i start the day by leaving my phone on the other side of the house. i wake up slowly, pick up a book, say hello to my wife. i subscribe to a physical newspaper because i find that a daily morning brief, where i can compartmentalize the time of checking the news, gives a more balanced picture of the world so i’m not exposed to these repeated sources of chronic stress throughout the day.
how is “busyness” often a state of mind rather than reality?
busyness is really no different from an active form of laziness when it doesn’t lead us to accomplish anything of importance. we’re terrible at measuring our productivity. we tend to look at proxy measures for our productivity: the busier we are the more productive we feel, even though we may be moving things around instead of moving things forward. and we tend to look at how exhausted we are at the end of the day as a measure for how productive we are. but productivity is about what we accomplish, it’s about the progress that we’re able to make. a simple way to measure this is by keeping an accomplishments list. make a note of all the milestones you reached and then review it at the end of the week.
you also have a chapter on burnout. what exactly is is?
not enough people realize the physical toll that stress and burnout can wreak on our mind and body. it’s characterized by three phenomena: first, exhaustion — and we often equate exhaustion with burnout but it’s really only a third of the picture; second, cynicism, where we have this negativity behind how we interpret our work; third, inefficacy, where we feel deeply unproductive, as if our actions don’t make a difference or a contribution.
stress is the one and only thing that causes burnout. we reach a point when chronic stress doesn’t let up, and, on a chemical level, our body refuses to respond to a stressful situation. if you find that you’re exhausted, cynical or feel unproductive, that can be a stepping stone to full-blown burnout.