and your experiences. Whether it setbacks or milestones, you feel the emotions that come with each: defeat, sadness, pride, joy. These feelings can range from comfortable to uncomfortable, but they are there.
Burnout: what it looks like
You struggle to focus, whether it due to brain fog, distracting, negative thoughts, or a persistent sense of mental fatigue.
You have a nagging sense that you’re never doing enough. You are not confident about your work or work ethic, often despite evidence that you should be. You have a set a bar for yourself that you seemingly can never clear.
You feel guilty ‘turning off’ after work or on the weekends, or you literally ‘just can’t.’
You don’t feel aligned to an ultimate personal or professional goal, which makes working hard feel very taxing. You feel like you’re treading water, endlessly, but getting or going nowhere.
You do not feel agentic. You feel like an NPC in your own life. You feel disconnected from the choices that brought you to this current investment [job/relationship/friendship]. It feels like you are grinding for something you did not choose.
You see no end in sight to whatever you’re experiencing.
You do not feel comfortable or capable of setting boundaries or speaking up for yourself. This could be caused by internal pressure (guilt, fear of being disliked) or external pressure. As for external pressure, it might be that wherever you are (in a relationship, work environment, friendship) you may be getting pushback when you DO set boundaries.
You have trouble regulating your emotions. There is limited to no time between when you process something - a slight, a challenge, disappointment - and when you react.
You do not invest in recovery, or feel guilty asking people to help you find recovery. You worry about inconveniencing other people, or demanding too much from them, and stay silent at your own expense.
You approach life with inflexibility. Small changes to plans in your work or personal life stress you out immensely.
You lack empathy and understanding. Other people’s needs feel like an inconvenience. You have an ever-simmering sense of resentment that can easily flare up.
You feel dissociative, meaning, you feel disconnected from your body and your experiences, specifically your milestones or accomplishments. You feel numb to your wins.
It’s a stealthy, insidious form of your own dehumanization.
My burnout journey lasted so long and was so hard to untangle because I didn’t have a name for what was going on, I was ashamed to name it, or for some reason, I felt like the stakes were so high, building a company, that I just ‘had to deal with it.’ But I think the main cause was even sicker. A reader shared this podcast episode with me last week, and one of the comments really stuck. Paraphrasing here, but it was something like: Burnout is when you’re convinced that your needs - to rest, to pause, to get help, to pull back - are threatening to your output, which you’ve put on the ultimate pedestal. So you go through life suppressing your needs, silencing them, and convincing yourself they don’t matter.
It’s a stealthy, insidious form of your own dehumanization.
The Big Picture
I’m very convinced that a lot of this self-abandonment, this insidious, self-dehumanization, as I am boldly naming ‘burnout,’ it due to external forces, specifically in the workplace. I believe we are trained, whether it outright or more subtly, to feel bad setting boundaries at work. According to Gallop, employee stress has been rising for over a decade. And it’s because the manager-employee relationship is broken. According to the same research report, this mounting stress has nothing to do with working remotely, or being on-site, or what industry you’re in. It’s driven by shitty relationships between managers and their employees. It’s because employees feel that their managers aren’t recognizing them, or prioritizing their wellbeing, or setting clear goals and creating opportunities to learn.
To me, this is a clear case of hurt people hurt people. And if you’ve never seen this phrase before, I’ll unpack it for you: HURT (adjective) people, HURT (verb) people.
If you’re not the CEO, then you’re being managed. There is someone above you assigning tasks, measuring your work, and relying on you to get shit done. It’s pretty powerful to think about this Gallop report, and the fact that Jim, the lowest level employee, reports intense stress because of Katie, his manager. But Katie herself is reporting intense stress because of Joe, her manager. And the tangled net of employee burnout spins out and out and out, catching everyone in its invisible web.
To me, this is scary but also promising. Because it means the pervasive burnout within our institutions is in large part driven by interpersonal relationships. And interpersonal relationships - connections - are moldable and fixable, if you have two honest parties coming to the table. The way to mold and fix them? Through vulnerability.
Could this look like… sitting your manager down and having an honest heart-to-heart about how you’re doing? Might it look like, telling a friend you can’t show up for them because you’re genuinely struggling with xyz? If we’re all burning out, or edging toward it, then speaking up when you’re hurt might inspire someone else to reassess their condition - what they’re accepting in the workplace, how they are being treated - and begin the slow but effective process of breaking that tangled, invisible web that’s creating a culture of anxiety, urgency, and ongoing dehumanization.
As for me, I’m hoping to create a culture at Scent Lab (where I just joined as co-founder and CMO!) that deftly avoids these traps. Bulletin was my first time team-building, creating a corporate culture, and managing a large group of people. I co-founded that company at age 24. I don’t think I nailed our work environment, especially since I was so burnt out myself during various eras, but I don’t think we fucked up, either. I’m excited to take what I learned and apply it to Scent Lab as we grow, and I’m glad I have a very public, very candid newsletter about burnout to help hold me accountable as a leader.
I hope you enjoyed today’s letter, and have a restful, relaxing, and self-first weekend.
Talk soon,
Ali 🧘🏼♀️
I’m about to implement *agentic* into my daily vocab. Thanks for another great piece, especially the burnout vs healthy productivity breakdown. So helpful! I definitely have one foot in each category. Keep shining 🤘🏽