The Type of Burnout You Never Saw Coming
So there I was: sitting at my computer in front of a professional development video course I’d signed up for. This info was golden, presented by an amazing thought leader in my work community. This was content I carved out time – and dollars – for and I was excited, or so I thought. I heard the content, but I couldn’t retain the content. It went nowhere. I could feel it touching the surface of my brain and slipping away instead of sinking in. I couldn’t pay attention, I didn’t feel engaged, and I just sat in my chair feeling numb.
More so than the frustration at not being able to focus on the information, was the dismay. This wasn’t the first time (or second, or third) I felt spaced out listening to an educational resource, and I had to face the reality that I had burned out on self-improvement.
Burnout is the ultimate form of mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion. It’s associated with stress, particularly from an unbalanced work or personal obligation load. Too much of anything becomes a bad thing and I had been relentlessly pursuing the general notion of betterment for years through courses, books, articles, communities, and newsletters. I learned the hard way that an overly aggressive development path on a near constant basis - essentially addiction to improvement - can also cause burnout.
What does this form of burnout look like?
When the drive to become better becomes addictive, it can look a lot like hoarding. Barely read self-help books pile up on the shelves. Community newsletters flood our inboxes, maybe several issues of each accumulating as we wait for the “right time” to read them. Our wallets grow slimmer with community memberships, empty courses, maybe even conferences where we feel more dazed than enriched. These are all testaments to an oversaturation of information.
What does this form of burnout feel like?
We feel trapped, overwhelmed, and depressed when we have this build-up of information that, without proper processing, clogs our attention and time. We have the info, but we aren’t applying it in our lives. Or, the development being taught is so vague and fluffy that you know it sounds pretty great, but you don’t really how to use it. We feel guilty, unable to get excited for the next opportunity. We struggle with the should aspect – we should be completing this course, we should be reading this article, we should be watching this Ted Talk – because we’ve set some magical standards bar for ourselves but haven’t let ourselves cross any finish lines.
How to handle self-improvement burnout
I want to point out that sometimes you need to be pursuing development consistently. Maybe you’re working towards a promotion, or genuinely want to learn a new skill. Maybe you need to maintain a certain number of Continuing Education Units (CEUs) for a certification. You can still refine your efforts in order to give yourself brain space to recover and adjust your habits to rekindle a healthy love of learning. There’s a difference between consistent and constant and it’s in finding the right cadence structured with meaningful process. Here are tips to handle self-improvement burnout:
1. Assume a highly discerning mindset.
From this moment on, you are no longer settling for mediocracy in your learning. Are you part of a community or following a thought leader simply because everyone else in your industry is? If they only serve up vague, motivational-but-empty content, cut them loose; you’ve evolved and outgrown that resource. You don’t hang onto your training wheels once you’ve learned to ride the bike – you can refer the community to others and make your exit.
2. Corral and concentrate your efforts.
Match your known resources to a list of what you want to excel in. I’m challenging you to generate the list, not to go scouring the internet or asking ChatGPT for one. Trust me, you’ll only end up feeding your addiction when you stumble across a dozen more resources you haven’t explored. Focus on the resources you’ve matched until you achieve what you want, then repeat the exercise with the next thing you want to be excellent at. Think minimalistic, think focused, think clear and uncluttered action plans.
3. Control your intake.
UNSUBSCRIBE! Make a list of all of the newsletters, groups, thought leaders, websites, etc. that you engage with on a regular basis. Pick one or two and reduce the noise of the others. I’m telling you to embrace the FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) here so you can go deep with fewer, select channels that you’ve consciously chosen for yourself. As an idea, if you have a buddy you network with regularly, ask them to do this with you and you each pick a different resource. Use your catch-up time to swap info you’ve learned.
4. Dissect examples of how you’ve implemented what you’ve learned.
In many situations of addiction to improvement, your brain craves proof that you’ve excelled at something, so you relentlessly pursue proof until you burn out. Try writing out a problem you’ve recently solved, or a task you recently completed. Jot down your thought process from the beginning to the end of the problem. Look at each step and think through where you learned to do that, or who you learned it from. Take a moment to feel gratitude for that resource and recognize that you have achieved what the resource set out to teach you. This kind of exercise may seem unnecessary, but the connection of thought to hand to analyzation can cement the learning and be your personal “proof” that you’ve absorbed the information.
I am still working on reducing the amount of self-improvement I let myself engage in and I’m still learning to trust my own abilities, accomplishments, and growth path. Like any addiction, it requires deliberate, conscious action on a daily basis to choose what I consume and how I process it. For those of you also struggling to find the balance of self-improvement and trusting your own abilities, here’s to us: we can do this.