Having experienced burnout with a couple of previous jobs I’d like to try and avoid ever doing that again. It’s painful. It makes going into work not fun. It takes dreading Monday to a whole new level. It really weighs on you. So in an effort to elude this there are a couple of preventative measures I’ve taken over the past few months.
It’s probably common knowledge that taking a vacation or just some time away to clear your head and not think about work is an affective way to let go and recharge a little bit. I know this too. Unfortunately I’m cursed with a desire to bank up my vacation so that I always have a buffer just in case I ever need it for any reason. Which means that instead of using it like I’m supposed to, I’d rather just see the balance number go up. A couple of policy changes at work having to do with max balance and payout percentage along with a personal long term goal pushed me to reevaluate my mentality towards this.
At some point during 2013 I was able to calculate that the amount of PTO that I would accrue through the remainder of the year (plus my balance at that point) less my planned vacation would leave me with 120 hours, or three work weeks, remaining that I would carry over to 2014. That’s the equivalent of carrying over 9 months of accrued PTO, a great indicator that I wasn’t properly utilizing this benefit. So the 3 weeks of carry over plus the four weeks that I’d accrue throughout 2014 would give me seven weeks to use throughout the year. At that point I decided that my intent for this in 2014 was to use it all, every last accrued hour. I intend to start the 2015 work year on January 5 with a PTO balance of 0.
The tricky part at this point was figuring out how in the hell I was going to spend all that time, so I made a spreadsheet. The basic concept was to put in each pay period and my expected balance at that point. I added in company holidays and work trips that get me out of the office and help relieve some of the burnout build up just by getting out of the office, doing something different, and all together changing the environment. The spreadsheet was able to give me an idea of when I would be approaching my PTO balance cap as well as provide a quick visual indication when I had too many pay periods planned without a break. With the shell setup I started adding in my vacation time that I knew I would need. A week for a trip to the Caribbean in March. A day for my birthday, since nobody should have to work on their birthday. And three days for a trip to Vegas with Snacks where we could take advantage of free hotel and a free flight for her since she’ll be going for her speaking event and conference, we can just piggy back on top of it. I know I’ll need a couple days for the Snack’s family trip to Okoboji, a couple days for a commitment in Chicago and possibly a couple days of fun in the sun in Florida in August. With all that accounted for I need to start looking for other ways to spend my time since I still have four weeks left. So I’ll plan on taking off the entire week of Thanksgiving and I found a way to use 7 days in December that will give me 16 straight days off (including weekends.) I still have two weeks unaccounted for and at this point I feel like I have pretty good coverage throughout the year. I’ll probably keep those unreserved and see what happens but for now my initial options are a couple of random weeks in September and October or every Wednesday in those months. I’d rather have a series of two day work chunks that three day weekends. Extending the weekend just doesn’t feel as valuable to me as having to only go to work for two days at a time.
So come 2015 I should feel very refreshed.
The other main change I’ve started to make over the last two months has more of an everyday impact. I’ve decided to change my work hours. Besides just helping me reduce stress it has the added benefit of actually being very beneficial to my work as well. I currently manage two different, but related products. Each product has a dedicated team. One of those teams is based in the same office that I am and I see and interact with them everyday. The other team is based in Shanghai, and while I don’t see them everyday I still interact with them everyday. During the winter months they are 14 hours ahead of us, and 13 in the summer. My new hours allow me to interact with them with minimal impact to most people’s schedule.
One of the things I started doing last year was waking up earlier. WAY earlier. Usually between 4:00 and 5:00 am, without an alarm clock. The major problem that I’ve always had with this was that I don’t want to get up and immediately, in the dark, get dressed and leave the house to go for a run or go to the gym. So I’d use the time to catch up on the DVR, read things on the internets or play games. And while I really enjoyed this, I still had to go to the gym after work and I still had to spend 8+ hours at the office, and often times still had to deal with at least a little bit of traffic. It occurred to me after a while that while I was going a lot of things for myself that early that I was always checking and answering email from China in order to cut down on the delay in communication time.
The concept that I settled on for my new work hour goes a little something like this. I continue to wake up without an alarm clock. I let the dog out, grab some water or make some coffee, and break out my work computer. I work for two hours and I focus entirely on the product whose team is based in Shanghai. I respond to questions, answer email, follow up on submissions and review progress. There are few if any distractions, nobody walks over to my desk, even Swarley goes back to bed until breakfast time. Once I’m done I have about 2 and half hour before my morning meeting. I can do whatever I want… as long as it includes getting ready for work and taking Swarles for a walk. Then I dial in for my call before heading in to the office. At 9:30. At that time it takes less than 25 minutes garage to desk. Having already worked for over two hours I’m able to leave the office around 3:30. Rarely do I actually get to leave when I expect but I still get to avoid afternoon rush hour which is great. The whole process fits into my schedule and breaks up my day. So far I think it’s been really beneficial for me personally and my work.
I think these are good steps in order to maintain a good balance between work and life and I hope they continue to seem as beneficial throughout the year as they do right now. If during January 2015 I look back on this process and come to a different conclusion, then it might be time to take some more drastic measures.
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