Radically Moderate Burnout

Is that a thing? I'm making it a thing.

Photo by Tangerine Newt on Unsplash

I’m tired, guys.

I’m tired of reading the news.

I’m tired of political whiplash.

I’m tired of sitting on a stalled book manuscript.

I’m tired of seeing all the things I *should* be doing to market the Substack and the book project but don’t have time or bandwidth for.

I’m tired of querying agents for the book with zero results.

I’m tired of the pile of administrative tasks I’m staring at, which are always worse in spring semester.

I’m (very) tired of my inbox, given that I’m now at 10 pages of backlog and no free blocks to actually do anything about it.

I’m tired of living in a climate where being outside is actively unpleasant.

I’m tired of whatever post-travel cold my body is fighting off.

I’m tired of my kids being home for the week and the fighting and mess and disorganization that inevitably results.

I’m even tired just thinking about the walk from the parking lot to my office.

Embracing or Escaping the Suck

Some of these things are big deals and some are pretty tiny.

Some of these things I have control over and others I don’t.

Some of these things I can adjust and others I can't.

Some I just need to work through and others I can probably find an exit strategy for.

Life is Lived in 4D

One of the things I find most helpful and most powerful about the radically moderate framework is that it asks us to look at everything in four dimensions.

4D thinking prevents 1D approaches to human problems. The internet loves 1D advice, which is one reason to avoid comments sections like the plague. One response to complaints about my job might be “why not quit?” But that kind of response is completely useless because I really like my job (most of the time) and have no intention of quitting. I’m not complaining about my entire job, just one (or two) small facet of it at one discrete point in time.

By thinking in 4D, I can complain about my job and still love it. I can feel burnt out but have to keep powering through. I can love my kids to the ends of the earth and still be wildly irritated at them. I can embrace the suck in some contexts and work to escape the suck in others.

Radical moderation doesn’t require us to resolve each and every tension because that’s not how life in four dimensions works. Tactics work in some areas and not in others, our habits and routines change over time as our lives change, and the things we care about or need to prioritize shift by the moment, the day, the year, and the decade.

When I look at my life in 4D, I can be really grateful for all the wonderful things that have produced my current state of mild exhaustion:

I wrote a book! That’s exciting.

I have a fulfilling job! Great!

I have three wonderful kids and a fantastic husband! Awesome.

But I don’t have to wallow in 1D toxic gratitude, pretending like the hard parts just don’t exist.

By living in 4D I can clearly see that many of the things that I love the most in my life are also the things that challenge me the most, stress me the most, and sometimes push me to the brink.

That has to be ok, because removing the hard stuff would mean removing the meaningful stuff too.

Navigating Burnout in 4D

What really matters is how we’re going to navigate the 4D space we’re in.

Since I don’t have time to lay in bed pretending that my job and kids and the book don’t exist, I need to develop a plan.

And that plan should probably be a four dimensional plan because I need to figure out where I am right now and what path I should be on to get where I need to go.

For now, that plan requires focusing on the things I can control and the things that are weighing most heavily on my tired little mind. A few rise to the top:

1. Taking some tangible steps on Substack and book marketing today (limiting this to maybe three).

2. Finding a time to triage emails before they take over my computer, Stranger Things monster style.

3. Doing a brain dump to make sure all my upcoming commitments are written down somewhere. I’ve found that about 50% of the time when I’m stressed like this it’s because I have floating commitments taking up space in my brain. Once they’re written down, I can then muck around with my calendar to find time to do them.

4. Getting some extra sleep tonight.

That’s it for me this week! I have a couple longer posts in the hopper so stay tuned for one of those next week.

For now though, let me know how you handle burnout and what you’re thinking about the tensions in your own life. What’s worth embracing? What’s worth escaping?

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