Taking Care of Business, the Email Newsletter of the Center for Career and Business Development

Volume 4, No. 9

Friday, September 9, 2005

Tired and Overworked
by Beverly Ryle

t’s 3:30 in the afternoon and I am writing this with a large pot of tea beside me. It sounds very civilized, except that I made the tea because I am tired, and I felt compelled to work on this column. Instead of taking a nap, I chose to take a stimulant and fall back into my pattern of overwork.

The good news is that I rarely do this any more, and when I do I am conscious of the choice I am making. For years, I just pushed through my fatigue and remained a victim of my own calendar and “to do” lists with absolutely no awareness of how damaging being a supercharged performer was both to my professional life and to my health.

Many of my clients do the same. They talk about how the long hours and demands of their work life are draining their energy and robbing them of time for being with family and friends, serving the community, and taking care of themselves. They constantly struggle to stretch their days to accommodate more, but they do not see how they are participating in a dangerous cycle that entraps them.

To break free, overworkers need to be challenged to look honestly at how tired they really are and what it is costing them. Then they need to have the courage to begin living day-to-day, as if their well being was as urgent a priority as next week’s big meeting, project, or presentation

How Tired Are You?
I had already been working at trying to achieve a more balanced life (notice how I framed this as yet another thing I needed to “work” to accomplish) for some time before I read Tired of being Tired: Rescue, Repair, Rejuvenate by Jesse Hanley and Nancy Deville.

I took the authors’ self-survey, and it made me see how everyday occurrences, like needing afternoon tea, not allowing myself breathing space in an overscheduled day, and waking up several times each night, were part of a deeper level of exhaustion.

My score on the survey indicated that I was in the “dragging” stage, which was exactly how I felt before the tea, at the end of the day and sometimes the first thing in the morning! According to the authors, this put me “inches away from more serious problems.”

Before the survey I thought I’d been making an effort to balance my life, but what I was really doing was playing the “finding time” game with myself, looking for ways to fit self-nurturing into an already overextended lifestyle.

I see now that this was a necessary first step. Over time, however, giving self-care a low priority causes it to lose its power to renew. There comes a time when a little exercise squeezed in or an occasional massage won’t offset a week of ten-plus hour days without even taking time for lunch. Eventually even a vacation will not offset the cumulative toll of working at full throttle.

The remedy to “being drained” requires doing more than playing calendar games. At some point, it becomes necessary to reassess priorities and develop healthier habits across the board, not just rush to an yoga class now and then!

Tired and Overworked

What is It Costing You?
My clients describe overwork as something they have to do to maintain their careers. In other words, it’s necessary. But is it a winning strategy?

Hanely and Deville write about a woman who headed a very successful company and routinely worked twelve to fourteen hour days. One night she called home around 10 PM to say she was on her way. When she didn’t turn up, her husband went looking for her. He eventually found her at her desk, paralyzed by fatigue. In this freakish variation on mother’s warning that if we made a face it would freeze that way, she had made overwork her life and had frozen in it.

One of my clients who struggles with overwork described an incident which illustrates how counterproductive overwork can be. A financial analyst on her team stayed up 48 hours straight to prepare for a regional meeting, and then ended up spending the actual event literally on the floor, moaning from the pain of a migraine headache. The hard work she had done in putting the numbers together was negated by her inability to be there to help make sense of them.

“Killing yourself” is not a winning strategy, especially when the long term consequences are potentially disastrous.

Clients often tell me that they work sixty-plus hours a week because everyone else does, or because it’s expected of them at their level, or because they could not handle letting their co-workers down.

In other words, they overwork because of someone else, not because of their own need to be productive. Others are cracking the whip, and they have become a beast of burden because that’s the culture in their organization.

Yet the same people who make this argument often recreate the same conditions when they work for themselves! When they have no bosses or co-workers, they find other reasons to keep up the same pace they did when they worked for someone else.

Overwork is always a choice. It may be driven by the sense of importance we get from “being at the office late”, or by the fear of losing approval or control. Only when we come face to face with the greater fear of losing more important things, such as a balanced life, health, and a sense of well-being, do we begin to make different choices.

Readers Write: Feedback on Last Month’s Column

I think you've learned the art of transformational coaching very well. In the last 10 years you've been coaching me, I've never felt you've been pushing me one way or another in making a decision about my next career move. You've always been able to help me see the opportunity in the context of the bigger picture.

—Director, Leadership Training and Retention, Wallingford, CT

I read your newsletter and I only wish I was there to give you a big hug. Your transformational coaching is transformative.

—ADHD, Career-Life and Development Coach, Westchester, NY

A terrific article and newsletter!

—Health Care Administrator, New Fairfield, CT

Great issue. I enjoyed the section on the demons and turning the negatives into positives.

—Research Compliance Director, Hyannis, MA

Center News

Beverly had the privilege of spending the first week of August in conversation with Meg Wheatley and fellow seekers of new ways to lead. Meg Wheatley is the author of Finding Our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Times; Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future, and Leadership and New Science.

Beverly's column in the November 12, 2004 issue of Taking Care of Business has been reprinted in the August/September issue of Cape Business magazine, a publication distributed to over 6,000 Cape Cod businesses.

Beverly will be the guest speaker at the September meeting of the Cape Cod Woman's Organization at the Center Stage Cafe in Dennis, MA at 6 PM. Her presentation will focus on ways that women can learn to be better negotiators in their professional and personal lives.

Also in this issue ...

Quote-of-the-Month

Readers Write

Center News

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As we move forward into the 21st century it’s pretty obvious to just about everyone that work isn’t what it used to be. Whether we work for ourselves, or for someone else, or are in transition, things are changing rapidly and we’re caught in a shift of seismic proportions. Many things are being demanded of us, and it’s going to require more than just new skills to survive and thrive. We’re going to need to learn how to get serious about taking care of the business of our professional lives.

Taking Care of Business
was created to focus on issues related to this re-education process. If you find it helpful, please pass it on to others you know who are trying to find their way through the new realities of the world of work.

We invite you to share your thoughts by emailing us at:

info@career-retreats.com

Imagine the following scenario. A citrus rancher named Simon Legree hires two pickers to harvest his orange crop. Throughout the first week the pickers continually harvest and bring Legree many bushels of oranges. The next week Legree is excited by his yield and decides that the pickers should keep on picking all night instead of having dinner and going to bed. So the next week the pickers pick all day and all night without rest or food. That week, they return with a smaller yield. Legree bellows at them that they must continue picking. By the end of the third week, the pickers' yield is yet smaller. Legree is panicked now because he needs those oranges, and he begins to berate and terrorize the pickers until they finally limp back to work. Exhausted and starving, they can only pick a few oranges a day. As the weeks go on, the pickers become so depleted and haggard that they cannot even reach up and pick one orange.

This is a metaphor for what happens to your adrenal glands when you get caught in the adrenaline rush lifestyle and do not allow your adrenal glands to rest and repair . . . . Although losing total adrenal function is rare, adrenal exhaustion—what you are probably suffering from to some degree now—is extremely common. Adrenal fatigue affects all the interconnected systems of the body and creates a biological domino effect that causes fatigue, cravings, weight gain, mood swings, and many of the health problems people are grappling with today.

Tired of Being Tired
Jesse Hanley, MD
&
Nancy Deville

40 Oak Leaf Rd
PO Box 156
North Eastham, Cape Cod, MA 02651-0156
508.240.3532

www.SuccessOnYourOwnTerms.com

About Us
The Center for Career and Business Development specializes in teaching people how to manage their professional lives by providing customized counseling and educational programs which integrate conceptual thinking with practical training.

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The stick illustrations in this issue are by Eloise Morley.
Her email address is eloisemorley@earthlink.net