Recovering from Burnout
“One of the best guides to how to be self-loving is to give ourselves the love we are often dreaming about receiving from others” - bell hooks
Recently, a senior product leader posted that the best product managers know how to avoid burnout. I call bullshit. Burnout is a largely unacknowledged part of many PMs’ (and technologists more broadly) career. In most organizations, it’s an inevitable fact of the role.
“[Burnout] isn’t a personal problem. It’s a societal one—and it will not be cured by productivity apps, or a bullet journal, or face mask skin treatments, or overnight fucking oats,” Anne Helen Petersen, “Can’t Even”
Early in my career, I used Ben Horowitz’s essay, “Good Product Manager/ Bad Product Manager” to define what my role as a product manager was. Horowitz states that good PMs take full responsibility for the success of their product. In order to be a good PM, I believed I had to do everything I could to ensure my product’s success. This often meant 7am calls with European customers or writing product requirement documents (PRD) on Saturday mornings. But this was unsustainable.
And 2020 highlighted how unsustainable it all was. My workday often started when I woke up responding to slack messages and ended with me falling asleep while writing a doc. Because I wasn’t co-located with many of my co-workers, meetings were scheduled over meal times as these were the few hours of overlap with the east coast and Europe. My entire existence became Zoom meetings, Slack messages and endless docs.
This hit me hardest when I started a new job. I was the solo product manager on a new product conceived by the pseudo-celebrity founder. And as the only Black female PM at the company, I needed to prove myself. I worried that if I didn’t give the roadmap talk at our conference, my work would be taken for granted. Or if I didn’t build the demo, my technical skills would be doubted. In spite of getting covid and sheer exhaustion, I did it all. And inevitably, I burned out.
Worse, I blamed myself. I internalized it as a personal problem, an inability to compartmentalize my work life. But this instinct was misguided. Burnout is a structural problem and as such requires systemic solutions. Dr. Pooja Lakshmin, in “Real Self Care” offers us a starting framework for using individual actions to approach the structural nature of burnout.
Set Boundaries with Others - As someone who prided myself on being responsive and helpful, I started to see how my willingness to respond to Slack messages that I got from the east coast at 7am contributed to my intense feeling of exhaustion. So I removed Slack from my phone. I set my meeting hours to be from 8:30am to 2pm to slightly alleviate the endless hours of zoom meetings. And most audaciously, I set every Friday to “out of office” to give myself a full weekday to do whatever I needed that week. And to my surprise, I didn’t become a bad PM. I simply started to catch my breath.
Change How You Talk to Yourself - Amidst these layoffs and an ever tightening economy, we’re told that we are lucky to have a jobs with a steady paycheck and good benefits. And we are. But I now recognize that this is the bare minimum. That I am unconditionally worthy of love and care. And so I had to reject the idea that I needed to prove myself. With over a decade of experience as a product manager, I’m a talented professional. More importantly, I’m a lovely human who gets tired, hungry, and cranky. While this mental shift seems small, it allowed me to ask for help. And most of my teammates were excited to learn from me and help write PRDs, do customer research and just stand in the gap.
Bring in What Matters Most - While I was burnt out, most things felt futile and unrewarding but I started noticing the things that felt energizing. For example, during retros when an engineer gave feedback that surprised me, I was elated. They felt safe enough to give meaningful critique and knew that the leadership team would address it. Building a resilient and psychologically safe team was something I valued. So I prioritized that, even though I knew this was not going to be the work that would be financially rewarded.
This is Power - Use It for Good - Once I started taking these steps towards caring for myself and letting others care for me, I saw more clearly how unsupported I was in my workplace. Beyond the leadership dysfunction and changing priorities that I expect from most tech companies, the non-stop micro-aggressions were exhausting. And every complaint about racism or sexism was met with “I’ve seen worse.” So I quit. I knew I could not recover at a company that operated as if there is an acceptable level of racism or sexism. I deserved better. Moreover, I wanted to spend more time doing the things I valued.
I’ve spent the last four months resting and recovering from burnout. Now, I see how self care is a continuous practice. I need to constantly set my boundaries, align with my values, and reject the notion that there will be one tip, one workout, one book that will guarantee that I don’t burnout.
“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” Audre Lorde
We live in a world that asks “how can we do more with less?” And burnout is likely with this mindset. So, resting and doing less is revolutionary. It allows us not only to care for ourselves but also build resilient teams where caring for others is a part of our ethos. We need to be well-rested and cared for to build meaningful technology. Building technology as an act of love starts with self love.
Acknowledgements
I’m incredibly grateful for the feedback from my first readers and editors, KT Simmons and Rye Castillo.
Resources
Here are some reading that directly influenced my thinking for this post
Can’t Even by Anne Helen Peterson. Her book on how millennials are the burnout generation helped me start to think of burnout as a structural problem.
Real Self Care by Pooja Lakshmin. Her interview with Tressie McMillan Cottom helped me identify how burnt out I was. Her approach to self-care and burnout is pragmatic and provided me with the necessary roadmap to understand how I was already practicing self care and how I could continue to do so.
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde. This collection of essay helped me understand how self-care is political and how daring to say that I deserve care is a radical act. It took me much longer to learn how to practice this belief.