I have been pretty strategic this year towards my writing, or at least this is what I would like to think.

At the start of the year, I set out to learn how social media works. I posted for 100 Consecutive Days on three platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn). I learned the benefits of learning in public, being a part of a scenius, and the art of self-promoting.

Four months later, I decided to up my game with Medium and publish 100 articles in 100 days. I got better at writing articles, reduced the time of writing an article to 1–2 hours, and build myself a system to write on Medium effortlessly.

In both these cases, I didn’t follow the common advice to succeed on the platform and pretty much did what I felt was right.

I am glad I made my own rules and set my own parameters of success.

The ultimate goal is learning, and success is when I have learned a certain skill.

To build a big following on Medium, you need to publish in big publications, but I chose to stay with smaller publications while learning the craft of article writing.

To earn a big check each month, you need to write articles that most readers want to read. I chose to write what I wanted to write, sharing what I was learning at that point in time.

Once again, I find myself at a crossroads where I am picking the path I think is the right one for me.

After spending two years on content writing, I think it is not the right path for me.

The demand to continually keep churning out content is too much. I somehow can cope with that. But what I can’t cope with is stagnation.

I am finding I am not growing by writing the same kind of articles all the time.

I think I am ready to move to my real passion — fiction writing.

I have been postponing fiction writing to learn to blog, audience building, and online marketing.

So much so that for the last two years, I have not touched fiction writing at all. I am afraid it will take me a long time to get back into it. It will be like walking through hell but that is exactly what I am going to do.

I will continue to write on Medium but put my primary focus on writing fiction.

I will continue to share my learning with you here in Authorpreneurs publication.

I am also working on a few non-fiction books, which I will be alternating with fiction work.

These books are based on the articles I have written so far. I have 350+ articles on my website and about 200 articles on Medium. Unfortunately, this backlist of articles will not get read again. They will keep sitting on Medium servers for eternity. The best way to preserve them is to turn them into books.

Books have a much longer shelf life than articles.

By turning them into books, we can reach a completely new set of audience — the book readers.

I believe we all need to look at turning our work into books.

In my next post, I will write about the process of writing a book.

It is not as hard as it might sound.

Many people are happy to see the back of 2020. One thing is for sure; none of us will miss it. And the bar is set very low for 2021. but 2020 was perhaps the most enlightening year in recent history. In less than ten months, it has changed the way we live and perhaps for good.

Much has been written about the havoc 2020 has caused, but I decided to concentrate on the lessons it taught us.

Here are nine insights, mostly from my journal entries.

1. This, too, shall pass.

Who would have thought that the whole world can come to a halt? As Burkeman puts it in his newsletter, “the treadmill, you’ve been on for decades just stopped.” If it’s possible for the world to go into lockdown, what else might be possible? A lot, in fact. We might have to continue to work from home. We may not be able to travel for another year. We continue to get tested repeatedly. Vaccines might prove useless.

But that is a grim picture. The biggest truth of all time is, “This too shall pass.” Soon we will get back to the routines of life and start complaining about the weather again. Already, nobody cares about the stats. Even thousands of deaths a day are not making the front page news. This is how resilient the human race is.

What happened is inexplicably incredible. It’s the greatest gift ever unwrapped. Not the deaths, not the virus, but the Great Pause. It is, in a word, profound. Please don’t recoil from the bright light beaming through the window. I know it hurts your eyes. It hurts mine, too. But the curtain is wide open. What the crisis has given us is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see ourselves and our country in the plainest of views. At no other time, ever in our lives, have we gotten the opportunity to see what would happen if the world simply stopped.

Here it is… [So] think deeply about what you want to put back into your life. This is our chance to define a new version of normal, a rare and truly sacred (yes, sacred) opportunity to get rid of the bullshit and to only bring back what works for us, what makes our lives richer, what makes our kids happier, what makes us truly proud. We get to Marie Kondo the shit out of it all.” — Julio Vincent Gambuto, Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting

2. Children don’t need to be told what to learn.

After years of debate whether kids can or can’t be homeschooled, 2020 presented the opportunity to test the theory on a mass scale. Kids stayed at home for most of the year and learned with the help of technology. Teachers and parents were there to guide but whether they put any effort to learn was children’s call. In other words, if they wanted to slack, they easily could. But schools are showing better results than ever.

What if schools are not the best place for your kids to learn? What if we don’t try to replicate school at home? What if we try something else? What if we use this as a radical opportunity to let our kids learn and explore their interests unfettered by the classroom demands?

John Holt started a newsletter Growing Without Schooling in 1977 where he advocated “ways in which people, young or old, can learn and do things, acquire skills, and find interesting and useful work, without having to go through the process of schooling.”

The term newsletter is misleading. It is, in fact, a reference book, published an article at a time on topics ranging from legal advice (homeschooling was illegal in many states) to technology, talent, skills, learning, and curriculum.

Children do not need to be made to learn, told what to learn, or shown how. If we give them access to enough of the world, including our own lives and work in that world, they will see clearly enough what things are truly important to us and to others, and they will make for themselves a better path into that world than we could make for them. — John Holt in How Children Learn

John Holt’s books How Children Learn, Teach Your Own, and Learning All The Time are worth checking.

2. Love is the opposite of being invisible.

One of the common complaints of working people is that they see their coworkers more than their loved ones. 2020 allowed us to work from home where both partners sat side-by-side or in adjoining rooms and spent most of their waking hours together. Although it was initially challenging, eventually, it brought couples together. My husband worked from home two days a week, and it was good to little chats during the day, something we get to do on weekends only.

In September 2018, singer and songwriter Nick Cave started his blog The Red Hand Files to answer questions from fans:

When I started the Files I had a small idea that people were in need of more thoughtful discourse. I felt a similar need. I felt that social media was by its nature undermining both nuance and connectivity. I thought that, for my fans at least, The Red Hand Files could go some way to remedy that.

Nick Cave has received over 30,000 questions from his fans within two years, and he’s written more than 200 answers. Some questions are more typical fan questions, such as his favorite books, songs, musicians, or poems.

But other questions are deeply philosophical, like when Pablo asks, What is love for you? This is a part of Cave’s answer:

Love is acknowledging the other person’s presence as Nick Cave’s responded to the question “What is love for you?” by a fan.

Love has something to do with the notion of being seen — the opposite of invisibility. The invisible, the unwitnessed, the unacknowledged, the isolated, the lonely — these are the unloved. Loving attention illuminates the unseen, escorting them from the frontiers of lovelessness into the observed world. To truly see someone — anyone — is an act that acknowledges and forgives our common and imperfect humanity. Love enacts a kind of vigilant perception — whether it is to a partner, a child, a co-worker, a neighbour, a fellow citizen, or any other person one may encounter in this life. Love says softly — I see you. I recognise you. You are human, as am I. — Nick Cave

3. When stumped by a life choice, choose “enlargement” over happiness.

Oliver Burkeman wrote in The Guardian, “I’m indebted to the Jungian therapist James Hollis for the insight that major personal decisions should be made not by asking “Will this make me happy?” but “Will this choice enlarge me or diminish me?”

We are terrible at predicting what will make us happy: the question swiftly gets bogged down in our narrow preferences for security and control. But the enlargement question elicits a deeper, intuitive response. But the enlargement question elicits a deeper, intuitive response. You tend to just know whether, say, leaving or remaining in a relationship or a job, though it might bring short-term comfort, would mean cheating yourself of growth. — Oliver Burkeman

“Relatedly,” he infers, “don’t worry about burning bridges: irreversible decisions tend to be more satisfying because now there’s only one direction to travel — forward into whatever choice you made.”

4. Rituals are ballast against the chaos of the everyday

For years I resented the neverending household chores. When I was going to the office, they were out of sight. Since I started working from home, they are on my face all the time.

Then I developed rituals. Rituals to do dishes, rituals to tidy bedrooms, rituals to water the plans, and suddenly things that used to stress me became stress-releasing activities.

Mike Powell wrote an article in the New York Times, A Letter of Recommendation: Washing Dishes, which expresses the same sentiments.

I’ve often said that the best job I ever had was washing dishes at a small Italian restaurant just after college.

(…)

As much as I liked the machine, I often took the time to do the job by hand. It became a welcome ritual, a ballast against the chaos of the everyday.

And like any worthwhile practice — marriage, creativity, compassion — it engendered the kind of patience that lets you see how life is something to be managed, not conquered. You might finish a load, but you’ll almost always have another one coming.

(…)

But lately, I’ve been wondering what that time and space is for. Implied in the quest for convenience is a distinction between the life we deem worth living and the life we have to endure in order to get there. One is a possibility, the other an obligation; one is a means, the other an end.

(…)

Life hacks, multitasking, the ruthless compression of our daily routine: We still frame the ordinary as something that exists only for the thing beyond it, as a hazard to be optimized away instead of an organism to be nurtured and interacted with.

5. Solitude is freedom from input from other’s minds.

Cal Newport is talking about a definition of solitude in his book Digital Minimalism. He borrowed the definition from Lead Yourself First. According to the authors, Kethledge and Erwin, solitude is a “state of mind.” a spiritual condition, not necessarily a physical one.

Here is how Newport explains it in Digital Minimalism:

“Many people mistakenly associate [solitue] with physical separation-requireing, perhaps that you hike to a remote cabin miles from another human being. This flawed definition indroduces a standard of isolation that can be impractical for mos to satisfy on any sort of regular basis. As Kethledge and Erwin explain, however, solitude is about what’s happening in your brain, not the environment around you. Accordingly, they define it to be a subjective state in which your mind if free from input from other mind.”

Under this definition, you can find solitude in a busy train while commuting to work or sitting in a coffee shop or a hospital waiting room. You can also be alone with your thoughts. But you have to be free from the input.

In 2020, we had been physically separated but bombarded with external input. The stats are showing that in 2020, consumption of social media and digital information increased exponentially.

Much of anxiety can disappear if we can distance ourselves from social media. In the twenty-first century, the person who will be more successful and mentally stable is not the one who is well-informed and well-connected but one who has “learned to be alone.”

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” — Blaise Pascal

6. Pay attention to what you care about, and care about what you pay attention to.

Rob Walker writes a newsletter, The Art of Noticing, where he talks about “noticing things,” “paying attention,” and “care for something.”

He writes:

[O]ne of my favorite responses to a willfully open-ended prompt I give my students — I order them to “practice paying attention” — came from a student who thought he did it wrong. He had made a planter, he explained, for a cactus. He’d done this, he said, on the theory that “by nurturing or caring for something, you pay more attention to it.” And of course he was right! (See also this recent Times Magazine essay making a similar point: “How Taking Care of Houseplants Taught Me to Take Care of Myself.”)

Amy Meissner, who advocates mending, writes:

“Once you’ve mended something, if you didn’t have sentimental value attached to it before, then you certainly do once you’ve taken time to care for it.”

Austin Kleon connects the two ideas with a quote from his book Keep Going:

“Attention is the most basic form of love,” wrote John Tarrant. When you pay attention to your life, it not only provides you with the material for your art, it also helps you fall in love with your life.”

2020 provided us the opportunity to care for our loved ones, our homes, our environment by spending more time with them and by giving them more attention. A lesson we can carry forward to the next year and beyond.

7. Plans are useless, but planning is priceless

In the twentieth and twenty-first century, we are fed on planning from primary school. Plan for life, plan for a career, plan for holidays, plan for shopping, plan for socializing. Then came 2020, and people’s well-laid plans were wiped out with the single stroke of God’s pen.

There is another aspect of planning:

Planning is a common form of mental restlessness which can manifest as anxiety — we’re so uncertain about the future that we try to gain control by planning it. In Buddhist teaching, planning is part of papañca — a Pāli term that is usually translated as conceptual or discursive proliferation or the diversifying tendencies of the mind.

(…)

Planning is a Barrier to Awakening. The problem with planning isn’t just that it agitates the mind, but that it disguises the basic characteristics of existence to which we want to awaken…— Shaila Catherine, Planning and the Busy Mind:

Although planning can appear as a useful activity, we need to examine our actual planning activities to assess how effectively and efficiently we plan. Many of our daily plans don’t actually turn out as planned?

The fact is the plans are not preparation for action — they’re the expression of anxiety or restlessness.

We have not discovered how to keep our minds at rest and be present for things as they’re unfolding.

But some plans are useful; therefore, we must assess our planning on a case by case basis. And to do that, we first have to recognize when we’re planning and how we’re doing it.

When you are planning, are you worrying about how something will turn out in the future?

Are you adding more and more things to your to-do list? Or are you leaving enough room for spontaneity in your day?

Do you notice the peacefulness that arises when you’re not planning anything — just sensing the present moment and letting the day unfold, giving it your clear attention and enjoying the experience and the calm that comes from it.

8. Human spirit

Whereas 2020 showed us the utter foolishness and selfishness of powerful leaders, law-enforcers, and the common man under stress, it has also shown is the generosity of countless human beings, whether they were the health workers or people with the least to offer. Stories of the human spirit by far exceeded the stories of mean-spirited people.

This has reinforced my belief in the human spirit. A story appeared on my Instagram, which is worth mentioning here.

I asked a wise man, “Tell me, Sir, in which field could I make a great career?” He said with a smile, “Be a good human being. There is a lot of opportunity in this area and very little competition.”

I think we have plenty of good human beings in the world, and they don’t believe in competition.

9. Be done with the New Year Resolutions

The trouble with the New Year Resolutions is that we set higher and higher standards for ourselves each year. We already have so much on our plate; we don’t need any more anxiety or pressure.

I am not just my accomplishments. My existence is not for just meeting my goals. My existence is to be here at this moment. To be present in whatever state I am in.

I don’t need to improve continually. As Elizabeth Gilbert put it in an Instagram message at the start of 2020, “I am not a Fortune 500 company that has to show more profit each year.” I am a living being, like any other living being, whether it is a bird, or a fish, or a dog, or a cat. A cat never has to set a New Year Resolution. For her 1st of January is like any other day. As long as she gets food, water, and comfortable surroundings, it is a perfect day.

Why can’t it be the same for us?

Why do we have to make our life miserable by setting higher and higher goals?

If anything, we need to cut out some of the trivial things from our lives.

“You don’t need to waste your time doing those things that are unnecessary and trifling. You do not have to be rich. You do not have to seek fame or power. What you need is freedom, solidity, peace, and joy. You need time and energy to be able to share these things with others.” — Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death No Fear.

I didn’t set any New Year Resolution in 2020. Neither did I set any goals. I didn’t care whether I finish my novel or not. Neither did I care how many posts I manage to publish on my website. I concentrated on building a habit of writing every day. And 2020 was the year I wrote the most.

“You are what you want to become. Why search anymore? You are a wonderful manifestation. The whole universe has come together to make your existence possible. There is nothing that is not you. The Kingdom of God, the Pure Land, nirvana, happiness, and the liberation are all you.” — Thich Nhat Hanh

There it is, some lessons I learned in 2020 that I will be carrying with me into 2021.

What are yours?

Photo by Albany Capture on Unsplash

I asked the question to a bunch of friends.

In a 1985 movie, Brewster’s Millions, Brewster, the lead character (played by Richard Pryor), inherits $300 million from his uncle, whom he has never met. 

But he has to complete a challenge with several conditions.

To get his hands on the inheritance, he has to spend 30 million dollars in 30 days. But at the end of 30 days: 

• he shouldn’t own any assets 
• he can not give away money to other people
• he can not waste it by purchasing and destroying valuable objects
• he must get value for the services he buys
• he can lose up to 5% in gambling and 
• he can donate 5% to charity and lose 5% by gambling 

Finally, he is not allowed to tell anyone about the challenge.

Brewster, who has never earned more than ten grand a year, rents an expensive hotel suite, hires personal staff on exorbitant salaries, and places bad gambling bets. He does crazy things like running for Mayor of New York City, buying a million dollar collectors’ postage stamp, using it on a postcard, and hires the most expensive interior designer to design the hotel room for him for just a night. 

Unable to spend 30 million dollars, Brewster becomes fed up with money and realizes the money’s real value, something his uncle intended all this time.

I have often wondered what people will do if they find themselves in a similar situation. 

30 million dollars is a lot of money, but what if people like you and me are given a substantial amount of money and told to spend it wherever we like. 

I settled on $100,000, and I thought I would experiment by asking people around me.

What if you are given $100,000 to spend as you like, where would you spend it?

The above question became my favorite icebreaker.

People’s reaction to the question was worth noting. 

At first, they don’t want to be game enough to respond. Then they want to make fun of me. They wanted to know when am I handing out the money. 

But with some encouragement and a bit of probing, I start getting interesting replies. 

Different people at different times in their life will pick up different things to spend the money on. My husband will no doubt invest the money in shares, and my daughters would go traveling, a friend of mine said she would hire house-help at least once a week.

Another friend wanted to go cruising for the rest of her life. Travel was the common thing (of course, I was asking this question pre-Covid times)

Recently I popped this question in a forum. 

Here are some of the responses.

If the $100,000 is still available, I’ll volunteer to take it.

It would go towards paying off short term debt, buying a different family vehicle (ours is about to die), putting some in the bank for our children’s education funds, and putting the remainder aside for a nice family vacation (probably Hawaii) when we may all travel again.

Oh, I’m so selfish. Of course some for charity. There are a couple of organizations we love to support.

These days I might spend it on political ads. Aside from that context, however, I would likely put a third to charitable organizations and invest the rest in environmentally friendly stocks. Although, a trip to Greece would be nice. I am currently retired with a comfortable nest egg, so I don’t need to pay off debts or the like.

I read this, but I struggled to answer it. However, if I were to go back in time to when we first moved to New Zealand, I’d have put it to pay off the mortgage. We were keen on paying it back as quickly as possible. And that’s the only thing I could think of. Even back then, I didn’t aspire for stuff that was beyond my budget. I see $100k as a substantial amont of money, and I’d personally feel it was a great extravagance to use it anywhere else than paying back a loan.

Today, I wouldn’t know what to do with it. The loans have been paid a long time ago. If someone just gave me that money, I’d probably give it to the St. John’s Ambulance service so they could buy some ambulances.

Hide it from my wife. She is gunning for the Amazon shopper’s hall of fame. Just kidding… kinda.

I would invest in myself (for learning), then put the rest in some kind of interest-bearing account and try to forget about it. I have actually received a lump sum in the past, and I was disenchanted by the experience.

I’m much less of a consumer now. Less enamored with the ‘goodies.’ They remind me of soap bubbles — all pretty and shiny. And empty. I came to the realization that I enjoy having money more than spending it. The money spent making good memories with my family is an exception. So is money spend on quality learning experiences.

There is no right and wrong answer to the question.

But most people, even the educated and savvy looking ones don’t know what to do with a windfall.

Research shows that 70 percent of people lose all of their financial windfalls within three years of receiving it.

$100,000 is not a huge sum that you need a financial advisor to tell you how to make the best of it. 

And it is quite likely that you might get a windfall in your life.

According to a recent study by Cerulli Associates, there’s a massive transfer of wealth poised to happen in the U.S. over the next 25 years. An estimated $68 trillion will change hands, with the country’s aging population transferring those assets to charitable endeavors and their heirs.

I am curious to know what will you do if you get $100,000 with the instrctutions to spend it all. 

Let me know by writing in the comments section.

I will let you my response in the next article.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

On the 6th of April 2007, Arianna Huffington, the founder of HuffPost collapsed from sleep deprivation and exhaustion, broke her cheekbone, and woke up in a pool of blood. She wrote about it in her post 10 Years Ago I Collapsed From Burnout and Exhaustion.

I didn’t know about Arianna Huffington’s famous Burnout which led her to quit Hufpost until two weeks ago when I realized something was not right with me.

I had developed a terrible neck ache. My eyes were permanently tired. I had so many articles turning over in my head, but when I sat down to write, the words wouldn’t come out. I was incoherent, apprehensive, and anxious. I lost confidence in myself. Nothing I did was good enough. I questioned the purpose of everything I was doing. I was ready to give up all the work I did for in the past two years. All I wanted to do was to curl up in bed. And when I did lie down in a fetal position, I would get up within minutes, frightened that I was wasting time.

I was on the brink of Burnout.

About 18 months ago, I quit my job to become a full-time writer. One would think, how lucky I was to be able to do that. I thought I would have a lot of time on my hand to devote to writing. But it was hardly the case. There was so much to learn. I enrolled in courses after courses, took on projects after projects, wrote article after article. I was enjoying the journey, up to a point until lockdown restricted my movement.

I took the opportunity to write even more.

I was not socializing, not going to the gym, not even going for walks. I got obsessed with increasing my productivity. It didn’t matter how much I accomplished in a day; what I was not fit in my day haunting me. There was no demarcation where my work-day ended, and off-work time began.

I resisted sleep stay up way past my bedtime, trying to squeeze in a little more. The result was when I manage to get to bed, I wasn’t able to sleep. I was restless, overwhelmed, and anxious all the time.

Thankfully I took the warning signs seriously.

I decided to research Burnout. If it was something that was going to take me down, I wanted to know all about it. I read everything I could find on the topic. Its history. The science behind it, the finding from the new research, other people’s experiences, and coping strategies.

I took notes. And I made my own observations. I am sharing them here so that you can watch out for the symptoms and are aware of some coping strategies.

The article is divided into two parts. Part 1 deals with science and Part 2 with the coping strategies.

PART 1 – What is burnout?

The term “Burnout” was first coined in the 1970s by the American psychologist Herbert Freudenberger. He used it to describe the consequences of severe stress and high ideals in “helping” professions. Doctors and nurses, for example, who sacrifice themselves for others, would often end up being “Burned out,” exhausted, listless, and unable to cope.

Nowadays, Burnout is experienced not just by those in the helping professions. It can affect anyone, from stressed-out career-driven people and celebrities to overworked employees and homemakers.

Burnout is now recognized as a legitimate medical disorder by much of mainstream medicine and has even been given its own ICD-10 code (Z73.0 — Burn-out state of vital exhaustion).

Is Burnout real?

It’s a mistake to assume that burnout is merely an emotional response to long hours or a challenging job. Mounting scientific evidence shows that Burnout takes a profound physical toll that cascades well beyond our professional lives.

Burnout expert Christina Maslach defines burnout as “a syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment.” It creeps up leaving us physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted, as well as frustrated, disillusioned, uncaring, and cynical.

Adrienne J. Heinz, a licensed psychologist and research scientist at the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder at the Palo Alto VA Health Care System and Stanford University lists the following as the signs of Burnout.

• Reduced efficiency and energy
• Lowered levels of motivation
• Increased errors
• Fatigue
• Headaches, muscle tension, GI problems
• Irritability, Increased frustration
• High levels of stress and anxiety
• Suspiciousness, cynicism
• Trouble sleeping
• Feelings trapped — lack of control
• Alcohol, substances to cope
• Feelings worried about work when not at work
• Loss of interest — Apathy

Many of burnout symptoms overlap with that of depression, leading the experts to debate whether burnout is a form of depression.

Could Burnout be a form of depression?

Dr. Grant H. Brenner, a physician-psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, debates that burnout may actually be depression, but calling it “burnout” makes it harder to get treatment where it is sorely needed.

To look at whether burnout is a depression in another guise, Bianchi, Schonfeld, and Verkuilen of the City University of New York and the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland conducted a study of 3,113 individuals across five different samples, measuring both burnout and depression, to determine whether there was any difference between the two.

The researchers found that not only did Burnout correlate strongly with clinical depression, but that individual Burnout factors correlated better with depression symptoms than with any other medical condition.

If you’re feeling burnout at work or in life in general, it will not go away on its own. Neuroscientists discovered that Burnout has a physical impact on your brain.

Does Burnout have a physical impact on the brain?

New research is showing burnout can be devastating to the brain.

A team of psychologists at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden provided striking evidence that Burnout can alter neural circuits, ultimately causing a vicious cycle of neurological dysfunction.

• A study by Armita Golkar and her colleagues reported that the work-related chronic stress enlarges the amygdala — the part of the brain that controls emotional reactions. This can increase moodiness. It also causes a stronger stress response when startled.
• In a separate study by Ivanka Savic, a neurologist in the Department of Women’s and Children’s Health at the Karolinska Institutet reported that the Burnout causes the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that is responsible for cognitive functioning, to go thin. This normally happens with aging, but in people who are stressed for prolonged periods of time, it occurs much more rapidly.
• A team of Greek psychological scientists led by Pavlos Deligkaris conducted a comprehensive review of the burnout literature and concluded the parts of the brain that control memory and attention spans are weakened. This makes it more difficult to learn.
• The brains of people who are chronically Burntout show similar damage as people who have experienced trauma.
• Burnout reduces the connectivity between different parts of the brain, which can lead to decreased creativity, working memory, and problem-solving skills.

To sum up, the emerging research is showing that the chronic psychosocial stress that characterizes burnout not only impairs people’s personal and social functioning, it also can overwhelm their cognitive skills and neuroendocrine systems — eventually leading to distinctive changes in the anatomy and functioning of the brain.

APS Fellow Christina Maslach, professor emerita at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of the foremost researchers on Burnout, published an article “Burned-Out,” in the magazine Human Behavior in 1976 that generated a huge public response. The impact of that article was huge leading to more research, more books, and more attention from academic journals.

Maslach and APS Fellow Susan E. Jackson (Rutgers University) collaborated on what would become the most influential framework for defining and assessing burnout.

At its core, burnout emerges when the demands of a job (or home) outstrip a person’s ability to cope with the stress.

Is stress the root cause of Burnout?

It’s a common misconception that the culprit behind Burnout is merely working too long or too hard. Research indicates that other factors, both individual and organizational, can be just as detrimental.

A comprehensive report on psychosocial stress in the workplace published by the World Health Organization identified consistent evidence that “high job demands, low control, and effort-reward imbalance are risk factors for mental and physical health problems.”

Ultimately, burnout results when the balance of deadlines, demands, working hours, and other stressors outstrips rewards, recognition, and relaxation.

Neuroimaging studies are showing that the brains of people suffering from clinical burnout show similar patterns to the brains of people who have experienced severe early-life trauma.

The symptoms of accumulated stress are well known.

• Behavioral — avoidance, irritability, sleep problems
• Cognitive — easily distracted, confused, thoughts of dread
• Emotional — anger, worry, depression
• Cardiovascular — chest pain, palpitations, cold extremities
• Muscular — tension headache, neck/back pain, shaky/strained voice
• Skin — flushing, hives/rashes/ psoriasis, perspiration

With these kinds of extreme effects, burnout is no joke. It can lead to anxiety, panic, anger, and breakdown.

Can Burnout be reversed?

Bruce S. McEwen (The Rockefeller University) along with BJ Casey (Department of Psychology, Yale University) Conor Liston, (Associate Professor Weill Cornell Medicin) found promising initial evidence that the adverse effects of chronic stress may be reversible.

In a study, they took a group of stressed-out medical students who were preparing to take their licensing exam and found that their brains showed many of the impairments described above. However, after four weeks of relaxation, many of the changes in the brain were reversed. They also stopped experiencing side effects, such as having a short attention span and mood swings.

But four weeks of exam prep is not equivalent to the years of stress that many people endure at their jobs.

However, this study does suggest that interventions and recovery at the neurological level are possible for people suffering from burnout.

PART 2

Experiences of people who suffered from burnout.

Many of the Medium writers spoke of their experience of burnout.

Lara McPherson suffered for six years before being correctly diagnosed

Lara McPherson wrote in her article What Burn Out Feels Like that she learned that burnout has a medical name too. It is called Hypoadrenia. Also known as Adrenal Fatigue.

She had been experiencing continued fatigue or exhaustion, muscle weakness, sleep disturbance, decreased ability to handle stress, Hypertension, hypoglycemia, unusual food cravings, weight gain, inability to lose weight, estrogen/progesterone imbalance, chronic anemia, trouble sleeping, depression for over six years. In that time she saw no less than seven professionals trying to get a correct diagnosis.

Unfortunately for me, it looks like the unresolved stress of the original trauma meant my tolerance for new stress was already greatly reduced. This, combined with too-big ambitions and expectations (my own) and an uninformed willingness to subscribe to “the cult of busy” led to chronically elevated stress hormone levels (cortisol), which gradually corroded my body’s ability to regulate adrenal and other hormones and started greatly affecting my ability to function, let alone thrive. When my adrenal system could no longer deal with the pressure it started to give way, disrupting my body’s whole eco-system in the process.

Imogen Roy couldn’t imagine one could burn out while doing something one loves.

Imogen Roy had just started her consultancy when she started experiencing the warning signs of burnout. She couldn’t understand it. She loved her work and she was working just thirty hours a week. But she was wrong.

At first, I felt like a failure. And I was confused. But I’m not even working that hard or that long! — I’d think to myself. I have a great life! I love my work! I’m doing what I love! I felt guilty. I felt week.

Burnout manifests itself differently for everyone. But feeling constantly drained, irritable and unproductive are the most common early-warning symptoms.

In her article How to manage burnout when you can’t take time off, suggests to “just stop and take a break.” But if that is not possible, these seven coping strategies helped her survive.

1. Only do the essentials
2. Reduce your hours
3. Tell someone
4. Organize something to look forward to.
5. Get our of the house (or office)
6. Reduce additional emotional stress
7. See every challenge as an opportunity to grow.

Richie Crowley suggests a contentment approach to avoid burnout.

In his article, The Fear of Complacency Drives “Burnout” — Here’s The Solution Richie Crowley writes that the root cause of Burnout is trying to accomplish too much in a day out of the fear of complacency. He says (and I paraphrase) that each day we set out to accomplish a day’s worth of tasks. Some days we finish them all, other days, we get distracted, and we don’t. When this happens, we have two choices: finish the tasks of the day at any cost or be content with what you have been able to accomplish. If we chose the former, that leads to “Burn-out.”

That is the reason he chooses the latter. He chooses to admire himself for his flexibility and ability to be able to be content with what he accomplishes. He reckons this attitude towards work is sold as being competitive and hardworking, but truly it is a fear of complacency.

This fear of complacency is what then drives the unhealthy behaviors and unhealthy decisions to continue working while ignoring balance and our wellness.

Tom Kuegler suggest choosing between two complete extremes

When you are burnout from writing Tom Kuegler suggests you either write your way out of it (it will get you out of the writer’s block caused by sheer laziness) or take a long, long break.

Katy Velvet recommends exercising your flexibility to prioritize your projects.

Katy Velvet, who works 12–15 hours a day and is seriously sleep-deprived points out that the great thing about working for yourself is that you have the flexibility to prioritize your projects. She has four tips in her article The Truth About Burn Out, to avoid turning into a zombie.

1. Learn to take breaks.
2. Relaxation should be a priority.
3. Let your loved ones know about your burnout.
4. Promise to check in with yourself.

Here is what I figured out from my burnout.

My burnout meant something had to change. It was a warning sign. And I am glad I took it seriously. I did a series of things.

1. I took a two-week break. I put my daily schedule on hold and freed up my day.
2. I talked about what I was going through with my friends and family members. The more I tried to explain to them, the more I became aware of the issues I was facing.
3. I culled several projects. I put some on the back-burner and abandoned some altogether.
4. I scheduled breaks on my calendar. Daily breaks, weekly breaks, and yearly breaks.

Summary

Burnout is a medical condition very closely related to depression.

Burnout is not just experienced by those in stressful jobs or those in the helping professions. It can affect anyone, from stressed-out career-driven people and celebrities to overworked employees and homemakers.

Burnout can physically alter your brain.

The jury is still out on the reversal of Burnout symptoms.

Early detection and intervention can help the long term detrimental effects.

What can you do?

Try and figure out what your Burnout is trying to tell you. It might be a sign that something has to change.

Rather than a catastrophe, Arianna Huffington says burnout was The Best Thing That Could Have Happened To Her. It literally changed her life. She wrote two books, Thrive and The Sleep Revolution, and launch a new business, Thrive Global, which is helping people navigate through challenging times with less stress and greater resilience.

Photo by Yuris Alhumaydy on Unsplash

About a year ago Mark Rober (a former NASA engineer) asked his YouTube followers to play a simple computer programming puzzle that he made with his buddy.

He told them that he wanted to prove that anyone from any background could learn to code. Fifty thousand of them took the challenge. But the truth was he didn’t care about proving that everyone could learn to code.

He was trying to figure out the role of fun factor in the learning process.

To be able to do that he added a little bit of stress for half the participants. He randomly served two slightly different versions of puzzles.

The only difference between the two versions was that in one version if they failed they didn’t lose any points but in the other version they lost five points. In both versions, the participants were given 200 points to start with.

When he analyzed the data he discovered that the success rate for those who were penalized for failed attempts was around 52%. But the success rate for those who were not penalized was 68%.

A difference of 16% was too much to believe.

But the answer came to him when he analyzed another piece of data  — the number of attempts to solve the puzzle.

Those who were penalized gave up after 5 tries but those who were not penalized tried 12 times or more. 

In other words, those who didn’t see failure in a negative light tried two and a half times more to solve the puzzle. As a result, they got more success and therefore learned more.

This was an astounding discovery. They had accidentally stumbled upon something significant. The trick to learning more is finding the right way to frame the learning process.

How to frame the learning process to learn more?

There are three things you can do:

1. Make failure a part of the learning process.

2. Shift the focus to fun.

3. Make the environment conducive to learning.

1. Make failure a part of the learning process. 

If you canframe the learning processin such a way where failure doesn’t bother you can learn much more and have a lot of fun in the process.

There is real evidence of that in real life. Toddlers are constantly trying new things. When they learn to walk they don’t think about how dumb they might look if they fall. They fall, again and again, and they don’t get scolded by their parents either. Instead, the parents encourage them to try again and again.

Toddlers’ focus is on learning to walk. By constantly trying, failing, and retrying they learn to walk.

2. Shift the focus to fun

When Super Mario Bros. came out, people were obsessed with it. They wanted to get to the castle and rescue the beautiful Princess Peach from the evil Bowser. Kids will get to school and ask each other, “What level did you make it to? Did you pass the game?”

They never asked each other about the different ways they might have died.

When playing these games, after jumping into a pit, no one thinks, “I am so ashamed; that was such a failure, I am never going to try again.”

What really happens is that they make a mental note, “I’ve got to remember there’s a pit there; next time, I’m going to come out with a little more speed and jump a bit later.”

By shifting our focus on the fun we can trick our brain and learn more. Science supports it too.

Brain research tells us that when the fun stops, learning often stops too.

Judy Will calls it the RAD effect in her paper The Neuroscience of Joyful Education. RAD is the acronym that explains the science behind the fun factor.

R stands for Reticular Activating System, A for Amygdala,and D for Dopamine. It happens in three steps.

● Novelty promotes information transmission through the Reticular activating system.
● Stress-free learning propels data through the Amygdala’s effective filter.
● Pleasurable associations linked with learning are more likely to release more dopamine, a neurotransmitter that stimulates the memory centers and promotes the release of acetylcholine, which increases focused attention.

You can add novelty by creating a stress-free environment for learning. 

3. Make the environment conducive to learning.

For some reason, most of the learning environments are designed like classrooms. Whether they are workshops, seminars, or group learning sessions; they are set up is like a school, demanding conformity and rigidity. Something that language teacher Michel Thomas renowned for his unconventional but successful ways of teaching is trying to break. 

If you look at Michel Thomas’s video on YouTube, you’ll notice something quite odd. He has been given a bunch of very challenging students (a mixed bag in other words) and his job is to get them started speaking French. The video starts with students in the classroom but they are not learning the language. 

Instead, Thomas gets them to do something entirely unexpected.

He gets then to move furniture. The students move sofas, tables, chairs and screens to create an atmosphere that is more like a lounge room rather than a classroom. Once the barrier between the teacher and student is broken, the conversation starts. Add food and coffee to the mix and students will be using French words and remember them much more easily. There will be no shame in incorrect pronunciation or not remembering the new words. The mistakes will be laughed off real learning will happen.

Thomas says, “learning should never be work. Instead, it should be a pleasure”.

You can change the environment for self-learning too. Rather than sitting in a library (or classroom) go to a park or cafe. Rather than reading alone, take along a friend. Explain to your friend what you have just read. You will read with more concentration and you will never forget what you have explained to someone in your own words.

I have covered a lot, lets recap.

The trick to learning more is finding the right way to frame the learning process.

If you can change your learning process in such a way that the failure is part of the learning process (a child learning to walk), your focus is on having fun (like saving the princess in a game) and your environment stress-free and novel (from a classroom or a library to a loungeroom or a cafe) you can enhance your learning many folds.

There you go. 

Add some fun to your learning process and you will learn much more.

Photo by John Moeses Bauan on Unsplash

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