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Is your bucket heading for burnout?

I love people watching.  I catch myself staring and watching others wondering what conversations are about when waiting in a queue.  With friends in my younger days we would make up stories about people we saw in the food court.  We had a few laughs staging relationship spats and heart felt pleas as though we were the writers of a soap opera. 

In my last blog post, I mentioned I was hanging out for a mini break.  Well I got it earlier this month.  A few days in Wellington for a virtual workshop from the comfort of a nice hotel room.  It was one of those pandemic silver linings.   

At the end of the first day, I found myself staring out the window watching the people still working in the opposite office building.  It was after 6.00pm.  There was a man who was gearing up to cycle home in the dark on a pretty average wet and windy Wellington day.  There was a woman and a man having what looked like an intense conversation over a document.  I would have been watching for about 20 mins and their conversation was ongoing.  Then there were others sat at their computers tapping away or on the phone.   

As I was watching these people go about their usual end of day routines, I wondered would the cyclist would get home safely, even with all his fluro, or did the intense conversation had a good outcome.   I don’t know and won’t know but being the person watching I reflected on the learnings of the workshop.  It was about mindset and the importance of understanding what is driving our behaviours and actions.  It is was about the stuff we have going on below the surface, which is often very different to what others see of us above the surface.  Research and models were shared and we had some great discussions about how impostor syndrome affects each of us.  It is more common than you realise 

If you haven’t already had your winter or spring break yet, please do.  Block some days in your calendar where you can take the time to do some learning, go hunting or simply take in the world from where you are with a different lens.  It’s time to refill your bucket. 

Pushing through with determination isn’t always the best thing for you or your team.  I encourage you to read this article about how too much determination can be our undoing, especially in 2020.  Having recovered from burnout multiple times, I can assure you that the road to recovery is always 3 times longer than the road that got you there in the first place. 

Take care.  Kia kaha.