An antidote to burnout

A note from my holiday

One of my best mates rang me a couple of days ago, saying that he felt burnt out. He was tired but wired, lacking in motivation and unable to focus - a common phenomenon.

Rates of burnout are soaring. One of the biggest reasons is the sheer number of inputs we get including, but not limited to, social media, email, rolling news and WhatsApp.

And then there’s ’shadow work’: unpaid labour that benefits someone else. Consider supermarket self-checkout machines, sold on the not entirely accurate premise that they will make our lives easier. They can definitely add an extra layer of hassle to doing even a small shop.

We came away on holiday two days ago, and the self check-in process at the airport was pandemonium. A gilt edged opportunity to accept and allow, if nothing else.

Automation and technology was meant to make life easier, and yet so many people feel more busy and harried than ever before. So I’m practicing what I preach and properly switching off while I’m here.

First and foremost: no screens - at all. My phone is staying in the apartment safe while we are here (once I have pressed send on this post). We have our hands full with two kids, one of whom is 14 months old, but that besides I’ve got nothing bar a book to ‘entertain’ me, and I’m only reaching for that sporadically.

I am embracing doing nothing. Coming into my senses. Seeing. Feeling. Hearing. Tasting. Just being. Stillness.

When I overdo it, a sign is that I tend to be restless. Frequently, that’s when I feel the urge to scroll most strongly. But I am grateful to be aware that stillness is where the subtle joy of being is found, even though my mind frequently tries to persuade me otherwise. When I truly put the snow globe down and let it settle, a sense of deep wellbeing bubbles up soon enough.

So many people avoid stillness like the plague, because it can be uncomfortable at first, but the antidote is in the poison. A holiday may be the perfect place to embrace it, but it’s so important to balance being and doing wherever we happen to be. We have to factor stillness and breaks (scrolling doesn’t count) into our lives wherever possible, as otherwise the busyness rushes in to gobble up all the available time.

So, as the saying goes: don’t just do something. Sit there.

I’ll be back online next week. In the meantime today’s A New Way of Being podcast episode features one of team GB’s top Olympic hopefuls, who won more medals than any British athlete at any Games ever last time out in Tokyo.