Simply Sarah Jones

“Burnout”. The ultimate buzzword in business. One of the least pleasant realities of existence in our country.

Have you ever asked yourself any of the following questions?

1. When’s the last time I took a vacation?
2. If I take a vacation, how bad of a position am I putting my colleagues in?
3. How many times do I have to tell my manager that I have too much work on my plate?
4. Why don’t they get it?
5. Are there jobs out there that require less of me?
6. Why am I so tired?
7. Why don’t I enjoy this job as much as I used to? Is there something wrong with me?
8. Can we get more hours in the day, please?
9. Can’t they just hire more people?
10. Seriously, why am I so tired?

If you have ever had any of the above thoughts, there’s a good chance that you’ve experienced burnout. And you’re not the only one. Here is the ugly truth of it all:

We live in a society where productivity is preferred over health and the financial capital is preferred over human capital. The entire ecosystem that is our economy thrives on it. Hell, you’re even incentivized to work longer hours through overtime pay. If you’re feeling like you’re working all the time with little to no reward – you’re not alone.

Even better, there is an entire industry that thrives off of burnout. Self-help books, planners and organizers that help you “save time”, apps that help you maximize your efficiency, even for personal matters. I would be lying if I didn’t use many of those apps.

When I worked at McKinsey, someone once said to me, “McKinsey is a gas – it will take up every bit of space in your life, if you let it.” What type of world do we live in where it is OUR responsibility to keep work from taking over our lives? Ultimately, I chose to continue working at McKinsey because of the extremely intelligent and wonderful people that I worked with. But it definitely gave me a crash course in what not to do about burnout. I gave McKinsey a lot of space in my life – and it filled up that space. It took a lot of conversations with my mentor and a real reality check to realize that I had to take ownership of my own time.

AND THAT SUCKS.

I want to live in a world where people prioritize taking care of their physical and mental health over helping a business earn money that doesn’t necessarily see them as anything more then an employee ID number. I want to run a business that lets folks work half days so they don’t have to pay astronomical prices for childcare that just adds more stress to their daily lives. I would love for single adults to be given as much flexibility as those with families, because they are still human and have needs outside of working.

I am a strong believer in the phrase “do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”, but that doesn’t mean that you still shouldn’t rest and take pause. Enjoy life, after all, isn’t that why we’re here in the first place?

I’m delivering a training on burnout next week, and I told my co-facilitator that I wanted it to be as authentic as possible. I don’t want to tell people to just “get more sleep” because if you’re stressed, sleep is pretty hard to come by. I don’t want to tell people to meditate because all that does is delay their work. I want this training to be a safe space where people can admit their fears, their feelings, and we can collectively decide how we want our small section of the organization to operate.

And that needs to be different than the rest of the world.

I grew up not being allowed to take naps. I worked my ass off during the semester at college, and then was shamed when my body needed rest over winter and summer break. As an adult, you aren’t given that opportunity to recover. Hell, most companies only provide 10 days of paid PTO in a YEAR in this country. A YEAR. Many of those days end up getting used when children are sick and need to go to the doctor. Think about how much money your company could save in turnover and insurance premiums if your employees were given the appropriate amount of time off (not just able to take that time, but actually forced to use it).

At the end of the day, employees shouldn’t be responsible 100% for their own well-being. Employers need to start taking responsibility by reducing workloads, encouraging time off, and providing low-cost health insurance options for their employees to see a doctor and/or therapist to help them navigate a world of overstimulation, unrealistic productivity expectations, and higher wages to reduce stress in their personal lives.

Will this cause the bottom line to move? Likely. Will it be worth it? Always.

Simply,
Sarah Jones