How To Recover From Burnout & Make Life Exciting Again

00:00:00.000 | I'm a full-time teacher, but previously worked in journalism.

00:00:03.360 | I'd like to develop a side hustle writing about using walking to explore the history

00:00:07.960 | in London.

00:00:08.960 | My long-term goal is to write a short book or walking guide on whether I should start

00:00:13.040 | a blog as I want to be writing more frequently to sharpen my skills.

00:00:16.560 | Well, Andrew, I'm going to use this whole desire of a side interest in producing a book

00:00:22.860 | about walking histories of London to test out our productivity perspective.

00:00:29.880 | If you are haphazardly busy in your teaching job, it is going to be very unlikely you are

00:00:35.600 | going to succeed with this endeavor.

00:00:38.480 | You'll have moments of inspiration, other times where you feel like you have no leeway

00:00:42.820 | to work on it, the project will make some progress, and then because of haphazardly

00:00:46.840 | busy periods will disappear for months, you might sour on the idea, you might lose your

00:00:51.460 | momentum.

00:00:52.460 | On the other hand, if you have a productivity framework in place, if you feel like you really

00:00:58.300 | do have control over the various obligations and your time, and when you work on it, you're

00:01:03.200 | capturing, configuring, controlling your teaching responsibilities, now you have a shot at succeeding

00:01:08.600 | with one of these projects.

00:01:10.560 | You can figure out, do I have time for this?

00:01:15.000 | Where is that time best placed?

00:01:16.880 | And then actually place that time in those locations.

00:01:19.320 | And there's all sorts of different options for how you might do this, but you're not

00:01:21.880 | going to be able to know what options are available or what is best until you really

00:01:24.880 | do have a framework in place in your professional life that is helping you control everything.

00:01:31.780 | Now I'm going to give a particular suggestion.

00:01:34.500 | So assuming you do this, you get a control productivity system in place, you feel in

00:01:39.200 | control of your time and obligations.

00:01:41.860 | I was thinking about your specific project here, writing this book, Walking History,

00:01:47.780 | and your question in particular about, should you start a blog?

00:01:53.700 | Is that going to be the right way to sharpen your skills and build this out?

00:01:56.740 | Well, my instinct is this project is probably a quality over quantity play.

00:02:02.380 | I think you want to be producing specific walking tours.

00:02:06.420 | Let's put the digital channel aside for now, but producing particular walking tours at

00:02:11.580 | a very high level.

00:02:12.660 | So well-researched, either well videoed or photographed.

00:02:18.640 | You have a map that you can follow it.

00:02:21.440 | Not that often.

00:02:22.440 | Sometimes once every month or once every couple of months, but when you release one of these

00:02:25.040 | things, it's really, really high quality, really easy for people to follow and use.

00:02:29.040 | It seems really professional.

00:02:30.600 | This is the like Mr. Beast or Tim Urban frequency of content production where it's not every

00:02:37.320 | three days, but the stuff they put out, they've made excellent.

00:02:39.780 | I think that's what you're looking for here.

00:02:42.920 | Be so good.

00:02:43.920 | The stuff should be so good.

00:02:44.920 | It can't be ignored.

00:02:45.920 | I think that's going to be the most fulfilling for you and be the best foundation for eventually

00:02:49.680 | then collecting these into a book.

00:02:52.600 | The channel question, I'm not sure.

00:02:55.020 | I think if you just had a blog, sort of web 2.0 style, you had a domain and a WordPress

00:03:00.400 | blog that might be not enough given the way that digital media has evolved.

00:03:08.680 | You probably need some other sort of media involved here.

00:03:12.920 | I mean, YouTube could be a big player here.

00:03:15.500 | You could have very well produced videos where you're actually doing this walking tour, maybe

00:03:20.160 | sub stack as opposed to just so people could subscribe and you get sent these walking tours.

00:03:24.760 | It would be a narrow band of people subscribing, but you would have a good band of followers.

00:03:31.600 | You could carefully put your toes in the professional social media.

00:03:35.600 | Obviously, I'm not a big believer in spending people using social media as a source of personal

00:03:40.520 | distractions, something people are on on their own time just to sort of keep up with the

00:03:44.200 | world and be distracted, but an Instagram account, a professional Instagram account

00:03:48.040 | where it's just for you, whatever, posting the photos from your latest tours that you're

00:03:51.900 | working on as it builds up to you, then launching your latest tour on a website connected to

00:03:57.240 | sub stack.

00:03:58.240 | I don't know the right mix there.

00:03:59.240 | You probably need a more heterogeneous mix than just a blog, but that would be my guess

00:04:03.240 | is that once you get control over your teaching life, you have that productivity framework

00:04:07.040 | in place.

00:04:08.600 | You'll be able to build a rhythm where you build up to once every couple of months, a

00:04:11.880 | great tour.

00:04:12.880 | I would imagine you do, you put aside a Saturday to really explore and scout things out, and

00:04:17.680 | then you have some sessions to do your background research and writing, and then you have another

00:04:21.760 | session a few weeks later where you actually go to do the video or photographs for the

00:04:26.480 | very nice actual tour put together.

00:04:29.360 | I would also say, don't hesitate.

00:04:32.040 | I wouldn't hesitate too much about spending some money on this as well because you're

00:04:35.280 | getting, you will get great satisfaction out of producing these really good tours.

00:04:40.040 | So if you gather all this information and then you're hiring, you're paying 200 bucks

00:04:45.080 | to an online contractor to then put it all together digitally in the right format so

00:04:49.960 | that you don't have to spend 30 hours trying to figure out how to do that.

00:04:52.760 | I think that's a very good investment of money, those type of strategic investments.

00:04:56.200 | So that would be my guess.

00:04:58.520 | Quality over quantity is the way to build not only towards a book, but just to enjoy

00:05:02.600 | this as you go along.

00:05:04.000 | But none of this is possible unless you leave haphazard business and really feel like you

00:05:08.400 | have your arms around your day job, you have that productivity framework in place.

00:05:14.240 | I don't know.

00:05:15.240 | What other channels do people use, Jesse?

00:05:16.240 | If you were, I mean, there's sort of people who've been grandfathered into just having

00:05:21.840 | their own blogs like Marginalia, which used to be Brain Pickings.

00:05:25.920 | I think Tim Urban with Wait But Why, Mr. Money Mustache.

00:05:30.960 | I don't know.

00:05:31.960 | Starting from scratch though, it's difficult, I think.

00:05:35.480 | I agree with you.

00:05:36.480 | I think you need multiple mediums.

00:05:37.480 | Yeah.

00:05:38.480 | I think the key is just don't let your professional use of a medium be your excuse to have your

00:05:43.840 | personal life devolve into consuming that medium.

00:05:46.920 | It's like you can do the Ryan Holiday thing and have stoic quotes on Twitter, Instagram

00:05:52.480 | photos of these sort of cool places you are and these videos that you've made without

00:05:56.340 | actually being on Twitter yourself and reading what other people said, without actually being

00:06:00.320 | on Instagram and scrolling it all the time.

00:06:02.840 | So there's definitely a professional mindset that I think helps there.

00:06:05.280 | You can also, I mean, he was saying how he wanted to work on his writing.

00:06:08.240 | You can also do that with both mediums for sure.

00:06:10.720 | Yeah.

00:06:11.720 | And see, I'm not as worried as he seems to be in sharpening his writing skills because

00:06:15.040 | he's a full-time teacher with a background in journalism.

00:06:18.480 | And the type of writing he's doing is describing history for a walking tour.

00:06:23.280 | I'm sure he's perfectly capable of doing that.

00:06:26.240 | His craft is where it needs to be.

00:06:27.680 | If he was a 22-year-old college student who has never really written professional before,

00:06:33.000 | okay, you got to get some training to get above that amateur bar.

00:06:36.240 | He's already well above that amateur bar and the writing he's doing is not, the value in

00:06:39.960 | what he's doing is not in the quality of the writing.

00:06:41.840 | It just has to be non-amateur writing.

00:06:43.400 | I bet he can already do that.

00:06:44.880 | Yeah.

00:06:45.880 | Good point.

00:06:46.880 | All right.

00:06:47.880 | What do we got next?

00:06:48.880 | All right.

00:06:49.880 | Next question's from Ruby, a 35-year-old banker from London.

00:06:52.520 | I'm taking a few weeks off to recover from burnout due to a period where my responsibilities

00:06:56.400 | kept increasing.

00:06:57.400 | What would you recommend to do to make the most of my time away from work?

00:07:02.480 | So Ruby, the productivity perspective here is that if all you do during your time off

00:07:09.280 | is recharge and then just go back into this environment where you were before, give it

00:07:15.160 | six months, you'll be back in the same place.

00:07:18.640 | What is important here, this is what I would do with my time off, is figure out what is

00:07:23.400 | the productivity framework I'm going to put in place so that I have clarity into all of

00:07:30.560 | the obligations entering my world.

00:07:32.600 | None of it is being held only in my mind.

00:07:34.360 | I am configuring.

00:07:35.360 | I can see what it is, what type of work do I have at different parts.

00:07:39.400 | This is the traditional facing the productivity dragon.

00:07:42.200 | And then I control my time on different timescales.

00:07:45.380 | Here's what I'm doing today.

00:07:46.380 | Here's what I'm doing this week.

00:07:47.380 | Here's how these projects fit.

00:07:49.600 | Now here's the goal here.

00:07:53.080 | Not that with this productivity framework, you can optimize your time enough that the

00:07:58.680 | workload that burnt you out before you can now handle.

00:08:01.040 | That's not the goal.

00:08:02.400 | The goal instead is clarity.

00:08:06.280 | Clarity about what's on your plate.

00:08:08.320 | Clarity about what is reasonable to be on your plate.

00:08:12.680 | Clarity about proposing this, this and this makes sense, this, this and this is too much.

00:08:19.660 | The productivity system, a good productivity system can give you the confidence you need

00:08:24.440 | to advocate for yourself.

00:08:27.200 | Now again, this I think is one of the, one of the insidious side effects of rejecting

00:08:33.720 | productivity because you associate it with this optimization over our culture is that

00:08:37.920 | ironically it is exactly what your employer wants you to do.

00:08:41.680 | We think about it.

00:08:42.680 | Oh no, the productivity is somehow part of this base superstructure sort of early 20th

00:08:47.080 | century Marxist approach of, of trying to exploit more labor from the, from the, the,

00:08:53.440 | the proletariat or something like this.

00:08:54.800 | Right?

00:08:55.800 | That's the old grad school, blah, blah, blah approach to it.

00:08:59.280 | Actually knowing what you're doing, knowing what's on your plate, having a extreme clarity

00:09:06.360 | about exactly your workplace, seeing the matrix of the obligations being thrown at you with

00:09:11.960 | clarity.

00:09:13.400 | That's actually what in a lot of these overwhelmed situations, your employer wouldn't want, because

00:09:17.080 | it means you can come back and say, I know this is crazy.

00:09:20.620 | We need to cut this in half.

00:09:21.760 | Let me tell you why.

00:09:22.800 | You know, I have my arms around everything and I'm very careful.

00:09:25.720 | I run my schedule very carefully and I do very good work.

00:09:28.080 | This is 50% too much.

00:09:30.360 | And I have confidence in that conviction.

00:09:32.400 | If you instead fall back into haphazard busyness because you're trying to reject the, the hustle

00:09:38.400 | culture, et cetera, you are at the mercy of these employers.

00:09:43.120 | It's just all stuff.

00:09:44.200 | We're all busy.

00:09:45.200 | You got a bunch of stuff.

00:09:46.200 | Why aren't you doing work?

00:09:47.200 | Why are you complaining?

00:09:48.200 | You're either going to burn yourself out again and again, or give them excuse to fire you.

00:09:52.840 | So productivity can actually be what you need to prevent and push back against overload.

00:09:58.800 | Right?

00:09:59.800 | So this is, again, the whole autonomy frame for productivity is having your arms around

00:10:03.880 | your obligations is what allows you to do so many different things.

00:10:06.800 | And this is one of the things you can do is it allows you to stand up, allows you to stand

00:10:10.960 | up and say with a clear voice and conviction enough.

00:10:14.640 | This is too much.

00:10:16.200 | I know it's too much.

00:10:17.840 | You know that.

00:10:18.840 | I know that now this is my, this is what's reasonable and this is what I'm going to do.

00:10:24.760 | And when people know that you have your act together, when it comes to these sort of productivity

00:10:29.240 | systems, it's much harder for them to push back against that.

00:10:31.320 | So that's what I would say, rest and recharge, but also get your systems fired up so that

00:10:36.280 | when you come back, you're no longer at the mercy of like whatever junk your employer

00:10:39.480 | is just throwing at you and hoping you won't notice that it's completely unreasonable.

00:10:43.040 | Yeah.

00:10:44.040 | I like what you said at the end of the deep dive to about having options.

00:10:47.400 | Yeah.

00:10:48.400 | Yeah.

00:10:49.400 | Productivity is about that's the autonomy frame.

00:10:50.760 | Yeah.

00:10:51.760 | If you don't have control over all the different obligations orbiting you in your professional

00:10:55.320 | life, you are at the mercy of whim, your boss's mood, your personality, what you can get away

00:11:02.440 | with and basically will probably just be stressed out.

00:11:04.720 | I mean, or you could be okay.

00:11:06.440 | Like maybe you just whatever, become kind of misanthropic and, and resentful and people

00:11:11.800 | want to deal with it and you kind of find a way to make it work, but it's all just,

00:11:14.920 | you're drifting towards some sort of steady state.

00:11:17.200 | There's probably going to be a non-optimal equilibrium, but when you know everything

00:11:20.880 | that's going on, you can stand back and say this, this, and this is the problem.

00:11:25.200 | And if I move this, I can't do those.

00:11:27.320 | I got to take this off my plate and no, no, no, of course, no, of course, no, of course,

00:11:30.720 | no.

00:11:31.720 | Yes.

00:11:32.720 | I'll do this.

00:11:33.720 | Here's what I'm going to do.

00:11:34.720 | And it just makes all the difference.

00:11:35.720 | You can do so much if you have a good productivity system and you can't do almost anything without

00:11:37.800 | it.

00:11:38.800 | So it's not like I'm burnt out or I'm, you know, quitting the workforce and hoping that

00:11:45.160 | people subscribe to my sub stack.

00:11:46.600 | There's got to be something in between those two.

00:11:48.720 | All right.

00:11:49.720 | Let's keep rolling.

00:11:50.720 | What do we have next?

00:11:51.720 | All right.

00:11:53.000 | Next question's from Rito, 23 year old from India.

00:11:55.920 | I have too many interests in my life.

00:11:58.000 | I have so many choices.

00:11:59.360 | It's crippling and I end up doing nothing.

00:12:01.160 | My question is how do I learn to prioritize?

00:12:04.440 | So Rito, I included this question because it helps show that the productivity perspective

00:12:10.160 | is also relevant to your life outside of work.

00:12:13.180 | It's also relevant to your leisure life.

00:12:17.360 | So haphazard busyness can cripple you like it's happening here in your leisure life in

00:12:22.000 | the same way that it can in your professional life, especially like Rito, you're young,

00:12:25.440 | you're 23 years old, you have all this time and all this potential.

00:12:29.020 | And there's so many different things you can do that you bounce from one thing to another

00:12:32.280 | and nothing's making progress.

00:12:34.120 | Your brain will eventually stop trying to generate motivation.

00:12:39.400 | I've written about this before, Rito, what's really happening here, if you want my opinion,

00:12:43.160 | is that our brain is very good at evaluating potential plans.

00:12:47.980 | Is this objective worth it?

00:12:49.520 | And do I have reason to believe this plan is going to work?

00:12:52.400 | Our brain asks and answers those two questions all the time.

00:12:56.560 | We're very good at that.

00:12:57.800 | This is something that is bred into our paleolithic path.

00:13:01.160 | Those mechanisms, when it doesn't trust you really know what you're doing, when it doesn't

00:13:05.280 | trust that there's a plan here that makes sense, that's going to lead to some sort of

00:13:08.220 | mastery or a highly fulfilling outcome.

00:13:11.840 | It says, nope.

00:13:13.900 | And what does it feel like when your plan evaluation apparatus in your brain says, no,

00:13:18.160 | it feels like procrastination.

00:13:20.500 | You can't summon motivation because there is a system in our brain that generates the

00:13:24.520 | feelings of motivation towards action and has to believe what you're doing.

00:13:28.200 | So if your leisure life is crippled with or ridden with haphazard busyness, it's like,

00:13:33.560 | I'm not going to just start this whatever by a video camera to become the next Martin

00:13:39.320 | Scorsese, because you don't know what you're doing here.

00:13:40.640 | There's no plan here.

00:13:41.640 | This is one of like 15 different things you have.

00:13:43.440 | That is why you have this feeling of I can't do anything.

00:13:45.640 | I feel crippled.

00:13:46.640 | It's because it's too haphazard.

00:13:47.640 | It's too busy.

00:13:48.640 | So you can bring a productivity framework into your leisure life to get your arms around

00:13:53.680 | this, to start to be selective, to start to be intentional about what you spend your time

00:13:57.880 | on.

00:13:59.240 | And in doing so, you're going to end up in a much better place.

00:14:02.000 | So let me give you a particular suggestion here, just to plant a seed.

00:14:06.560 | So one way you might structure more intentionally your life outside of work would be a four

00:14:12.720 | part focus.

00:14:13.720 | I've talked about this before.

00:14:15.960 | Three routines and one project in one time.

00:14:18.360 | So the three routines that just figure out how to have going in the background would

00:14:21.820 | probably be some sort of fitness health routine.

00:14:25.440 | This is eating and exercise.

00:14:27.360 | This is foundational.

00:14:28.520 | Let's get that going background, some sort of reading routine.

00:14:33.240 | I'm reading on a regular basis.

00:14:34.800 | I'm moving away from just distraction.

00:14:36.460 | My mind is learning how to actually remain focused on complex thoughts.

00:14:41.960 | You're going to develop as a human being.

00:14:43.640 | You're going to develop as a, as a thinker.

00:14:46.200 | We did a podcast episode a few weeks ago on how to become a reader was called the joys

00:14:50.820 | of the reading life.

00:14:51.820 | It's probably like two 38.

00:14:53.960 | Yeah.

00:14:54.960 | Yeah.

00:14:55.960 | Episode two 38.

00:14:56.960 | You can watch that.

00:14:58.080 | Your third routine I would say to put in place foundationally is some sort of community routine.

00:15:02.600 | These things you do on a regular basis that keep you connected and serving your friends,

00:15:06.280 | your family, other people in the communities that you're involved with.

00:15:09.640 | Get background routines for those three things going.

00:15:12.720 | That's just foundational.

00:15:13.720 | You can tweak those, but you should always on a regular basis.

00:15:15.960 | Those things are just woven into the fabric of your life.

00:15:18.560 | Okay.

00:15:19.560 | And then one major project.

00:15:22.040 | And then do that major project till you get to a great milestone that you can swap in

00:15:24.760 | another major project.

00:15:26.520 | So just one major project at a time, spend six months on it, spend a year on it.

00:15:30.840 | I don't really care.

00:15:31.840 | You're young.

00:15:32.840 | You're 23.

00:15:33.840 | You have more time than you think.

00:15:35.080 | So this is just one particular suggestions of how you might establish a more intentional

00:15:39.600 | approach to your leisure life, but, but having routines for the things that are foundational

00:15:43.960 | to a life well live and then pursuing one thing at a time until a good point, giving

00:15:49.760 | that your full attention that for example, works really well.

00:15:54.360 | And it's the type of thing that you're not going to get to until you get more intentional

00:15:57.180 | about your time.

How To Recover From Burnout & Make Life Exciting Again | Cal Newport

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