Time for a Check-in: Are You Feeling Burnt Out or Engaged?

“When we’re burnt out, we’re exhausted, unproductive, and cynical. When we’re engaged, we feel energized, productive, and driven by purpose.”

– Chris Bailey, How to Calm Your Mind

Where are you at these days?

Are you careening closer to burnout – or feeling excited, productive and engaged?

If you suspect burnout is on the horizon, you might want to check out Chris Bailey’s latest book, Calm Your Mind; Finding Presence and Productivity in Anxious Times.

It is fabulous!

Full disclosure: as you may know, I am a big Bailey fan. I have written multiple blogs about other books by the author. My favourite book of his is entitled The Productivity Project; Accomplishing More by Managing Your Time, Attention, and Energy. One of the blogs I wrote about that book was called, “Hey Busy Bee…How Productive ARE You in that Little Hive of Yours?” I refer to it often when I find myself slipping into busy-bee mode 🙂

The other book of Bailey’s that I found extremely helpful is entitled, Hyperfocus; How to be More Productive in a World of Distraction. A blog I wrote about that book was called, “Focus Like a Laser Beam; Daydream Like a Believer.”

His books obviously resonate with me. In fact, I would go so far as saying that Chris Bailey has taught me more about productivity and focus than any other author (or anyone for that matter). As a writer myself with a staggering number of important projects on the go at any given time, I have had to learn how to be productive…and have successfully implemented many of Bailey’s practical tips and suggestions into my daily routine over the years.

His books have been a game-changer for me…and for many other readers, obviously.

However, in Bailey’s most recent book, How to Calm Your Mind, the author confesses he was SO successful at researching productivity and sharing his findings with us readers, that he reached a point where he realized HE had lost something valuable along the way:

“As important as this ever-present interest was to me, and as far as exploring it had gotten me, I had failed to set boundaries around my pursuit of productivity,” he writes in his latest book, How to Calm Your Mind. “I felt anxious, burnt out, and depleted, like so many others who take on too much.”

“Stress had built up in my life,” he says, “and it had nowhere to go.”

“Given all the self-care I was pouring precious time and money in, it surprised me that the low-level anxiety would have the room to metastasize into a full-fledged attack,” he confides. “I realized I needed to go deeper to actually find calm.”

I love his candour!

And his wisdom:  “There is a common enemy of calm that we must face down in the modern world: our desire for dopamine, a neurochemical in our brain that leads us to overstimulate ourselves.”

Yup. Does your damn phone spring to mind for you? It sure did for me.

“In addition to leading us to become less present, a dopamine-centered life can also, quite ironically, lead us to become less productive,” Bailey explains. “Driven by dopamine, we waste more time on distraction, while shortening our attention span through constant stimulation.”

“A dopamine-centered life can lead us to become less engaged with our work,” he says. “We become far more productive when we work deliberately and with intention, not when our mind is anxiously tugged in many different directions at once.”

Which brings me back to my phone…

Although I no longer have my phone anywhere near me when I am actually writing or doing other work tasks on my laptop, up until very recently, I did still tend to check it for texts and messages during every break. But after reading How to Calm Your Mind, I began to realize (or finally admit to myself) that responding to, and initiating, personal texts and messages during every single work-break was still tugging my mind in different directions.

Now that I think about it, how could it not?

Although I was hyper-focused on my work tasks when I was actually working, maybe I wasn’t being as productive as I thought I was? Or as productive as I could be? Because I had to admit…I, too, was constantly feeling that low-level anxiety the author mentioned.

My continually racing mind seemed to be far more interested in what came next, versus experiencing the moment I was in…including allowing those all-important creative insights for my writing to bubble to the surface.

After reading How to Calm Your Mind, I realized that some of my work-breaks would be far wiser spent puttering in my garden or walking on the beach or lying on my couch and closing my eyes for a few minutes of focused breathing.

Because all things that race need regular rest – minds included.

Which brings me back to burnout versus engagement…

In How to Calm Your Mind, Bailey refers to the research findings of Christina Maslach who says: “the polar opposite of burnout is engagement.” In fact, “by flipping the three characteristics of burnout around we convert burnout to engagement. When we’re burnt out, we’re exhausted, unproductive, and cynical. When we’re engaged, we feel energized, productive, and driven by purpose.”

Energized, productive, and driven by purpose.

I like that. That’s how I want to live. That’s how I am living most of the time…but even MORE so when I put my damn phone on airplane mode for big chunks of the day!

I don’t want to burnout. Been there, done that.

How about you?

Has your phone become a distraction that is pulling you away from being engaged with your own life?

Maryanne Pope is the author of “A Widow’s Awakening.” She also writes screenplays, playscripts & blogs. Maryanne is the CEO of Pink Gazelle Productions and Co-Founder of the John Petropoulos Memorial Fund. To receive her blog, “Weekly Words of Wisdom,” please subscribe here. And be sure to visit our PinkGazelleCards Etsy shop.