Avoiding burnout for high achievers

Nikhyl: Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Skip podcast. My name is Nikhyl Singhal, and as always, this podcast is designed to get you ahead in your tech career. Today's topic deals with burnout. Burnout, or enforcing boundaries is such a common conversation that takes place in almost every tech circle and frankly, even beyond tech. One of the questions that came up as I was leaving Meta was in a Q&A and it was, what are effective ways to enforce boundaries?

So when I first heard the question, there was two reactions I had. One was the topic itself is sensitive, and then the second is, do I have anything new or novel to say on the subject of burnout? Because it's just so widely covered and so often discussed. I think it's sensitive because it's very personal.

One person's day sounds horrific and that person might describe it on the verge of breakdown. And then another person might look at that and say, that's joy. I'm sure that right now, given the growth and excitement around AI, those folks are working around the clock, but some of these more traditional businesses might not require the same pace. They might be waiting for interest rates to lower before they can really build. And so the challenges around companies and industries, the uniqueness between geographies, individuals really come up a lot.

I think this is one of those areas where gender has a major impact. Maternity leaves often come during the period of time in a woman's career when she's just starting to find rhythm. Often the question around, do I end up having a family? Pushing hard with young children in the household and trying to manage a very tough leadership career is relatively different than the male counterpart.

Not always, but often the male counterpart doesn't have the same physical challenges around pregnancy or has a different type of role for a young family than a mom. And so, when women talk about burnout, they are describing something different than often men are describing. But unfortunately, that conversation is not as broadly discussed, because we don't talk as openly about challenges between gender.

We, to some extent, dismiss it. I think that you also have questions when you have folks taking maternity or paternity and having young families as to whether or not they can sustain a pace, or if they take time off, if they're able to rejoin the workforce and feel like they're welcome back.

I think that I attempted to bring a set of female leaders whom I have the privilege of coaching as part of my Skip CPO community in the March 13th episode from last year on this conversation around burnout and balance and how to work through some of these differences. And so naturally, the question that came up was, well, is there anything new that I can bring to the table?

And 10 to 20 percent of my conversations when I have career chats with folks do tend to revolve around pace and burnout and boundaries and often the conversations that I have aren't the tools that one typically uses to protect yourself but it's really around mindset.

And so today's episode, I'm going to devote to the mindset needed to either avoid burnout or to understand the underpinnings of what causes burnout.

And my hope is through that conversation, you'll be able to see around corners, understand why things are heading towards perhaps an unsustainable place and how to protect yourself, how to protect your family and how to signal to your employer, here's kind of the things that I need to make sure that I have a long lasting career and tenure at the organization on the project itself.

So I'm going to use a format that I find effective, where I'm going to paraphrase a set of conversations that I've had over the years when people have come to me with this subject. So we'll frame today's episode with a set of examples. Let's get started.

Guest 1: I'm worried if I can actually stay in tech long term. I'm nearing my limit. I really don't know how I can continue. I've heard the conventional wisdom, enforce boundaries, create priorities, find some balance, take a vacation, switch jobs if you hate it, but honestly, I'm not sure if one project or job is better than another.

The problem I have is how to enforce those boundaries. You take time off, and there is hell to pay when you return. I'm good at my job, I want to do well, just not get crushed in the process.

Nikhyl: This is a great example where most people, particularly leaders that are listening to me today, they know the conventional wisdom. Me suggesting challenges around not enforcing boundaries isn't going to add any value.

The challenge is how to effectively do it. I used to suggest that burnout came mostly from the growth that our industry was hitting that for 10 years, we were in such a go, go, go world that everything was almost moving at an unsustainable pace. And that at some point, things would slow down, because we couldn't sustain that level of growth. And actually, I was half right. It did slow down. It was an unsustainable level of growth as interest rates rose and the economy sort of adjusted. We brought in efficiency, but what was growth got replaced with layoffs. What was replaced with hiring became 3 jobs for every 1 person.

I've come to the conclusion that this pace and challenges around burnout is inherent to our industry. It doesn't change dramatically depending on the environment, the rate of growth. It's always tricky. And so as a result, we need almost like the defense of the dark arts. We need a mindset that keeps us healthy long term.

So let's work through these key observations. So number one, I believe that all high performing companies will always push their best people to this brink of burnout.

Guest 2: I used to tell myself that I need to surge for just another few months. We'll ship and things will get better, it's only a moment in time. I've been telling myself that for 5 years and it's now a running joke with my family. It doesn't seem to matter what time of year, which project or manager or even company. I feel like I'm a glutton for punishment.

Nikhyl: I think that companies often have this sort of secret statement they make, which is if you want something to get done, give it to the busiest person, you know, companies are designed to identify the most successful people and ensure that they continue to take on more scope. They have demonstrated the skill to solve problems effectively for that organization. So, why, if you have an important problem, would you trust someone who is unproven, versus someone who is proven, and then for that proven person, expect them to figure out how to scale? That to some extent may sound obvious. But if you play it forward, what it means is if you're listening to this caller and you're doing well, or perhaps excellent at your job, your manager is probably thinking.

What can I give you more to ensure that you have greater scope and impact? And hilariously, you're probably thinking, I wish I could get more scope. Now, let's say tomorrow they give you a new project. They typically don't say, hey, we want you to do this new thing and stop doing this old thing. What they probably are going to say is we want you to do this new thing and keep doing what you were doing in the past.

And in fact, if they took something away, you probably would be frustrated. Now, if we play it forward, I have no doubt that you'll be able to successfully solve this new thing. Your reward will be another new thing. They will come to you and say, congratulations, you have solved two things for us. I have prepared a shiny third thing for your talents along the way, hilariously, there's usually no compensation adjustment. You're just doing more stuff for same pay. For anyone that works outside of technology or corporations, this sounds insane. But the reality is not only is this how it takes place in most high performing organizations, but it's something that you want.

And if it doesn't happen, you get mad. So the leadership team feels awesome that they're giving you more scope responsibility because naturally it's going to translate into growth. You will find a way to scale. You will find a way to hire. They'll keep doing it. Eventually, you'll get promoted more title, more compensation, more status.

So the reason I point this out is that your success is actually the root cause of the challenge you face in managing time and dealing with burnout. If you sucked more, they wouldn't give you more stuff and you probably wouldn't be worrying about burnout, you'd be worrying about other stuff.

When people come to me and say, I can't sustain the pace that the company has me on. In the back of my mind I'm thinking, the company is probably doing the right thing, but because of your success, you haven't been able to find the right tools or mindset to be able to scale and that's okay because that problem is far more desirable to solve than the problem associated with, I'm great. Nobody sees me. Nobody gives me more stuff. Or I am so talented and so recognized, but there isn't more stuff to do because we keep shrinking what we're doing in order to meet budget. Those problems are much more challenging. I want to make sure that all of us understand that successful people are inherently designed to burn out. And then we build from there.

Observation two, all elite professionals need to burn for a while. But not continuously. So this is probably best illustrated with another example.

Guest 3: I have a personal update for you. I'm pregnant. Only my partner knows. Obviously, we're thrilled. It was a long road to get here. But I have to confess to you, I'm really worried about the impact to my career.

I was just getting into flow. Finally, work is clicking. I finally know I'm good at this tech thing, but you talk about the importance of maximizing your power years of career, and I think I'm just starting. Well, I was just starting, but now I need to invest in my family. How bad will this be for me professionally? Am I going to be old news when I return?

Nikhyl: Yeah, this one's a tricky question. Honestly, I'm not even sure I'm the best person to answer it. When I first recorded this, I listened to my answer and I didn't feel like I had a clear enough point of view to actually. Talked to some folks in my Skip community, some of the women that have gone through this, a few that are even expecting right now to get a sense of what their wisdom is on the subject.

And so collectively, what I'm sharing with you is how you should think about this challenge between establishing family and having a career. Probably the first and most critical point is that no leader that I know that has been gifted enough to invest in family lives to regret it.

In fact, usually the angst and pain that I see is that they're struggling to really have kids. And with work pushing families to later in life, there's a lot of challenges in being lucky enough to even get pregnant or adopt or establish family. If you're facing this question, you have a tremendous silver lining. The second observation I make is that you're certainly not alone or doing it incorrectly. If you feel this angst in the end, a lot of the professionals listening to this podcast have a superpower of being able to provide enormous amounts of force and enormous amounts of focus to work.

That's what's gotten you to where you are. And the fear that you face is that you can't work at the same pace work at the same degree of focus, certainly while you're pregnant, but even shortly after, and perhaps for some period of time. And that's scary. Because it means you have to rewire the way you work.

But the good news is a lot of your contemporaries have had to go through this. You're normal if you're facing this anxiety. And it will make you a better professional. It will make you a different professional. But likely will be equally successful in my experience. Point number three is you have to measure careers long term. And if our goal is to maximize your career, my job is to ensure that you can have it all. But we cannot ensure you can have it all on the timeline that you desire.

The fact is that you are now going to be paced differently than your peers who don't have family, or perhaps our male counterparts, who are able to quickly return to work, that may not be a luxury that's afforded to you. And I think that now you start to see that pace shift. There is no doubt that you will have to slow down. The question is in the long term, how impactful will it be? And my experience is that if you consider careers as 40 or 50 years in duration, these few years of having to perhaps slow down, take a slower trajectory to career so that you can then eventually speed back up, will not be as material as you may fear, but it will have an impact. It's just in the long, not as substantive than it feels in the short.

After all, your pregnancy is not permanent and you won't have young kids for the rest of your life, but it feels so daunting because however long your career has been, it is definitely going to require you to change your working style, to create a balance between home and work. And number four is really around your support system. Certainly this came up with the podcast that we had a year ago, where a few of the members of my Skip PM community joined me.

And we talked a little bit about work life and challenges around really obtaining balance. The note was that look, outsourcing is kind of key. And I think that if you can have a strong support system, whether that's your partner who might be in a position to really step in and support you or the financial means to be able to outsource some of the mechanics around establishing family. Those things can help a ton. And so if you happen to be lucky enough to have that support system, then again, you will be in a position to return much more quickly. So bottom line, I believe you can have it all, just not all at once.

There is a trade off that will require you to change the pace of work and reprioritize some of what you do at the office. And lastly, if you're in a position where you're already established either at your company, given your tenure or in our industry, or perhaps both where you're relatively senior and you've been at the company for a bit, you'll find a ton of support. I think you'll find that you can work through this transition much more quickly.

But if you're trying to establish yourself and going through this transition at home, I think it's quite challenging. Sadly, there's no silver bullet, but let's continue with the questions because what you'll find is some of the techniques we use for some of the burnout challenges actually apply very much to this transition at home as well.

Okay, let's move over to observation three. Ambitious overworked people will eventually resent their job.

Guest 4: I'm insanely frustrated with my company. I didn't get the promotion I deserve. What's more is that everyone tells me I'm doing great and I couldn't have given more to this stupid company. But I think I'm ready to look for another job. These people don't deserve me. I don't trust my manager and don't trust the company.

Nikhyl: This one's pretty interesting. Though it's in the burnout episode, there's more to this one, I can't tell you how many elite professionals I talked to who are doing exceptionally well, are incredibly frustrated with the company that surrounds them.

Okay, so we know the pattern, you push hard at work. You get noticed. Everyone is excited, so they give you more responsibility. You know, this is the prime time moment. So you've decided I want to prioritize the push at work. So you push harder, do whatever it takes. This is the more important point. You sacrifice your health, the time with family, your free time, but in your mind, it's worth this investment. It'll pay off. Then your boss comes in and rewards you.

Maybe it's a promotion. Maybe it's a raise, but it doesn't come with a promotion. Or maybe it's a promotion and a raise, but it doesn't come with enough compensation improvements. Or maybe it's a new title, but it doesn't have increased responsibility. Maybe it's everything, promotion, raise, more responsibility, but you're getting layered.

There's always something that fails to meet expectations. And so this is the thing to examine. If you prioritize work and you give everything, what payment is considered fair back to you? In many cases, there is nothing that you can receive that will equate to the investment and sacrifice that you have made.

But in your mind, you've chosen to sacrifice very important parts of your life. The company is a constrained entity. It can only respond in a certain way, it can only pay you a certain amount of money until rules set in. It can only give you a certain title until a structure is applied.

There is a set of hierarchical leaders that also need to have jobs, as well as peers. So one side, you're saying I'm going to be unconstrained except for the number of hours in the day, I am going to put whatever I can into this job, but the company is not ever in a position to do the equivalent. So you are bound to be frustrated. And for those of you that are listening to this call that fit this category where I've given everything. We just need to stop for a second to recognize you'll never be satisfied with what the company comes back with in return.

And since there is no even trade, you are going to become resentful. Now, if we play this out, If I'm having a career chat with someone who comes to me with this and they decide to rage quit and they decide to go to some other project. Some other team, some other company, this exact same thing is going to happen again, because they're going to take all the guardrails off.

They're going to be unconstrained, maybe even more so, because the new employer is going to be empathetic. They're going to be more excited about giving more responsibility. They'll keep giving more stuff. You'll be like, okay, I see more stuff. I can take on more stuff. They're going to keep going. And then the same kind of setback will happen, it may look different. It may be not promotion, but it may be money. It may not be money and promotion. It may be title, or it may be leadership or maybe scope. It's always something. And it may not happen in a year. It may happen in 3 years. But my point is that what will end up happening is the cycle will repeat over and over.

And you'll have a list of companies that you'll look back and say, I gave more to those companies than I received. And I'm resentful of all my former projects and employers. Now that sounds pretty dark, but I would say in my own career, almost all my jobs ended this way, where I look back in the rear view mirror and said, I gave way more to those companies than I got back. And when that started to happen over and over again, I started to ask myself, whose fault is that?

Is that my fault or is that the employer's fault? I realized that increasingly, it was actually my fault. Anytime you over invest in a relationship, I'm not entirely sure that the recipient is the culprit. I think that it oftentimes is the individual who's just giving too much. I started to realize that the starting premise of giving everything unconstrained to a constrained entity was foundationally busted.

What I should have done is say, look, I'm not gonna give everything so that when that natural constraint locks in, not a promotion in 12 months, a promotion in 18 months, I don't come unglued because I'm like, well, I didn't put everything into the company. They didn't put everything into me. Seems fair. Now, is that taking on fewer hours, fewer projects?

That is an exercise left to the reader. My only point is, you are definitely going to be frustrated if you end up putting more into the company than you receive. So unconstrained unfettered ways of working will not only lead to burnout, but will lead to resentment. So we need to put some guardrails into the way we work in order to ensure that we have a long term career and we feel that work is treating us fairly.

Okay. So now we've set the table. So let's go back to the advice on burnout. Enforce boundaries. Okay. All of you know that that's an important piece, identify those boundaries and make sure that you don't go past them. If you look at the points that I've just presented to you, you might now be a lot more likely to enforce those boundaries, because we've just noted that if you take all the guardrails off, we'll be resentful.

We don't want to be resentful. So maybe it's okay to add things back in your life and create those boundaries, because what it does is it's great for your employer because they don't want you pissed. They don't want you frustrated. They don't want to apologize for the constraints that the promo committee, the compensation committee, the leaders, your peers all have. They're always on edge that they're not feeding you enough.

If you took just a little edge off by enforcing your boundaries, they'll probably be happier and you wouldn't be so grumpy and pissed and angry at them all the time. So, ironically, they want you to enforce boundaries even though they keep giving you more work.

They want you to figure out a way to not only scale, but not be pissed. This is the art to changing your own mindset is to recognize, hey, careers are longterm. I don't need to burn it out all the time this year, next year, the rest of my career, I can move back and forth. By the way, if I do push so hard that I essentially am unconstrained,

I'll end up being resentful. And if I'm successful, I'm going to be forced into this situation. And the only way not to is to suck. Well, I don't want to suck and I don't want to be pissed and I definitely don't want to burn out. That to me is the art of changing your mindset.

The other tip that I like sharing at this time is to actually suggest you find a hobby, which for those who are suffering from managing their time and burnout, that's like the craziest piece of advice. You want me to do more stuff. I just told you I can't get enough stuff done. And now you want me to go find another thing.

Now, what's interesting. Is if we go back in time and we look at when people feel burned out, often it's because they're doing joyless things. I sometimes ask them to do this exercise, which is take a look at your week or your month and use those sort of features in your calendar to color code, green, yellow and red.

What we end up finding is that, when you put these red meetings, yellow and green, you could have a very busy day, and if it was yellow and green, you probably wouldn't be burned out. And naturally, if you had a lot more space, but you were bored or frustrated or dealing with politics, and it's mostly red and yellow, you're going to completely go over the edge.

Obviously people are going to be like don't go to those red meetings. I'm like, well, what are those red means are with your boss? Or what if they're the ones that are the formal reviews for your project? Well, obviously that can't be done. Or if they're like, oh yeah, go find a project where you can enjoy it more or go find a company that has better values and culture.

Well, I mean, those things don't always exist. We do hard things and we're elite professionals. And so we're constantly going to get pushed into these difficult places. But what's interesting is if there are green meetings, which have nothing to do with work conversations that have nothing to do with your employer, perhaps you're advising a company, and perhaps that is what brings you joy.

Perhaps you coach and advise like I have done. There are a million things you can do which will give you something for yourself. So why for yourself? And why a hobby? So why not just spend more time with your friends, your family, all the other obligations that you have to invest in? So what I find is that to really add the green back in, you really have to find something that you love. And that's not to say that your friends and your family aren't things that you love and enjoy. It's just that that sometimes comes with a lot of strings attached, a lot of obligation. And what I want you to do is find something that you truly find your own, that is truly a single player game, that you truly love, something where you can be creative on your own, that you can lean into, that is by definition yours and yours alone.

And by doing so, one, I guarantee you it's going to be bright green, and two, what it'll do is it won't just reshape the time. If you could just say you're two hours away from reducing burnout, you're probably not feeling burned out.

You're probably just feeling a little bit unoptimized. My note is that you're probably consistently unable to support all the needs that you have in your life. And so if you start with that as a premise, then no matter how you shuffle around your time, you never will be able to satisfy all the needs that all of the people have for you.

What you kind of throw your hands up and say is that, well, maybe I should just ensure that. 3 or 4 hours of the week, I do something that's me and me alone. And those things I'm never going to sacrifice because when I know that I can't optimize a rest, I can guarantee at least I have those few hours and maybe it's not a few hours, maybe it's a few minutes a day, maybe it's 2 hours a week, I don't know what that is.

It's highly personal, but it's more hobby-like, and then suggesting to you tweak half an hour, invest in something that you weren't able to get to before, because I suspect if you were that close to avoiding burnout, you would have gotten there already.

So that's why I like this advice. So find a hobby, find something that's creative for yourself, put it on your calendar to allow you to defend against the incessant number of red and yellow meetings that are very hard to escape in certain time periods.

Okay, so as I zoom back on this entire episode and examine conventional wisdom, a few cracks start to appear. As I think about this advice. When it comes to pace and burnout. hey, don't ever join a startup if you're trying to create any kind of balance, you have a young family, you're trying to get settled. Go to a big company. They have a lot more time. They have a lot more tolerance and facility for being able to manage people in different ways. If you talk to anyone that works at a big company, and they do this green, yellow, red exercise, first of all, every half hour is filled with meetings and they're all yellow and red with very rare exceptions.

And it doesn't matter if you're working for Microsoft or Google or Netflix or, you know, Meta, it just doesn't matter. It is the nature of having to take something and scale forward. Meanwhile, you're in a startup. You're working really hard. You meet with all the employees. It takes 2 hours. You're done for the week.

It turns out it's super fun because it's super creative. Now it's stressful, but you have responsibility and authority. So what's funny to me is if you talk to people that are in startups, they work a lot and many of them push really hard, but they don't call it burnout. And when you talk to people that are in big companies, even those that are able to protect their schedule, they often feel like they're on the edge because large organizations require you to travel.

It requires you to do a lot of meetings. It requires you to be present, but you don't have a participating role oftentimes it's very, very challenging to state for the record that small companies are guaranteed to be higher paced and more likely to drive burnout than larger companies, but that's not conventional wisdom.

Why I make this point is you need to figure out your own boundaries and you need to figure out exactly the right style that works for your long term career to be able to figure out the mindset to combat burnout.

So in conclusion, the thing that I want all of you to take away is figure out the space that you want to give work and work from that point, and build up from there. Work will expand to fill whatever space you give it. And the better you are, the faster that expansion will be. Recognize that your career will be measured in decades. Given that fact, it is completely unreasonable to put off joy for decades to become an elite professional. Add things you love into your calendar and enforce those boundaries simply because if you remove them, you will give too much to work, resent your employer. You will become frustrated. They will be frustrated and you will continue to thrash through these abrupt endings, and feel like you're never getting enough out of work, despite your success.

And what's great about this advice is that there will be bad days that will come. You'll always have good things in your day, your week, your month to fall back on. With a long term mindset, you can get through a lot as long as you don't compromise values, as long as you recognize that you do have to push hard and prioritize work in a way that makes sense for yourself.

And jobs will come and go and people won't, but all of these things will help you avoid some downstream future regret, but most importantly will ensure that you have the right mindset to properly defend against burnout.

Thanks for listening to The Skip. If today's episode resonated with you, please consider leaving a review, sharing with the people, you know, who want more out of their career.

You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you currently listen, and you can also follow my newsletter on Substack. And if you have questions or feedback, leave a comment or send me a note on LinkedIn or Twitter. I try to answer each one more directly. As always, I'm Nikhyl Singhal and this has been The Skip.