I Didn't Do the Thing Today: Letting Go of Productivity Guilt

by Madeleine Dore

Just as the sources of burnout are many—an infectious pressure to be busy, for instance, or the precarious or uncertain nature of work, or troubling external events and circumstances—so are our experiences of it. The two-phase description by writer Honor Eastly has long stuck with me: crispy and burned out. The crispy phase precedes burnout and occurs when you are stretching yourself but still enjoying the process. Perhaps it’s a state of flow, or the motivation for the project is fueling long hours. But there’s a risk—you’re moving but starting to catch on fire. The second phase comes when movement grinds to a halt—you feel stifled and burned. This two-phase framing for burnout helped me recognize burnout amnesia in myself—the tendency to forget that if I keep running when I’m on fire, I might get burned. It’s helped me recognize my own signals of crispiness before I land all the way in phase two: waking up at three in the morning worrying about a crowded to-do list, an intolerance for mess and noise, feeling alone, despondent, ruminating on what other people think. When I spot these signals, I can turn to the things that might help me cool off—asking others for help, taking deep breaths, exercising, resting, switching on an auto-email responder.