You May Be Running on Fumes

I had two phone calls in the last week where the theme was, "I'm burnt out beyond belief."

These conversations always come from high performers who are trying to achieve big goals and who never want to rest or slow down.

I always tell them the same story.

If you drive your car around until it runs completely out of gas, you will be stranded, frustrated, and you'll lose out on the destination you were headed to. No matter how busy you are, you have to stop and put gas in your car; otherwise, you run out.

The problem with high performers is they usually think stopping is the same thing as falling behind. They look at rest like it's something lazy people do, or something they can get to once the work is done. The problem is the work is never fucking done. There is always another email, another project, another goal, another quarter, another person who needs something from you. So they keep driving.

They skip the gym. They answer Slack messages at dinner. They work on vacation. They wake up thinking about work and go to bed thinking about work. They convince themselves that this is just a busy season and eventually things will calm down, except somehow the busy season turns into six months, then a year, and eventually they have absolutely nothing left in the tank.

Burnout rarely shows up all at once. It usually starts quietly. You're a little more tired. A little more irritated. You start procrastinating on things you normally wouldn't. You stop being excited about work you used to enjoy. Your patience gets shorter. Your creativity disappears. Eventually, you're sitting there wondering why you suddenly suck at something you've historically been pretty fucking good at. You don't suck. You're running on fumes.

There is also this weird badge of honor we give exhaustion in corporate life. People brag about how little they slept, how many meetings they had, how they haven't taken a vacation in a year, or how they worked through the entire weekend. None of those things are accomplishments. They're warning lights on the dashboard.

If your car tells you it needs gas, you don't scream at it to work harder. You don't tell it there's an important meeting tomorrow and you really need it to push through. You don't question whether the car is committed enough to getting to the destination. You pull the fuck over and fill the tank.

Rest is not the opposite of ambition. Rest is part of sustaining ambition long enough to actually accomplish something meaningful.

Your career works the same way. Rest is not the opposite of ambition. Rest is part of sustaining ambition long enough to actually accomplish something meaningful. The goal isn't to see how far you can drive with the gas light on. The goal is to keep yourself moving for years without completely destroying the engine along the way.

So if you're exhausted, maybe the answer isn't another productivity hack, another calendar system, or another cup of coffee. Maybe you need to stop for gas. Take the day off. Shut the laptop. Go somewhere. Do something that has absolutely nothing to do with getting ahead. The destination will still be there when you get back on the road, and you'll have a much better chance of actually making it there.