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How to Draw the Line Between Productivity and Burnout
Focus on meaningful work that makes you proud at the end of the day
As my city went into lockdown in March, I shifted into high gear. I’m a science journalist, so naturally, I dove into researching and writing about Covid-19. As a full-time freelancer and a happy workaholic, I had always pulled longer hours than most, but now I was really pushing my limits. I worked through the first weekend and planned to keep on trucking through the second.
Then my mind went blank. My brain refused to produce any new thoughts. My half-finished drafts stared at me from my screen like abandoned orphans. I didn’t just hit a creative roadblock, I crashed in a cognitive wasteland.
Turns out, the way I was working was setting me up to crash and burn. Gianpiero Petriglieri, an associate professor of organizational behavior at the Insead business school in Fontainebleau, France, calls this phenomenon “panic-working.” It’s a defense mechanism that creates a false feeling of being in control of the situation.
And a lot of us are doing it right now. The coronavirus has fed our anxieties. Some people have fled to country homes in search of peace. Others try to hide from their worries in the safe haven of overwork.
But this maniacal modus operandi isn’t sustainable, as Petriglieri writes. “Panic-working leaves you mentally numb,” he says (which is exactly what happened to me). And while you might think that submerging yourself in work will help you feel less stressed, it can have the exact opposite effect.
Like any machinery, whether biological or mechanical, your body needs care and upkeep. “If you overheat your car engine all the time, you will eventually ruin it,” Petriglieri says. “You wouldn’t do it to a car, so why do it to your own body?”
Interestingly, research finds that putting in extra hours doing what you love does not have the same detrimental effects as overtaxing yourself out of a sense of duty. It may even help, says Lieke L. Ten Brummelhuis, associate professor of management and organization studies at Simon Fraser University in Canada. Brummelhuis’ recent study found that people who enjoy their work and achieve meaningful results aren’t as at risk…
