Sizzling hot burnout

Ultra rare audio substack with my friends from Surfing Corporate

Somethin a lil different this week. A few weeks ago I was asked to submit a voice memo for my all time favorite podcast about corporate life: SURFING CORPORATE.

(Follow/subscribe/listen/rate/etc Surfing Corporate. On Instagram too.)

The episode was about burn out so we were asked if we’ve ever been burnt out, what it felt like, how to deal with it, etc.

Here’s my response:

Transcript for those who prefer reading and/or can’t stand the sound of my stupid voice:

“Hey what's up corporate surfers, my name is Joel Willis. I am currently creating a social network for gamers called Channel 3. Before that I was the Editor in Chief for a digital media brand for dads called The Dad.

And before that, I had a series of soul crushing corporate jobs so I know all about work burnout and I’m here to talk to you about it today.

I think it’s important because for me I’ve been burnt out a lot in my career because I take things extremely seriously. I get very intense about projects and tasks and goals and things that I want to work on. And then I go all in and I don’t really realize that I’m burnt out until it’s kind of too late.

So for me what that looks like is I feel an extreme amount of stress about all of the different things that I have to do. And it wasn’t until later in life where I realized that it wasn’t necessarily that I had a lot of things to do and I was stressed about em, that’s true, but it was more that I didn’t want to do those things anymore. And this was because I was burnt out. I didn’t give myself any time for breaks. I went all in on these things and I did them to the point that I just didn’t want to do them anymore and I was essentially bored with the work. But I mistook that boredom for an intense amount of stress. And it’s no good, it’s no good for anyone. But that’s what burn out looks like for me.

My advice for this and what I’ve caught myself doing now is when I get overwhelmed like that and I catch myself feeling like I have too much going and I don’t know what to work on and I’m stressed, just give yourself a break. Give yourself a little bit of a break from that. A mental health day. Go give yourself some space and most importantly give yourself some grace for not needing to be all in on that, all of the time. Just make a little bit of progress every day. Even just the tiniest bit. And don’t worry about getting it all done in one day. And then you can attempt to avoid that burn out, avoid that stress, and avoid that boredom that we all know comes with corporate life sometimes, even if we don’t recognize it as boredom.

Alright cool. Thanks Aileen. Thanks Glenda. I miss talking to you guys. I hope you guys are doing well. Thanks for providing the single greatest corporate podcast on the internet. Thank you. Buh-byeeeee.”

The full episode is fantastic. My friends Aileen and Glenda talk to Executive Psychotherapist (!!!) and Performance Coach Dr. Kim Hollingdale.

Dr. Hollingdale says a lot of smart things including some stuff that may kinda sorta be similar to what I said so I’m thinking I should maybe be given an honorary doctorate of executive pyschotherapy???

For real, the single best sentence of the pod is right around 21 minutes in. Here it is:

"I think of stress being the outcome of any mismatch, any misalignment, between the person and the things they are being exposed to, asked to do, or environments they are being asked to live in."

Dr. Kim Hollingdale

Try to think of stress this way instead of feeling guilty. It’s not your fault; it’s a misalignment.

Accept that you’ll never be completely without stress, but if it’s becoming too much for you, what can you do to realign?