Advice from a grumpy old man #903

Even bees play, and it’s adorable.

Rest and play are not a reward for work.

Rest is required to be capable of work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nh4a137OU_Y

One of my current favourite online educators is Catieosaurus (the “Fruit Snack” lady. When I watched her video on burnout, it struck a cord.

…we know that burnout damages your ability to interpret your internal signals, specifically interception, like what is actually going on in your body. Am I hungry? Am I tired? Am I thirsty? Do I need to pee? But it also damages your reward perception, which is your ability to figure out….what you need right now. It also damages your effort calibration, which means that it can be very difficult for you to figure out how much energy something is going to cost you….[and] increased executive dysfunction, increased brain fog, increased emotional flattening, and a loss of creative capacity….loss of competence, of self-trust, of meaning and identity. And that’s just burnout.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jea1PwXrl0k

She defines burnout as the inability to return to baseline after stress. It’s an injury, like a broken leg, that needs to be repaired. “Just rest”, doom-scrolling, and napping just don’t cut it anymore.

So, rest, recover, take time for yourself and your loved ones. Make the decision to ‘prioritize later’, to work for the long term, to run the marathon that is life. Not always sprinting. Avoid burnout in the first place, if you can.

Otherwise one day your body will make the decision to “rest” for you, and it will probably happen at an inconvenient time.