Make your Day Suck Less
Avoiding burnout in corporate America.
Opening your eyes to the natural light of the sun coming through your room, smelling the distinguishable breeze off the ocean, and feeling that energy flowing your body aching to get your day started. That’s not my reality, likely not yours either. Let’s be honest; it’s all about precisely measuring how many minutes you need before the first meeting in the morning because we all know all those minutes of extra sleep matters. Then you wake up to get your morning routine halfway done, skilfully deciding what task you can live without — maybe you don’t really need to shave today, or the coffee will have to wait. After rushing to your laptop, fingers crossed, nobody starts their camera on Zoom. We embraced the WFH routine and slowly mastered the art of being comfortable during COVID Zoom times.
I skimmed through many blogs that tell you how to live a happier life, waking up earlier, meditating, going for walks on the beach, and all. Although it sounds awesome, the reality is you are likely not set up for that. If you are in tech, grinding on your startup, or just being under a ton of pressure due to COVID consolidations, you are probably struggling with 80-hour work journeys very often.
Don’t feel you are alone in this journey; just this week, I had three friends complaining about working until 1:30 am on Friday or how ready they are to quit if they could. I have been waking up early, jumping into meetings at 6 am, finishing my workday sometimes late at night. You may feel your life has one sole purpose: work, work, work. How do you get around that?
It’s generally hard and a gradual walk towards financial freedom. That’s okay; the idea here is to get the system to work for you. You play the system rules all day, every day; it’s time for you to outsmart it and live a happier life. For me, it’s like being in college: you were so overwhelmed by classes and assignments, but you still found every loophole and method to cope with it and, obviously, have some wild times. Let’s get started by looking at the foundations…
Your health matters
Life is not all about profits, companies won’t visit you in the hospital, and money won’t help get your heart beating longer. Prioritize your physiological needs above all because that’s the foundation for everything else. Easy to say, hard to do.
I am in no way qualified to give you health advice or tell you what workout routine will make you feel better, but I can tell you this: listen to yourself. We are being bombarded by performance reviews, peer reviews, customer pressures, demo reviews, and asks from all over the place. Often we forget to listen to what we want, to what our body needs. More importantly, take action to get you closer to it.
In my case, I prioritized getting at least 30 minutes of exercise every day. It gets me to feel more energized and ready for the next day. I love biking but can’t go outside for long rides during the week without losing productivity, so I bought a hyped static bike, and man, worth the money. First, I put it in my office; I look at that damn thing every day. That gives me a sense of commitment, and I realized most of the training I go through at work is video-based, meaning you can watch the exhilarating training videos while you pedal. Cool, also, they have these training classes with so many instructors. Just getting your mind to focus on that overly energetic instructor takes your mind off everything.
I also signed up for classes I never done before. I thought Orange Theory would be cool, so I signed up for a couple of classes recently post-ish COVID era, and just by driving to a place, getting through the motion of exercising, and completely shutting work down makes my day whole again.
It’s not about what you do, it’s about getting your mind off work and your body working.
Sweet, now we have to figure out how to find the time for doing your stuff. As you know, time is scarce. Many times, I get doubled, maybe tripled booked. Sometimes, people even double book me on purpose. I always wonder what goes through their mind when they do that. Are they thinking, “man, I am the most important guy here, way more important than the other people”? Who knows, not the point here. Anyways, take time and get some help.
Outsmart Your Calendar
We all live and breathe by our calendar. Every second count, some companies even have specialized tools to track where you spend your time automatically. Now, make an effort to take the driver's seat on your calendar.
As a rule of thumb, take 15 minutes on Fridays to prepare and plan your schedule for the following week. This will save you some precious time and will prevent co-workers from taking over your time completely.
I am notoriously bad at managing my time; I often miscalculated how long tasks will take, and I end up not having time for an afternoon catch-up or exercise. Good thing technology is here to help. A co-worker recently made me aware of Reclaim.ai, a really sweet app that connects to your calendar and automatically assigns time for exercise and other routine tasks you have. You can choose how flexible you are willing to be with determining tasks, and once there is a conflict, the app will re-arrange your calendar. That’s what I imagine having an assistant would feel like.
Get Whoever Matters On the Same Page
We got exercise and timing checked in our life to-do list. Now, it’s time to have some tough conversations. You could be a lone wolf or maybe surrounded by family and loved ones. Either way, understand that your needs may conflict with your closest circle of people. The most effective way to deal with that is to set the appropriate boundaries. This may take time and requires some awesome people skills to not upset anybody, but at the end of the day, you can’t make everyone happy.
If you are an altruist like me, this is especially hard. Lots of times, the energy of other people energize you, and you feel personally responsible for others. Cool your jets for a minute on this, take a step back, and re-prioritize. First of all, your loved ones are not going to go away. If they do, they shouldn't be on your ‘loved’ one list.
The easiest way to set a baseline around you is to be vocal about what you are going through. Tell about how hard your job is or how long you have been working. People will tell you what you may want to hear or just not get what you are going through at all. That’s okay, and really the point is to set the precedent that if you can’t reply to text messages or be a champion in Social Media, you are likely busy or taking care of yourself. Another good way to reassure people of your friendship is to let them know you will be there for them even if you aren’t going to be in their faces all day.
Take a Break
Be smart and cognizant of your limits. If you are grinding all the time, your performance suffers. With that, your stress goes through the roof, and your relationships, along with your happiness, go to the thrash.
Be smart, plan and use your PTO. I totally get the unlimited PTO policy can be a joke and more of a corporate mechanism for tax and HR purposes, but work hard to establish a good reputation with your boss. She or he has the keys to enable you to rest and cash in your political capital. More on that?
Sure, I often think after you are successful at an impactful project, besides getting high fives and a salary bump, you build trust and a good reputation. This yields you political capital, a nonexistent currency not blockchain-based that allows you to trade in mistakes and warrants you longevity and rest. If you leave a job, you can’t really cash it in, so use it while you have it, especially if you do it to recover mentally.
I hope this article has been helpful, and if it was, clap for us! Happy life!
