How to get over burnout
I guess this goes out to the more senior people on this board who have experienced burnout before.
I have been working 100+ hour weeks for over 3 years so far, but recently I have become burnt out. I have lost my desire for anything and everything. I have no desire to work, make money, go out, buy crap, nothing! All I want to do is just sleep and be alone.
I'm not the one to bitch and moan about my problems, but this is the first time I have ever felt this way. I used to love working hard and long hours, but something just snapped and I lost my ambition.
How do I get that fire back? How do I get over burnout? Any advice is greatly appreciated.
Maybe you should drink more water.
When I was younger I worked at a firm that was pretty similar, although not in the trading or structuring world: very long hours week in and week out, very stressful all the time and there was no rainbow at the end of the tunnel, i.e. it wasn't going to get better for 5-10 years. The people were great, which was the only saving grace. I took a 2 week vacation after explaining to my boss that I was close to snapping (the most I took off for the previous two years of working were a few three day weekends and a couple of days at Christmas), visited some friends in Europe and went to the beaches of Spain. It cleared my head, took me out of the daily grind and gave me a different perspective. I think it's a great move to get away because when you're living it on a daily basis it's tough to think that your life can be any different. When I got back I simply started looking for a different job. It took a few months but ultimately a great move.
Maybe some people are meant to work 90+ hours per week for a decade, but I think that's why most analyst programs are 2 years. They know it's going to burn you out.
I worked at GS in IBD for three years after business school and registered for this site just to respond to you. I went through what you are going through and really encourage you to take what you're experiencing seriously. 100 hour weeks are bad for your physical and mental health. Some ppl can deal with it better than others, and if it's affecting you you must take note and change something. My decision was to leave and work in a job that had more normal hours, and it took me about three years to decompress and start to feel like myself again. I saw many of my colleagues suffer from anxiety, depression, and very serious physical illnesses driven by the lifestyle.
Not all people are built the same. I really encourage you to listen to what your body is telling you. It's your life.
My 2 cents...
Went through something similar - it took me a year to discover I did not care about anything, all I wanted was being alone,etc...just like you described. I lost my quality of sleep, waking up several times per night,..
I took a more stable consulting job, less hours, less pressure...things did improve a bit, I was able to sleep again, but I did not fully recover (was still subject to stress and depression at each problem).
I finally went to see a doctor, who then referred me to an institution specialized in treating burnouts and depressions.
The bad news is: there is no easy and quick solution. It's a comprehensive and lenghty process of adapting the way you eat and drink (see previous comment about coffee, for example), the way you live (started going to the gym and contacting friends again) and deconstructing what brought you to this situation with the help of a psychologist. It took months to notice a difference, but things are slowly improving.
Do not underestimate the psychological part - it is really important and completely changed my perspective on the subject. Do not assume you will simply recover with time off and vacations - your probably need to change a number of things in your life.
Good luck!
How I use books to prevent burnout (plus my top 5 from the past year) (Originally Posted: 06/29/2015)
Mod Note (Andy): Alistair also has a webinar coming up with us on 7/13 at 7pm, see the event page here.
I am obsessed with books.
I bought 134 books in 2014.
During August and September alone, my credit card has 19 separate transactions for a used book store near my house. (side note: What kind of person buys a new book every 3 days?!)
I spend more time and money buying books than I'm comfortable admitting, but it's worth it. Every now and then I read a book that changes how I see the world, and it reminds me that books are one of the best investments I can make in my life.
But for me the importance of reading goes well beyond just learning: I use books to prevent burnout. Reading is one of the best ways to de-stress and escape the day-to-day insanity of work and life.
Here's why I think reading is important for people in high-stress jobs, and here's my 5 favourite books from the past 12 months.
Why I read books
It wasn't until recently that I discovered my love of reading. I used to hate books.
There was a 6-year span between my last year of high school and my early 20s where I didn't read a single book.
Up to that point I'd only read because I was forced to in school. My relationship with books was tarnished by mandatory book reports and discussions about how the colour of a protagonists shirt reflected his inner turmoil. I could never understand why a book couldn't just be a book and a story couldn't just be a story. Why did we have to try and get inside the writer's head about some meaningless detail that he/she probably didn't think twice about when they wrote it?! Seriously, it's one sentence in a 50,000 word book!
I carried this mindset to university, where again I was forced to read a book during one of my non-Engineering electives. I still didn't see the point of reading books, so I found workarounds. All it took was 30 minutes in google and I had the gist of the story, along with a few summaries and discussion pieces from academics much smarter than me. What was the point of reading an entire 500-page book when there were clearly more efficient ways to extract the knowledge?
But sometime in the last 5 years, I started to read again. I don't remember what book I picked up or when it happened, but that doesn't matter. What mattered was that I started reading again because I wanted to, and not because someone else had told me to.
I started reading around the time I was getting burned out from my management consulting job. I had been working hard for 3 years, and the daily grind was taking it's toll. I didn't have many hobbies outside of work, and I'd fallen into the routine of filling my free time on weeknights and weekends with more work. I had already tried the usual escapes of partying and buying clothes/shoes/gadgets/stuff, but neither of these had a lasting effect on my happiness.
One day I picked up a book instead of my blackberry and just started reading. As I flipped the pages and got into the story, the lingering anxiety about urgent deadlines, angry bosses, and critical emails faded away. I lost track of time, and I lost track of myself. I was so engrossed in the story that I didn't have the freedom to worry about all of my personal problems or stress about the future. I was in the moment and experiencing the book in vivid detail.
I continued experiment with using reading to prevent burnout in the years that followed my (re)discovery of books. Reading is still part of my daily routine, and a staple on my 'Life Checklist', which some of you may have read about a few weeks ago in this WSO article: How I Limit Anxiety, Stress, and Regret.
As you'll see from my recommended books below, I don't just read to acquire knowledge. My relationship with books is more complex than a simple transaction — it's about exposing myself to a story that is not my own, and reminding myself that there is more to life than the day-to-day stress and anxiety that I'm feeling.
My 5 favourite books from the past year
I've read a lot of books across a lot of genres: psychology, fitness & nutrition, historical fiction, historical non-fiction, science fiction, self-help, philosophy, etc. I choose new books based on recommendations from smart people that I respect: Shane Parrish, Maria Popova, Ryan Holiday, Tim Ferriss, Josh Waitzkin, Sam Harris, etc.
I've loved some of their recommendations (see below), and have hated others (e.g. On the Road by Jack Kerouac).
I don't try and speed-read; I take my time and re-read pages and paragraphs as many times as I want.
I underline words and scribble in the margins; I enjoy making a book my own.
If I don't like a book, then I'll stop reading it, even if it's one of the all-time greats. I don't have a goal when I start a book, I just read and let my mind go where it wants to go.
Here are my 5 favourites from the past year: On the Shortness of Life by Seneca When I read books I fold the bottom corner of pages that contain a great idea or thought-provoking quote. I folded down 28 of the 33 pages in this life-changing essay. I've read this 3 times and have this quote printed on the wall in my office: "It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death's final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it."
Waking Up by Sam Harris This is another book I've read 3 times, but for different reasons: I'm still wrapping my head around the radical and thought provoking ideas he presents. It's hard to pin down exactly what to call this book: it's part philosophy, part neuroscience, part meditation guide, and part memoir. While he's better known for his work on religion and
, this book is my favourite piece of work from Harris. This is one of a handful of books that caused a paradigm shift in my life. He's also published an accompanying video seminar on his website that gives a good overview of the book.
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand I shamelessly jumped on the bandwagon for this book when the movie came out, and I don't care. They made a movie about it for a reason — it's an amazing story. I'm a big fan of this style of writing, which ties together an individual story with the historical context. A couple of other great books in the same genre are The Tiger and The Golden Spruce, both by John Vaillant.
Body By Science by Doug McGuff I don't understand why this book isn't more popular. It should be one of the definitive resources on working out, yet it only seems to have a cult following. The book outlines a rational and scientific approach to working out, starting with the philosophy and finishing with the physiology. It's what I recommend for my clients, because I've yet to find anything or anyone that can convincingly refute the conclusions in this book.
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield When I first got this book I was underwhelmed by it's size (190 pages) and skeptical that it was just another self-help book. I wasn't exactly wrong because it is short and it is a self-help book, but I still loved it. Pressfield nails the emotions of 'resistance' that we all face when trying to create something that will change ourselves and the world. It's probably more applicable to the entrepreneurial or creative type, but is still worth the read if you work an office job.
Do you read books?
For most of my consulting career, I never made time for books. I've recently realized that it was a huge mistake. So, I'm genuinely curious to hear from WSO readers: Do you read books? If so, why? Do you even have time to read books on top of work and everything else in life?
Leave a comment.
Alistair Clark is a former management consultant that runs worklifefitness.co. He consults top-performing business professionals (consultants, bankers, lawyers, etc.) on how to prevent burnout so that they stay healthy, kill it at work, and enjoy life again. Get started with a free eBook: Get in Shape and Save 11 Hours a Week.
Life is short because it is finite.
Because it is finite, it is impossible to do everything that you want to do. Even if you did everything you wanted to do, surely you'd want to some of those things again.
Not to mention that when you are dead, there is absolute nothingness. It always amazes me that people aren't more afraid of death. You and every person you have ever met will be dead and forgotten in a nanosecond on the cosmic time scale. That is absolutely terrifying. We're floating in space on a fucking rock orbiting a giant flaming sphere people!
Why aren't people talking about this more often?