"This job is killing me."
We often toss that phrase around, using it as humor to help us get through a tough day.
But what happens when it becomes fact instead of dark humor?
That's where I was 2 years ago. I had been burned out for some time, but had kept pushing through, thinking it would get better when this project wrapped up, or when they added the extra staff they had been promising, or when things slowed down over the winter.
But things never got better.
And one day I realized that this job was literally killing me. There wasn't a dramatic crisis. There wasn't a trip to the ER with heart attack symptoms like I'd had at a previous job. I didn't wake up paralyzed, or covered in hives, or break both my shoulders like some of the guests on my podcast have shared. I wasn't throwing up in the bathroom before every meeting with a workplace bully, like a colleague told me she does. For me, there was just a bone-deep feeling that I would not survive if I continued in this job. That the stress was actually going to take my life.
This seemed silly when I first said it to myself and it sounded a bit over the edge when I said it aloud to my husband. But no matter what I tried, I couldn't shake the feeling that the job was killing me.
What I didn't know then was that the feeling wasn't crazy. My mind just knew something my body hadn't expressed yet.
The research backs up what my mind was telling me. Large-scale studies show that overwork and stress can shorten your life and drain the quality out of the years you do have. In a single year, long working hours were linked to 745,194 deaths worldwide and 23.3 million years of healthy life lost.[1] Working 55 or more hours a week raises your risk of stroke by 33% compared to a standard 35-to-40-hour week.[2, 3, 4]
I was only working about 45 hours at my job. But I was putting another 15-20 hours into my career change. That put me at 60-65 hours a week.
So my stress and my job were killing me, and while I had started the process of changing careers, I wasn't in a position where I could just quit my job. But I had reached the point where something had to change immediately or I was afraid I would never make it to my new career - or the rest of my life.
That's when I put in some boundaries at work that felt super-scary (but actually turned out to be small once I applied them). My career coach asked me a critical question: where is the most stress coming from in your workday? For me, it was the back-to-back meetings with no time to go to the bathroom, let alone do the actual work.
So I started forcing white space on my calendar. I blocked 15 minutes before meetings to make sure I was prepared and could take a few deep breaths. I blocked 30 minutes after each meeting to complete my tasks that were assigned during the meetings and to draft needed communications. And if someone scheduled over those times, I declined the meeting (with very few exceptions).
I expected pushback. I expected to be told that I had to open up my schedule. I expected to be knocked back on my performance review because I was declining meetings and "not being a team player."
Instead, I was getting more work done with less stress. I got the occasional request to take a meeting when my calendar showed "Task Time," but it stayed about once a month. I dropped from about 35 meetings per week to about 20 meetings. The mental drain of constant task switching was reduced. I was able to go to the bathroom without being late for my next meeting.
After a couple of months, I was able to add back in the small breaks that had been eaten into by meetings. I started taking an actual lunch break. I was able to step outside and walk for 10 minutes once or twice a day. I could feel my nervous system relaxing.
Setting my meeting boundary wasn't a magic bullet that suddenly cured my burnout. But it brought me back from the edge enough that the feeling of "this job is killing me" wasn't controlling every move. I was able to create some space to make meaningful progress towards my new career and give myself the financial runway to make that transition. And got some sunshine on those walks.
What's the first sign your body gives you that you're running on empty? For me, it was a bone-deep feeling I couldn't explain away. I'd love to hear yours: https://www.movetojoycoaching.com/contact
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Sources
1. WHO/ILO Joint Estimates of the Work-related Burden of Disease and Injury: https://www.burden-eu.net/docs/webinar-who-ilo.pdf
2. Harvard Health Publishing, "Only the overworked die young": https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/only-the-overworked-die-young-201512148815
3. Endeavor Health, "Long work hours and heart health risk": https://www.endeavorhealth.org/articles/long-work-hours-heart-health-risk
4. CDC/NIOSH, "Heart Disease and Work": https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/heartdisease/about/index.html
