All right, we have a question here from Lira. Lira says, "How do you deal with unexpected overload and burnout that you can't really ease? I'm a 26 year old Spanish ESL teacher and nutrition student from Spain. I've been working at an academy teaching English part-time for the last year and a half.

I'm also finishing my degree project for university from home and working at a bookstore owned by family members. Due to the owner having an unexpected illness, my hours at the store have doubled and I have to work for another three months, blah, blah, blah. Now I get up very early to work on my project before working at the store all morning.

I'm feeling burnt out, I'm not well rested, and I'm feeling stressed most of the time. I time block and keep to-do lists and I assign specific days and times, plan my days so I can fit everything and have started quarterly planning since September, which does help keep my eye on my goals and figure out the next steps, but this does not help with burnout.

Could it be I'm simply adjusting to the increased workload and what would you recommend? Well, Lyra, first of all, I understand the state you're in. I get there often myself, where I have a lot of things on my plate. Because I'm very organized, I can make it fit. So it's not like things are being left behind or I'm scrambling to stay up all night long to try to get deadlines on.

It's not that type of stress of I don't have enough time to get things done, but it's exhausting. Every minute is scheduled right up to a shutdown. You feel like there's no gaps in that time block schedule, your full intensity all day long. I find that exhausting and that's exactly the situation you're in.

And you're exhausting, A, because of just constant labor. That's just physically draining day after day after day to do that. It's just draining. It also, at least this is my theory, short circuits the planning centers of our brain, which aren't used to having so many things on our plate.

Yes, with artificial help and tools like multi-scale planning, we can make it work, but our brain doesn't really know about that. And so it can't wrap its mind about all the different stuff on your plate. And so it's freaked out about it. How are we gonna get this all done?

It's used to a slower pace of execution. So you're straight up exhausted and you have the negative effect of this planning center short circuiting. That's why you feel burnout. So here's the cure. Do fewer things, take more breaks. That means one of these things going on in your life, you're gonna have to pause or stop.

Now, I think you know that this is the answer. And the reason why I think you know this is the answer is that in the full version of your question, I condensed this, but in the full version of your question, you were very careful around each of the things you introduced that was drawn from your time to put these disclaimers that explained why there wasn't more blood to squeeze from that turn up.

There wasn't, you didn't have options to make it easier. You didn't have options to make it more flexible, to spread it out more like this is this demands, I can't change it. You said that for each of the things. So you were preemptively trying to sidestep an answer that was like with a little bit more organization, with a little bit more savvy in how you lay things out, maybe things will feel better.

Because I think you knew the answer was, that's not gonna solve it. There's too much raw stuff on my plate, and it's exhausting me. And you were looking for permission for me to take things off your plate. And I'm giving you that permission right now. We have a hard time with this, taking things off our plate.

Especially those of us like you, Lira, who are driven and ambitious and interesting and doing interesting stuff. All these things you're doing are either interesting or admirable. You're helping your family, you're getting a degree, you're working on a big project. And we feel bad about taking stuff away. But let me tell you, when you zoom out and look at these pictures, in the big scale, it's not a big deal.

You're going through a period of, you said three more months where you have to take extra shifts at a bookstore to help your family. Okay, that's nice. So maybe you need to delay the nutrition degree by a semester. Or not do your project yet. And say, look, we have this family thing going on, I have to help out.

In the big picture, what's gonna, it's not gonna matter. You're gonna get your degree, you're gonna finish your project, you helped your family, you spread this out by another six months, it's not a big deal. But in the moment, it feels like failure. Because stepping back, adding things makes us feel good.

Hey, look how admirable and ambitious I am. I'm doing all these interesting things. Stepping back from things makes us feel bad, or like something bad is happening. Or like there was a failure. And we amplify in our mind how much other people are gonna care when we do that.

Reality check, they don't, they're thinking about themselves, they're barely gonna notice. I used to encounter this in a dramatic way when I was a grad student at MIT. And I was writing student books, and I was advising, informally advising undergraduates to help them apply my advice to their lives.

And the trade-off was, I would then write about them on my blog, anonymously, or shoot anonymously. But I would like, let me help you get your life in order as a student, and then let me write about it. I had a series on my blog called College Chronicles back then, where I'd write about it.

And I remember I would come across students, and there was one in particular, I remember this one student, and I called her Lena. It's not a real name, but I called her Lena. She was at MIT, and she was an undergraduate. And she had all this stuff on her plate, because she was so ambitious.

Her family and her school back home were so proud. She got to MIT, and she didn't wanna let 'em down, so she had three majors in all these clubs. And she was the person everyone was always impressed by. And the only lever she knew how to pull to increase impressiveness was quantity.

Quantity of activities, but she was having trouble. And so I worked with her. I said, "Let's look at all of your obligations "and figure out how much time they need each week, "and let's try to figure out a schedule, "a student autopilot schedule. "We can make time for each of these things, "so it's automatic.

"Tuesday at this time, I work on my problem set. "Wednesday after dinner, I'm at this club meeting." We did this exercise, and we ran out of time. Even if she worked every hour of the day, from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., she still couldn't get all the work done, even in a normal week where there wasn't extra exams or projects due.

I said, "This is black and white, Lena. "You have to quit things. "You have to stop doing three majors. "You can't do all these clubs. "You literally don't have time." Black and white. She couldn't do it. She couldn't do it, because to quit something or walk away from something would be her stepping away from accomplishment, stepping away from ambition, it'd be letting people down.

And I've told this story before, but what happened to Lena was she burnt out and had to take a leave of absence, a medical leave of absence for mental health issues. Prider Brain. So I understand the difficulty here, but this is me telling you and giving you the permission I think that you want from me.

Do less. Spread it out. Give yourself a break. Give yourself breathing room. You're young. None of this is incredibly time-sensitive. When you look back 10 years from now, you're not even gonna know the difference between getting all this done in the next three months and spending eight months instead.

But in the moment, it's gonna be night and day. There's gonna be the difference between physical breakdown and exhaustion and all of the things that can lead to depression, deep procrastination, health issues. It's gonna be the difference between that and actually having some autonomy, control, gratitude, and depth in life.

So that's what I'm gonna say, Lyra. Do less. I give you permission. Quit the way. It's not retreating from your ambition. It's tackling it in a way that's gonna be sustainable in the long term. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)