The Introvert Leader

The Two Questions That Saved Me From Burnout

• Austin Hopkins

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0:00 | 13:12

You don't have to settle for being burnt out at work. It won't get better with time unless you do something about it. Most burnout advice sounds the same, but it doesn't work. 67% of workers are feeling some kind of burnout. In this episode, I give you a framework to get past it.


Timestamps

2:19 – The Reframe: Most Burnout advice doesn't solve the root problem.

4:00 – Bored Burnout: Boredom is a quiet kind of burnout that eats at your soul. 

6:31 – Depleted Burnout: Even if you love your work, devoting too many hours to it can leave you feeling depleted. Find your passion and never work a day in your life is a lie. 

9:05 – The Two Question Test: Easy questions you can ask yourself when you are feeling burned out at work. 

11:25 – Challenge: Ask yourself two questions before you work more hours or take on more work. 


 

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Success On Paper Feeling Empty

SPEAKER_00

I was getting paid well, getting promoted every year and a half. My boss and my team loved me. And weirdly, I felt empty inside. From the outside, my career looked good. I was liked, I was getting results, but on the inside, I don't remember ever feeling so empty. No one knew, but I felt it every single day. I remember putting on my work shirt and tie in the morning and feeling a wave of helplessness come over me. The more hours I worked, the worse I felt. And there were two questions that were staring me right in the face, but I was all up in the sauce and I couldn't see them. I was burned out. I just wanted to stay in bed, call in sick, or take an extra long lunch, anything to avoid working. If you've ever faced burnout or you're in it right now, I'm going to give you a two-question test to figure out what's broken and how to fix it.

A Simple Fix For Workout Boredom

SPEAKER_00

So I canceled my gym membership a couple of years ago and I work out at home. I have limited equipment, but it's a pretty good setup. And my workouts have been okay for the last couple of months, but I've been feeling really bored. So like two weeks ago, I bought a plyo box for box jumps. I don't know if you've seen these before. It's just a big box, but it's crazy how one little thing can totally reinvigorate your workouts. I have felt so pumped to get in the gym and get out of my comfort zone. And something about activating the fast twitch muscle with box jumps is making me feel like a kid again, jumping in and out of trees. So I figured I'd share something that's been helping me kind of fight the boredom in the gym, which has honestly led to less burnout in the gym. All

Email Updates For New Drops

SPEAKER_00

right, real quick. A couple weeks ago, I started sending out a bi-weekly podcast email. Place for me to share episode drops, show updates. I don't want you to miss anything that's coming out with the show. So click the link in the description to make sure you get signed up.

Why Most Burnout Advice Fails

SPEAKER_00

When I was burned out at work, it felt like trying to drive my car without gas. It just doesn't work. And by the way, this isn't just me. 67% of workers now report burnout symptoms at their job, up from 52% just a couple of years ago. So burnout isn't something you just have to accept. It's not the normal thing that everybody has to go through to have a successful career. It's a choice and something you have to fight against. So today, I'm gonna help you deal with it. Settle in, my friend, it's time to learn something. So I want to kick things off with a reframe. The problem is, most burnout advice out there fits into one of two buckets. Either working less hours to protect your boundaries, or just find more meaning in your work and you won't ever feel burnt out. Both of these are half the puzzle, in my opinion. Working fewer hours but doing work that doesn't fill your soul is still gonna make you feel burned out. And working tons of hours on stuff that brings you meaning may feel good for a season, but the burnout is coming whether you believe it or not. All right, let's break it down. Let's say you were working 60 plus hours a week on meaningful work, work that you really enjoy. I have seen so much content out there that says if you find your passion, you won't have to work a day in your life. You will have an endless supply of energy. But I challenge you to work 60 plus hours for six months straight, then come talk to me. The seasons when I have felt most engaged and most fulfilled at work no longer feel that way when I'm spending most of my time working. I don't believe we're meant to work that much in our lives. I really don't. When I'm able to work a reasonable number of hours, have time to exercise, hang out with my family, my friends, I'm a more well-rounded human being. Even if I love my job, working 10 to 12 hours a day isn't my idea of a successful life. When work is my entire personality and overtakes everything else, do I really feel that good? All right, let's look at the flip side. Let's say you're working only 40 hours a week, but you have no meaning. Working that 40 hours a week, but not doing anything with meaning is just as bad in my opinion. Those 40 hours feel like 80 hours because you are counting every minute as it slowly crawls by. I used to think an easy job was the dream, but then I did construction for an entire summer, and I realized that no meaning plus a great schedule is a recipe for what I call bored burnout. Being bored at work is one of the most low-key, painful things. It's not an obvious pain, like not getting the job you wanted or getting in trouble for a screw-up. It's a quiet eat it your soul kind of pain. So

Bored Burnout And Quiet Misery

SPEAKER_00

I'll tell you a quick story. I had been a branch manager for five years at this point. I had managed three different locations across three different markets, but I was bored out of my mind. I did everything to make the day go quicker. I took my lunch at 11 because I couldn't wait any longer. I'd find an empty office, close the shades, read for an hour. I scrolled on my phone in between my tasks, nothing helped the boredom. I just felt burnout. I would replay the same question in my head every day. Is this the best there is? The problem was that my work didn't have any meaning. I felt nothing stretching me, nothing using my creativity. The longer I felt this way, the worse I felt. Even though work was easy, I didn't feel engaged. And when your work doesn't have any meaning, things get scary fast. You feel like a human on a hamster wheel headed to nowhere. That's not a good feeling. No one wants to feel like that. We want to feel like we have meaning in our work. So, what can you do about it? There's two things that I did that really helped. First one, take action. Find something small to channel your strength zone. What is something small you could take on unprompted without your boss asking you that would challenge you? You can't change your whole job overnight, but you can change one thing. What's something you could tap into your unique strength? Maybe it's a problem your boss hasn't been able to solve. Maybe it's an operational process that needs updating. Maybe it's a cool new AI tool you could mess around with and implement within your team. Pick anything. Don't just wait for things to get interesting. Make them interesting. And the other thing is to take pride in your work and how you show up. Pretend you're in your dream job, even though you're bored as hell, and watch how you feel. You're gonna feel better. Take pride in the job you have, even if parts of it suck. The second thing you can do is trust. So after controlling what I could, I had to trust. I don't know if you know this about me, but I rely heavily on my faith for my life and my career. So I had to trust God had a plan for my career. Otherwise, I might lose my shit. I had to quit complaining and worrying that things wouldn't change. And I remember for a year straight, I said the same prayer every morning on my way to work. God, I trust you have a plan for my career. Something better is coming. And one day I woke up with a little red LinkedIn notification on my phone, and I had got a message from an old colleague offering me an interview. I hadn't talked to this person for five years, and boom, a opportunity fell right in my lap. Now you might call it luck, I call it faith, and I'm not telling you you have to find faith to get through burnout, but I am telling you what's worked for me, and I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't share what helps me out in my own life. So

Depleted Burnout From Too Many Hours

SPEAKER_00

bored burnout sucks, but depleted burnout is a tougher one to manage. I want to tell you about a time where I felt completely drained, and yet my job had more meaning than ever. I'm running multiple departments. I have a senior leader title, and results are coming in shockingly easy, but I'm working 50 plus hours a week. I like the work, and yet I'm hitting a wall. I feel like I can't keep it going and something is gonna break. Like I'm almost held together with tape. I remember thinking, how can I like my work and also feel burnout at the same time? How does that even work? How can the two coexist? Well, it turns out they can, and it's more common than you think. I thought that once you liked your work, that everything was supposed to just feel great all the time. The problem was I was pushing too hard for too long. And it didn't matter that I felt fulfilled. The work part of Austin was overtaking the life part of Austin. I wasn't taking care of the personal part of my life. So if you're working the majority of every weekday, 10 or 12 hour days, and you're working the weekends, are you really living your best life, even if you love the work? I believe we were meant to work a fulfilling job, but also have a full life outside of work. You are meant to be so much more than just your job. You have so much more to offer. So don't sell yourself short. Now, you might be asking, what can I do about it? I have a job that I like, it's meaningful, but I'm working too many hours. Two things that you can do. The first thing is set a limit on how much you work. I think anything more than 40 hours in a given week is too much. You may disagree, but let's do some math. Most of your career, you're gonna be paid salary. And let's say you're earning $150,000 a year and you're working 40 hours a week. Let's say you decide to work an extra five hours a week. Well, that brings you up to 2,340 hours a year. Now your salary is gonna stay the same, but your effective hourly rate is gonna drop by 11%. Are those extra hours worth it? I know you need to get caught up and you need to look good so that you get a raise, but do you really need to work those extra hours? Or could you shift some stuff off your plate? Or could you get more efficient with the hours you do work? Something to think about. More hours in a fulfilling job doesn't prevent burnout. At best, it postpones it. So the second best thing you can do is to pick one or a couple of areas to hold on to and give up everything else. So, what areas of your job do you feel most energized with? That's the stuff to focus on. So get rid of the easy stuff. Even though it's easy, if it doesn't bring out your passion, get rid of it. Edit out the parts of your job that don't bring you meaning. And I know you're gonna feel less burnout. You're gonna spend time on the stuff that actually matters. So whether you're bored or depleted, burnout isn't something just to live with and hope it will get better. You know you deserve better than that. So let me help you with a simple two-question test to figure out how to get past it. Isn't

The Two Questions That Reset Everything

SPEAKER_00

it weird how a lot of the time the most helpful things are the simplest? So I ask myself these two questions almost weekly so that I don't unknowingly fall into burnout. So question one, does this matter? Before you take on a new project, before you decide to send that extra email, before you agree to join that last minute call, ask yourself whether this matters. Does this work matter? If the answer is no, don't do it. It's as simple as that. Even if the people around you would do it, stand tall and know that you're making the right choice for you. And PS, most of what we think matters right now really doesn't. Will the work problem this week mean anything in six months from now? Or does it seem to just matter because you're in it at that moment? Question two, can I sustain this pace? Is your current workload sustainable? If you can't sustain it without your quality suffering, stop. A C version of yourself for a year isn't better than a B plus version of you for a quarter. Longevity is everything in this game. So quit thinking so short term. Think long term. Careers aren't made in weeks, they're made over decades. Okay, I'm gonna be

The Sweet Spot Low Hours High Meaning

SPEAKER_00

honest with you. I think there's an ideal state. I think there's a formula to avoid burnout, and I've structured my life around it. Now, as I was prepping for this episode, I'll be honest with you, I was a little worried to talk about this because I felt like it might come across as a little bit douchey. But I believe that the best careers are made of low hours with high meaning. This is that sweet spot. Plenty of time for the personal stuff, the physical health, the hobbies, the relationships. And the hours you do work are packed with meaning. Over the last couple of years, I've been lucky enough to structure my life around this. So I'm working maybe about three hours a day on average, and the rest of that time is spent with stuff I enjoy: reading, hanging out, learning, exercise, whatever it is. I don't say that to sound douchey, to sound braggy. That might not even be possible for you right now. And it wasn't possible for me years ago, but I worked, saved, created a career that allowed me to transition into this. So I think at the end of the day, this is the ideal state. I've never felt less burned out. I've never felt more meaning in my work. And I share this with you to be honest, and hopefully it comes across that way. And I think at the end of the day, the bottom line is the goal is to work as few meaningful hours as possible and for you to be able to spend the rest of your time on stuff that you enjoy. Okay,

Your Burnout Challenge This Week

SPEAKER_00

now that you have your test, I want you to ask yourself these two questions this week. The next time you're faced with a decision, ask, does this matter? Then ask, can I sustain this pace? If the answer to question one is no, then don't do it. And if the answer to question two is no, scale back. That's your challenge for this week. Now, if any of this episode hit home, maybe you aren't just dealing with burnout. Maybe your confidence has taken a hit. Now it happens to the best of us, especially for new leaders. Confidence is one of those hard things to just fake. Maybe you've got ideas you're scared to share because you feel like they're a little weird. Maybe you don't look like the successful leaders around you. And part of you wonders if your team will ever even trust your style.

Confidence Course Invite And Closing

SPEAKER_00

I've been working for the last few months to create a confidence course specifically made for leaders. In September, I'm dropping the confident leader blueprint. This course will help you develop the confidence to try the weird things you already know in your gut are gonna work. It's going to help you feel comfortable showing up exactly like the leader you were meant to be, regardless of what the successful leaders around you look like. So my dream is that once you take this course, you will feel the strength we're all meant to feel, even if you don't feel like it this very second. So click the link in the description to get added to the wait list. Burnout is that silent struggle that everyone's feeling, but no one's doing anything about. I want you to fight it with all of your might because you will get burned out. You're gonna dampen who you are in this world. And the truth is, the world needs the full version of you. So ask yourself those questions and fight it, baby. I want to say thank you so much for listening. Make it a great day.

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Austin Hopkins

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