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.
