BURNOUT

(quiet quitting)

Burnout is the term used to describe a lethargy felt by someone towards their mode of earning a living and is thought to be the result of internal and external pressures that cause them to lose motivation and interest in what they are doing. This leads to a newly named but I suspect long existing condition called quiet quitting, which, if Gallup in the USA is to be believed, affects 50% of the workforce. From my own observations, this figure is probably true for most of the English speaking world.

What exactly is quiet quitting? A senior military officer for whom I worked at the time had recently been passed over for promotion. He explained to me, “You think you are looking at me, but that is not so. This is not me; this is just the kit.” In other words, the body may be present but only just. Any meaningful presence does not exist. The body is there, going through the motions – the minimum required to preserve the position.

With the financial crisis of 2008, pandemic and lockdown of 2020, war in 2022, not to mention 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq – the 21st century has gotten off to an eventful start. This has left many people feeling burnt out. Many have dropped out, even if they remain in place, just the suit and tie.

The WHO recognises the syndrome and treatments are available, but that is not what this is about. As usual, I am aware that many of you may be disadvantaged in some way. For you, burnout represents a great opportunity to overcome disadvantages and improve your life. If you can avoid burnout yourself, without expensive interventions with both known and unrecognised side effects, you can take advantage of the state of the workforce to distinguish yourself either through entrepreneurial action or within an organisation, simply by showing up every day ready to go.

To avoid burnout, there are three areas in which we need to act. I call them physicality, mentality and ability.

Physicality: Your body needs to function reasonably well with as little aid from medications as possible. This means avoiding disease and optimising health.

Prioritise sleep: Matt Thacker, in his book Why We Sleep, makes a detailed case for how sleep is fundamental for human (animal) health. Author Joanna Bourke in An Intimate History of Killing describes how the US army discovered in WW2 how to reduce shell shock from the levels seen in the First World War by simply rotating troops off the frontline every two weeks for a few nights of uninterrupted sleep. Shell shock is an extreme case of burnout, so it follows that sleep should have a similar effect. You can find tips to improve sleep here. Make a good night's sleep the rule rather than the exception. Give yourself a chance to sleep by setting a sleep window of minimum 8 hours overnight. Set aside time for the business of sleeping.

Watch What/When You Eat: You do not need a fancy diet. Eat what you normally do for the most part, or adjust your diet to eat more cheaply. Exceptions: reduce your consumption of processed foods and avoid any added sugar. Eat as natural and as local as possible within your budget. What is difficult but necessary is to view eating as an issue of performance and not pleasure. Eating for pleasure should be reduced – confined to weekends, holidays, and family gatherings. At all other times, eating is serious business. Set an eating window; a time when you will stop eating and a time when you will begin again. This window should naturally include the time when you will be asleep. If you already have a sleep window of eight hours, then stop eating two hours before that window begins and resume eating one hour after this window ends. This will give you 11 hours of not eating, which I consider a minimum. Try to extend the resumption time to two hours, so you will have a 12 hour window. Try to extend this time and consider occasionally fasting – more on this here. Not eating gives your body the chance to deal with the consequences of eating, i.e. digesting and excretion. Get the most out of the food you eat.

Supercharge yourself with Supplementation: Even with the best diet, the truth is, food does not contain the range of nutrients it once did that are necessary for human health. The way around this is by supplementing the vitamins and minerals we know about. We can also use supplementation to improve our optimal functions and elevate them for substantial periods of time to super hero levels. More on this here.

Mentality: The conventional wisdom is that burnout is a mental health issue, and it is treated as such. In order to be mentally healthy you first have to be physically healthy and operating at an optimal level. This is the only way to ensure that you are producing the hormones and neurotransmitters in sufficient quantity and quality to get your brain to function optimally. With a working brain you can then generate the thoughts that constitute a healthy mind. This is mental health. Your thoughts are not all your own – Influences come to you in your DNA, your life experiences, and your instincts. A key to avoiding burnout is to get control of your thoughts and create the mind that you want; to literally think the thoughts that make you better. This is done through techniques broadly called mindfulness. Find out more about a simple approach here.

Tame your Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS): The SNS is designed to trigger automatic responses to threats, typically with the flight or fight response, and is intended to operate for a short time and allow us to confront/avoid/escape danger. Our modern environment commonly has us in a state of full time flight or fight which leads to? Yes, burnout. You have to gain control of those automatic responses and learn how to recognise and regulate the SNS. More on this here.

No Imagination: Do not spend your time imagining the many things that can go wrong and their consequences to you. Discipline your mind by regularly seeing with your mind's eye the outcomes you want. Do consider risks and responses and see these too. But if you find your mind drifting to see the chaos that awaits, set fire to that picture and hold the correct one before you. More here.

Focus: Train your mind to focus, so that you can work at a task to completion. Build the habit. Mental Relaxation followed by focusing on a point within the body is one way of training focus.

Resilience: Fail you will, but you have to come back, learn what you can from the failure, assess the goal, and try another way.

Do Not put any Significance on Inanimate Objects: Only love things that breathe. Don't buy a car that you cannot walk away from if it is totaled in a wreck. Be thankful you're alive and that you can comfortably replace it. Dress with style, not fashion. Less is more.

Ability: Everyone has a talent. Discover yours and try to make your living in an area that values those talents. Talents come in disguise, and can often be found in hobbies. A friend of mine turned his childhood passion for goldfish into a multi-million USD Tropical Fish business.

Hone your Skills: Identify skills that will improve you, and acquire them. Do a few of these a year. Proficiency in spreadsheet use, coding, or drawing, for example. Find courses you can do and set an annual goal for yourself.

Build your Self Belief: If you do not believe in yourself, it is unreasonable to ask anyone else to believe in you. Look at yourself in the mirror each morning, you're worth it.

Dudley ‘Tal’ Stokes is an athlete and entrepreneur who represented Jamaica in 4 Winter Olympic Games between 1988 and 1998. His 14th place finish in the Lillehammer Olympics remains the best ever achieved by a black man. Through speaking, coaching and writing he continues to influence and inspire others. He can be found @ dudleystokes.com.