Disrupting Burnout
Disrupting Burnout with Dr. Patrice Buckner Jackson is dedicated to overworked, undervalued high-achieving servant leaders who give all to serve others and leave very little for yourself. You are an accomplished woman with many responsibilities and you often find yourself overwhelmed, exhausted, and burned out. I’ve been there. As a matter of fact, burnout almost cost me everything. Compassionate work can carry a high price tag: your mind, body, spirit and relationships may be in distress as you serve the needs of others. I am here to equip your hands and refresh your heart so you can serve in purpose and fulfillment and permanently break cycles of burnout.
Disrupting Burnout
137. “I Can’t Stop!” Overcoming Objections to Taking a Break
Access the S.T.O.P. Plan here, Friend.
- This is a free resource to support your journey toward a more sustainable rhythm of life
Could a simple "rhythm reset" be the key to combating burnout, especially for women balancing the demands of home and career? Join me, Dr. Patrice Buckner-Jackson, affectionately known as PBJ, as we confront the common objections women face in prioritizing their well-being amidst life's hustle. We'll uncover the crucial need for integrating micro breaks into daily routines to safeguard physical and mental health. Discover practical strategies to transform rest from an elusive luxury into an attainable necessity, ensuring you're as effective at work as you are at home.
This engaging episode unpacks the art of planning micro breaks for mental rejuvenation without overwhelming your schedule. You’ll hear how my husband and I use our "weekenders" to recharge, allowing us to return refreshed rather than exhausted. We'll delve into the significance of strategic time management, even in short-staffed teams, by conducting desk audits that offer insights into workload distribution and uncover unacknowledged after-hours tasks. Learn how to communicate with unsupportive leadership to foster an environment that values mental health and well-being.
Beyond individual strategies, we'll explore the broader concept of strategic renewal, aligning personal well-being with organizational goals. By speaking the language of those we wish to influence, whether through data or stories, we can advocate for a sustainable rhythm of rest that benefits not just ourselves but everyone around us. We'll tackle objections to taking breaks and share creative ways to communicate and gain support for renewal plans. Join the conversation and take the first step towards showing up as your best self—it's time for a reset!
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We are killing our teams because we keep trying to do more with less and folks ain't trying to hear it. They've had enough, they're not willing and they're not able to keep doing more with less. Hey friend, welcome to another episode of the Disrupting Burnout podcast, where we are giving you the strategies for pouring out purpose without continuing to live through the consequences of burnout. Friend, if you are new here, I'm Dr Patrice Buckner-Jackson, but you can call me PBJ, welcome. I am glad you are here and you're right in time for the conversation. Friend, listen. If you have not listened to all of the last few weeks this month concerning the rhythm reset, I want you to go back. You can listen to this one first if you like, but I want you to go back and listen to all of these episodes so you can catch up and know what we're talking about when we say it's time to take a rhythm reset. It's time to reset your normal rhythm, set your home base to a sustainable rhythm of life, the way that you move, the way that you serve the things on your agenda. You've got to reset yourself so that you are in a pace that you can live with, not just a pace that is going to make you run out of gas quickly. You've been in that pace a long time, friend, and it's time for a new pace. So go back and listen to those episodes so that you can catch up on the conversation.
Dr. PBJ:Today I want to address some of your objections, because every time I do a speech or a workshop, or I talk on the podcast or on social media, people women share with me. Let me just be specific. All right, all of you are welcome, everybody's welcome, right? But let me talk to my sisters for a minute, because you all constantly give me the reasons why you cannot stop. As soon as I start talking about taking a pause, taking a stop, your mind immediately starts giving you excuses and reasons why you can't stop. So today I want to address some of those reasons, some of those excuses, some of those objectives, to let you know that you can and you should.
Dr. PBJ:And let me just start with the most important one. What if you don't Friend? What if you don't? What if you don't stop? What if you don't reset? What if you don't change your rhythm? Then what? What happens to your body? Or what's happening right now? What happens to your mind? Or what is happening right now? What happens in your family if you cannot care for them? What happens at work if you cannot be there and you cannot take care of your responsibilities? So, before I give you strategies and even more reasons why you need to do this, what if you don't? What's going to happen? If you don't? Pbj, I can't stop. I don't have time to stop. If I stop, all of this falls apart. We're short-staffed. I don't have anybody that can take my place at work. I don't have support at home or at work to stop.
Dr. PBJ:Friends, if any of these thoughts come to mind when you think about taking a break, you are the person who needs to stop the most, to stop the most. I want to offer you our stop plan. Simple, I want you to use the same strategies and wisdom and skills that you use at work, and I'm going to guide you to using those strategies to plan micro breaks. I'm not talking about a month's sabbatical, but can you incorporate micro breaks into your life as a regular rhythm of rest so that while you are serving, while you are giving, you can have moments of revival, so that you can live the life you're living sustainably? Friend, you need to grab this stop plan. Make sure to click the link in the show notes or wherever you're watching or listening to this, so that you can get what you need right now. It can't wait. I know you do a wonderful job, but people don't know what it cost you to be you, and you know what the cost has you. It's time to stop. Grab the plan today when I am considering coaching a woman, so we will meet and decide if I'm a good fit for her or she's a good fit for me and I ask this question quite often, and you might be shocked at the number of times I hear I don't think I can live, or I think it's going to take my life, or I think I might get sick. We're not playing games here. Only you know how deep you've fallen into the hole of burnout. Only you know how far you've gotten, and sometimes you don't even know. So if you have a reason why you can't stop, why you can't slow down, why you can't pause, why you can't reset, the first thing I want you to critically think about is what happens if you don't. So let's just start right there.
Dr. PBJ:Let me share with you some of the most popular objections that I hear often from mothers out here, but I have children, or I have small children, and I don't have help. I don't have family close, my partner or the other parent, they have a demanding job or they're not in the picture. I have to take care of my children, pbj. So how do I pause and take care of my children? That's number one. Number two I hear quite often we're short staffed at work. We have open positions and they've been open for a long time and they don't seem to be filling very soon. So who am I going to give my work to when I'm the only one that does this particular thing, or I'm the only one that has this expertise, or we just don't have enough hands? We just don't have enough hands and it doesn't seem like it's changing or getting better anytime soon. The next objection that I hear pretty often is how do I do that when my leadership is not supportive? I have a supervisor or an executive or a boss who could care less about my need to rest or my burnout or where I am. They just want the work done, my burnout or where I am, they just want the work done. So how can I pause when I am not supported professionally or even personally in doing that.
Dr. PBJ:So I want to walk through these objections and I want to give you some thoughts, some considerations that may help you move forward in planning your stop, your reset, your pause. The first thing I want you to know is that a pause is not all or nothing. So I'm not saying quit, I'm not saying escape, I'm not saying run away. I'm saying pause, plan a pause. Think about your family, think about your organization or your workplace. Wouldn't it be better to plan for the time you're going to be away, as opposed to folks having to scramble and rally to figure out what to do if you cannot be there? To figure out what to do if you cannot be there, if, god forbid, you were sick or out for some reason and you cannot do the things that you do? Folks would have to figure it out. So wouldn't you rather work with your people to make a plan, as opposed to getting to a broken point where you cannot help at all and people have to figure it out?
Dr. PBJ:I want you to be involved in the planning. I want you to be in the driver's seat. I want you to make some decisions for yourself, instead of finding yourself in a position where people have to decide for you. Someone else has to decide who's going to take care of your babies. Somebody has to jump in and take care of work because you can't be there. Friend, we're not playing around here. That's how critical this thing is. With everything going on in our world right now and all the pressures internally, it is critically important that we make the decisions for ourselves, for our health, for our wholeness, for our recovery now.
Dr. PBJ:You can't wait till things get better. You can't wait for policies to change. You can't wait and see how bad all of this gets. Friend, you better do something right now, because your nervous system was wrecked before 2025 came in. For some of you, your nervous system was wrecked before 2020 came in, and you still pushing and you're still going and you're still showing up. So what if you can't? This is not about escaping. It's not all or nothing. It's about being intentional and being wise about what you need in order to be who you are. People appreciate what you do, but they don't know what it costs you to be you. So let's walk through it together.
Dr. PBJ:First of all, no matter what your objection is or what your situation is, I want you to consider what a micro break looks like to you. So what is the smallest stop you are willing to consider right now? We just need to start, and I know I know your mind is telling you that's not going to help. You don't know how burnt out I am. A little stop is not going to matter, friend, hear me, hear my heart. I'm telling you every little bit helps. So what is a micro break or a small stop that you are willing to do?
Dr. PBJ:I have a podcast episode where I'm talking about three kinds of rest that you need. You need your Selah rest your daily throughout the day, three to five minutes. You need your Sabbath rest, your weekly disconnect. And then your sabbatical rest, where you can physically get away from all of your responsibilities and find rest. But I want to even be more detailed than that. So what does a micro break look like for you Meaning? Can you use a day that you're already off, work some holiday, something where the office is already closed, and can you take better advantage of that time off than you have in the past?
Dr. PBJ:Shoot, let's think about the weekend. Can you start with your weekend? If you're off on weekends or whatever day you are not working, can you be more intentional about that weekend time so that you can have a real pause or a real break. Well, pbj, I have little kids. Okay, got it. Can you take some time off while those babies are in school or daycare? Drop them off just like any regular day. Go send them to the people that take care of them throughout the day and you go, instead of going to work, go sit by a body of water, go to a park, go have coffee with a friend. Not the friend that dumps all their problems on you, not that one, not this time. Choose the friend that refreshes you every time you're with her. Take advantage of hiring some help. Can you get a nanny or a babysitter? Can you swap with another mom sitter? Can you swap with another mom? So somebody else who needs a break? You take care of their kids this weekend and they take care of your kids next weekend. It's amazing how much relief you can feel knowing that you have a break planned.
Dr. PBJ:One of the things my husband and I did this year is we took our written family calendar that we keep up on the wall in the office and we already planned out for the year our time off and what we call weekenders. So a weekender might be a weekend where he has a day off because his office is closed, so it's a three-day weekend. It may be a weekend where he takes a day off, but it's also time that I protect and block that I will not take speaking engagements or workshops or any other kind of work and we go out of town. It might be an hour away, it might be two hours away, we might fly somewhere, but we have already identified those weekenders for the year. So I know, as I'm pushing through, I got a lot of work, I got to get this done, but I can see on the calendar that that break is coming and when we take those weekenders we don't fill the agenda with a bunch of things to do, but we relax, we enjoy good food, we enjoy each other.
Dr. PBJ:We might do one or two things, but we don't come back exhausted. We're not coming back tired. We're going away to rest. We drop the dog off at the borders. We have wonderful group of people who take care of her and we go and take care of ourselves.
Dr. PBJ:Now, of course, we are empty nesters. Our child is grown and she is doing her thing, so we have space to do that, but so do you. Who else loves your children. Well, pbj, I don't have family close, got it. Is someone willing to come into town? Is there another family, maybe from church or maybe from work, that you trust your babies with and they will take care of them for you? And then you exchange the favor. I want you to be creative and stop telling yourself no. Start with yes. If I did this, how would I make it work? If we were really going to take this break seriously, how would we take this break and how would we make it work? So you know, you have children and someone has to take care of your babies.
Dr. PBJ:Engage your community. None of us do life alone. All of us need a community around us, and sometimes that community is not your blood and not just children. Some of you are caretakers. Some of you take care of adults in your life, family members who have illnesses or situations where they cannot take care of themselves or they need extra help. You need a break too. The research shows us that the health of the caretaker is often more in jeopardy than the health of the person who has the health issue, because the caretaker is so focused on the loved one that they forget about themselves. So who do you have in your community? Who can you pay? Who can you assign? Who can you ask for help to take a weekend? Or take a day, take a day, take a couple hours, take a half day. What is that micro break that you're willing to start with to just catch your breath? Friend, you got to have a starting place and you got to engage your community to help you.
Dr. PBJ:I want to talk about being short-staffed at work, because that's a real thing. Many of us do not have enough hands to get all the things done that we're trying to accomplish at work, and when you're in that situation, it really feels like there's no way you are going to get a break anytime soon, because the work doesn't stop and the positions are not filling. Let me give you some thoughts on this. Either last week or a couple weeks ago, one of the recent episodes I shared with you the reading and research day that my team and I implemented. What I didn't say to you is, before we made the proposal, we gathered some data, so we did what I call it and other people call it's not my word a desk audit.
Dr. PBJ:We had everybody in our unit write down. What are you doing with your time. It took me an hour to do this meeting, or I got six hours of meetings and then I have to return emails and phone calls and I had to meet with a parent, or I had to meet with a student, or I had to do this program or plan this program or facilitate this program or clean up from the program. Whatever you're doing, whatever you're doing, write it down, because often your calendar does not tell the accurate story. There are some things that are planned and scheduled and there are other things that you cannot plan, you cannot expect, and they take up your time. So for two weeks we had everybody in our unit complete a desk audit and in that desk audit and I know it feels tedious, but when I tell you the data that we got, the data that we gathered of the number of hours outside of 40, outside of 40 hours that people were working because I work with a unit of people who do engagement with students Much of our work was after five o'clock because, you know, college students don't just live from eight to five.
Dr. PBJ:As a matter of fact, they don't want to be bothered at eight. Okay, they. Most of our work with them is in the evenings and sometimes on the weekends, and those hours were not being accounted for. Those hours when the campus is quiet, everybody else has gone home, they're having dinner with their families or whatever student affairs folks. We're still here and we are still engaging and we're still doing the work. So we were able to account for all of those hours of setup and programming and cleanup and training and meetings and being the advisor and all the things. And when we looked at the number of hours that people were working outside of the 40, that's what empowered us to implement or ask for the reading and research days so that people could get a break.
Dr. PBJ:So if you are short-staffed, it might be time to do a desk audit. It might be time to document where the time is going. It might be time to have a conversation about where should the time be going. This is what we're spending our time on right now. Is that the most efficient use of our time? While we are short-staffed? Having the data in front of you allows you to evict the emotion and make decisions on what's healthful, what is sustainable, what is productive for the team. Without that data, you don't even know why people are tired. You don't have no idea. You're not telling the full story.
Dr. PBJ:So do that desk audit, then reconsider what are our priorities right now? What are we focused on and what should we be focused on in this time while we are short staffed? About now that we have narrowed the priorities down, how can we cover each other? How can we support each other to ensure everybody's getting some time away, to ensure that folks are not constantly working on the weekend, answering all the email and doing all the projects, to make sure that folks are not giving up all of their evenings to get this work done? So, if you are short-staffed, have your folks do a desk audit. Where is our time going? Quantify it, tell the story, show it in the numbers and then narrow down those priorities. You can have it all, but you can't have it all at the same time, friend. So you need to decide what we need, what is critical, what's critical? Remember we had that conversation what is critical right now? What is important? But we can get back to it later. This part is important, but we can come back to it. We don't have to do this right now. You got to have those conversations. We are killing our teams. We are killing our teams because we keep trying to do more with less, and folks ain't trying to hear it. They've had enough, they're not willing and they're not able to keep doing more with less. So we've got to have those conversations and we have to make decisions about what are priorities and how do we cover each other or how do we collaborate with another department or another organization or another company so that we can be a help to them and they can be a help to us, so that our folks can sustain? You're going to mess around and lose more than you've already lost Because we're not planning, we're not treating this as a critical time and it's critical.
Dr. PBJ:Last objective PBJ. My leadership is not supportive. They don't want to hear nothing about me needing a break. They don't believe in this burnout stuff. The way they came up, the way they came through, you just put your head down and work hard. So I had a conversation with the leaders in one of the prior episodes.
Dr. PBJ:But let me just add this If you are a leader and if you've been doing your work for a long time, the pressure today is not the same as what may have been pressure to you in the past. I'm not saying you didn't go through anything. I'm not saying you didn't have troubles. But what I'm saying is the level of pressure that your people are under today is different than maybe what you've considered. So if you felt like you could just put your head down and grind it out and you were fine, I want you to consider the 24-hour news cycles that your people have pressure from, that your people have pressure from. I want you to experience, or consider, the political pressure and the bureaucracy and the expectations of the folks that you serve. It's different, friend. It's different. We live in a different age and our mental health is in jeopardy. So please don't compare your experience coming up through the ranks to the people that you lead with and serve right now, because it is not the same and that is an unfair comparison.
Dr. PBJ:So, now that that is said, if you have a leader, a supervisor, who is not supportive of you getting the rest, getting the break that you need, I want you to consider the language that you share with them. First of all, I want you to be able to show your impact. I want you to be able to talk about your values. Sometimes we hide from that. We hide behind a desire to be humble, we hide behind imposter syndrome, but it is important for you to be able to articulate the value that you bring to an organization, and not in a disrespectful way, not in an ugly way Don't be inappropriate, friend but help people understand. Help them understand who you are and what you bring. And you can do that by chronicling or detailing the projects you've completed or the KPIs that you've achieved, or the goals and strategies that you have made progress in. Help people see. And once you help them see, talk to them about strategic renewal. You don't have to say I need a break. You can talk about how, in order to sustain the level of work that you give, it is necessary to have renewal time. And maybe it's not just for you, maybe it's an organizational renewal because, friend, if you need renewal, they probably do too. They might not tell you, but they need it too. So how can you propose it in a way that it aligns with the values and the goals and the strategic plan of the institution or the organization, but it also gets you what you need.
Dr. PBJ:Speak their language. If they are data, people give them data. If they are qualitative, people give them the story. But speak their language. What is important to them? So what do they think about before they go to sleep at night. What do they wake up thinking about? What do they email people about? What is important as far as values of the organization for them? What are their main goals? Align the plan for strategic renewal with the goals of this particular leader and with the organization. Help them see why it's necessary for the outcomes of the company.
Dr. PBJ:It's not just for you, friend. Your recovery, your renewal is not just for you, but it impacts everybody you're connected to. If it's your family that you have to communicate with, or a partner or a co-parent, help them understand how renewal for you is a positive impact on everybody and the entire system. Don't be afraid to talk about why it's important and the value that you bring and how you want to continue bringing that value. But in order to do that at a high level, you need renewal, and so does everybody around you.
Dr. PBJ:Friend, listen as soon as you hear me say you need to take a pause or you need to learn how to stop. And I'm not just talking about a one-time stop, okay, I'm talking about a lifetime of rhythm, a pace that you can sustain. You can pour out major purpose without continuing to go to the depths of burnout because you have a regular pace of rest in your life. Maybe once a quarter you have sabbatical rest where you get away, or whatever your rhythm is. Whatever you need, you're setting a pace for doing life well, and I know, as soon as you hear me say this, the first thing that comes up in your mind are objections, and I hope through this episode you found that there are answers to all of those objections and there are ways to be creative, there are ways to communicate, there are ways to enroll people in the plan so that you can get what you need and everybody around you benefits from you getting this renewal.
Dr. PBJ:All right, friend, I got to let you go. Listen, as always. You are powerful, you are significant, you are brilliant, you are loved, you are irreplaceable. You are loved, you are irreplaceable. There's nobody like you, and if you could not show up, if you were not there, another person might step in, but they'll never be you. I want you to be your first advocate. Don't wait for somebody else to stand up for you. Don't wait for somebody else to see you and notice you need a break. I need you to stand up.
