Emotional resilience and burnout in leadership

> There is no snowballs chance in hell that a company will tolerate absence of their management staff that is longer than 4 weeks

That's a very US-centric view.

In some countries, people get 4 weeks vacations yearly, and can take them all in one block. Yes. A full month outside work. Fully outside, not this "I'm away but will be available by mail" BS.

If this is expected, companies will plan for it and will survive just fine. Normalizing the non-stop grind should not be acceptable.

Despite the praise, I don’t see much of value. This is taxonomic in nature, giving you some loose categories to decompose sources of stress and emotional debt, but tons of research has been done in these areas, and this survey is a bit contrived with not very much data in the scheme of things.

None of that is a big deal really, but what bugs me is nothing in the document offers concrete strategy or tactics to resolve emotional debt or burnout. Advice like “be self-aware” and “go for a walk” and “get enough sleep” is terrible because everyone is already trying all that and burnout hits you specifically when circumstances prevent you from adequately “just” doing them.

It’s empty non-advice, very similar to saying “eat right & exercise” to a depressed person.

It reminds me a bit of this discussion of severe life events as a major explainer of most depression,

https://grasshoppermouse.github.io/2018/12/16/seven-reasons-...

It’s the same with burnout.

You can torture out “shadow” reasons all you want, but it’s really deflecting from the big obvious fact that un-live-with-able circumstances are un-live-with-able and you need to actually fix and remove traumatic circumstances. You should not talk about or endorse “being resilient” to them, because it’s just victim blaming “you need to take care of yourself” dressed up in pseudotheory.

Honestly I see more harm than good in analysis like this. Especially in terms of letting corporations and HR departments deflect and ignore fixing toxic work environments rampant with major burnout stressors, by supplying braindead platitudes like “go for a walk” or “be self-aware” and even worse saying, “look our leaders are doing it, so they’re not asking you to do something they themselves aren’t doing.”

Reading HN is fun and interesting.

Burn out cost me a job. I was just getting back of on track when they let me go. I'm in a new job and loving being productive again.

Really relate to this. I shut down my startup in April. On paper, we ran out of money.

Behind the scenes, I finally paid the toll/ burnt out after 1-2 years of constant unexpected, unpredictable shocks. As a solo founder with investors, there was no escape, no one to run things while I took time off, and no way to leave without ending the company. At points, if my phone buzzed with a text message, I would go into a panic attack, expecting another problem.

I’m now reading a book on the impact of trauma on psychology and while my experience was nothing compared to people who went to war, etc - I see a lot of similarities. Eg there are external triggers that shock your body without your control.

One of the frustrating parts was that I knew it was happening as it was happening. I had the language to identify I was burnt out, had a coach, a therapist, tried to leverage a support network, etc. I do wish there were more solutions for this.

At a minimum, it’s good that this issue is getting talked about more and more. An important requirement to take a sabbatical as in the example in the paper is having buy-in from board members, investors, or team mates, so getting more people on board with mental health is key.

Question - curious if anyone has seen any books on burnout recovery. Thus far, 4 months in, it’s quite a long process.