Decrapify Work or Die (from the steely knives of cynicism!)
My cynicism saved me. Oh, the irony!
In 2019, the WHO recognised burnout as a health-affecting issue and defined it as:
Burn-out is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterized by three dimensions:
feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion;
increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job; and
reduced professional efficacy.
As someone who has experienced this (putting myself in a sadly not-very-exclusive club), I relate to most of it but I have a problem with ‘cynicism related to one's job’.
You see, I’m pretty sure it was the cynicism that kept me sane. If I hadn’t been able to take the piss out of what was going on then I would have crumbled way earlier. It wasn’t a sign of burnout, it was a sign of resilience.
In those dark times, being able to share a bit of ‘gallows humour’ down the pub with my fellow sufferers was the thing that gave me the strength to endure. Being able to see the disconnect between what management said and what actually happened and make fun of it was about the only joy we got. It was a way of getting back a bit of power. Yes, they were grinding us into the dust but we were laughing in their faces.
Dr. Richard Claydon (yes, him again) calls this the role of the Eironist and believes it both extremely valuable to and reviled by many organisations in equal measure. The Eironist is the character in Greek drama who comments on the action and points out the absurdities and the gap between the protestations of the protagonists and what is actually happening.
Of course, if you do this is in a large organisation, you are considered to be a ‘poor fit’ culturally, or a troublemaker, or both. This often results in you being ‘flattened’, isolated or managed out. Or all of them, in that order, in my case.
I think cynicism is a defence mechanism to protect yourself from a toxic environment. It’s a way of controlling the narrative, of countering the negative forces and of asserting your creative expression and independence of thought.
Whilst I was cynical about my employers, however, I am generally an optimist and believe in the innate goodness of people. So you could say that my cynicism was constrained to work. Now, the WHO say that “Burn-out refers specifically to phenomena in the occupational context and should not be applied to describe experiences in other areas of life.”
So, here we part ways again because I think the real sign that I was in burnout was when that ‘healthy cynicism’ in the workplace spilled out into the other areas of my life and began to undermine my optimism. That’s what should have been the red light for me (it wasn’t because I didn’t know burnout was a thing and so I just staggered on, of course).
So what do you reckon? Cynicism - good for your resilience or a sign of burnout?
For all the negative consequences, I still go for the former.
The state we're in
Feeling a bit Meh?
Well, after the past year or so, that’s hardly surprising. It seems a lot of us are and it’s OK, because we’re just languishing. Doesn’t that make you feel better?
In positive psychology, they talk about the two states of depression and flourishing, and how we can navigate our way alone this continuum from the one to the other and stay at the flourishing end. Only right now we’re stuck in the middle, and that’s the little referred to state of languishing.
Languishing is ‘an absence of well-being’ and many of us can associate with that right now. Personally, I know I am not depressed but I also know that I’m not exactly going gangbusters at the moment, I’m just a bit ‘Meh!’. And that’s how it’s been for several months now.
The good news is there’s an antidote and that is - FLOW! Well, it could be (they’re still checking). And that IS good news but the problem now is, how do you achieve a state of flow?
For many, the workplace seems like an unlikely source. In fact, many workplaces seem designed specifically to stop flow. Constant interruption, end-to-end meetings and/or zoom calls, stifling processes, excessive workloads, stress, exhaustion … well, you get the picture.
That’s rather odd, isn’t it? I mean, these workplaces want creativity and innovation and collaboration and … well, that’s what they SAY they want. And yet they create conditions that keep people languishing, with no path to flourishing. You could say it’s ironic.
Until organisations enable play and experimentation and give their people the space and time to pursue their curiosity without expectations of specific outcomes, then their people will continue to languish. The ones that don’t slide into depression, that is.
Employees, on the other hand, need to look for flow outside of the workplace. Make time your hobbies, take up new ones, learn new skills, exercise, go and get lost in the world. Otherwise you’ll end up in a right old state. Languishing. Which is probably somewhere between Montana and North Dakota.
(For more on this, here’s Adam Grant’s NYT article There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing)
Missing it ...
Grief is one of the contributory factors to languishing and something that has been much on my mind lately.
I used to think of grief as being something you felt when you lost people but I now know. thanks to Brene Brown, that it’s much more than that. It’s about the loss of our hopes and dreams, our possible and imagined futures, longing for what was and feeling lost in the new world we find ourselves in.
It was a bombshell when I realised that my response to the redundancies that I suffered should have been grief, especially the first one in BT. I was aware of the disappointment of these setbacks but I was not aware of the loss of my dreams and aspirations, for the futures that I had projected both consciously and unconsciously. I had never grieved for those and so had not been able to properly move on and create new futures.
Right now, we are all grieving ‘normal life’, whatever that may mean for each of us. For some, who have lost loved ones or had to postpone weddings and other major life events, it is very marked. For others, it’s less dramatic but still has impact. We need to acknowledge and grieve for our loss so that we can create new hopes and dreams.
Grief is a slippery bugger, hiding away in places you don’t expect. Don’t overlook it. And how ever small the cause, take the time to grieve. It’s part of living, after all.
Ahoy! Pirates on the Airwaves
The Be More Pirate podcast has launched! Sam Conniff and Alex Barker interviewing modern-day pirates who have rewritten the rules. The first three are up and they’re excellent. Inspirational, educational and entertaining. Get it at your usual podcast place (or find it here on Apple)
And there's more of ME! This is my Candid Craic interview, imaginatively called “Decrapifying Work with Colin Newlyn”, with Oscar Velhuis and Dr Richard Claydon (yes, him yet again) of EQ Lab who also run the excellent Drinking Dialogues every Tuesday.
Monday is the new Friday, don't you know?
OK, this was delayed as it was my birthday at the weekend and I had better things to do than write this rubbish. Mostly involving food and alcohol with friends and family. Maybe I'll get back on track this week. Or maybe not.
Get in touch, I'd love to hear what you think of my nonsense, and anything else on your mind!