Have you ever seen that comedy sketch where a woman goes to see a doctor and

she's complaining of a terrible headache.

She's tried paracetamol, she's tried head massages, reflexology.

She's tried lovely essential oils, going away on a retreat to cure her headache.

She's just exhausted and nothing is working.

And the doctor says to her, what about a nail?

And she's got a four inch nail sticking out of her forehead.

And she keeps saying, no, no, no, no, no, it's definitely not the nail, there's

definitely something else going on.

And I remember laughing at it.

It was totally brilliant.

But at some point while I was watching it, I just realized I've done exactly that.

When I had three small children, doing several different roles, ill

relatives found any crisis, doing everything to try and fix anything.

And what was really wrong was that I was totally overwhelmed and I

was way beyond my capacity, way beyond what I could cope with.

Because when life and work feel overwhelming, what do we do?

Well, we download a meditation app.

We start doing extra journaling.

We practice gratitude.

We promise to spend more and more time out in nature.

Sign up for yoga, go on retreats, buy yet another productivity book,

or maybe color code, the calendar.

And I have done every single one of those things.

And listen, they're not stupid, right?

Those are really important things, and I still do a lot of those.

Meditation really helps.

Gratitude helps.

Exercise helps.

Time off helps.

It all helps.

They helps you regulate.

But they don't remove the nail from your head.

And sometimes the issue isn't that you are just dysregulated

and you need more meditation.

It's just that you are working a 55, 60, 65 hour week and then telling yourself

that the problem is your nervous system.

Of course, you're tired.

Of course, you're waking up at 3:00 AM with your heart racing, and of course

your brain isn't gonna switch off.

Because if the demand exceeds your natural capacity, then not coping, your distress,

it's not a dysfunction, it's information.

Yet so many of us feel so ashamed when we don't cope.

Now, struggling with an impossible workload is not a character flaw, and

it's not a deficit of your resilience.

It's your human nervous system responding appropriately.

And in this quick dip episode, I'm gonna give a bit of a reality check.

This is a You Are Not a Frog quick dip, a tiny taster of the kinds of things we

talk about on our full podcast episodes.

I've chosen today's topic to give you a helpful boost in the time it

takes to have a cup of tea so you can return to whatever else you're

up to feeling energized and inspired.

For more tools, tips, and insights to help you thrive at work, don't

forget to subscribe to You Are Not a Frog wherever you get your podcasts.

Now, there's a line from Oliver Burkeman, author of 4,000 Weeks that

I come back to you again and again.

In that book, he says, when he is talking about excessive work, excessive

workload, he says it's not just that this situation feels impossible in strictly

logical terms, it really is impossible.

It can't be the case that you must do more than you can do.

That notion doesn't make any sense.

Now, that's not a motivational quote, that's just pure maths.

You can't fit 25 hours of work into 24 hours a day.

But many of us just say I have to.

I have no choice.

I have to try.

But you can't.

And here's another line that that I often quote, 'cause it really stuck with me.

Byron Katie often says this.

She says, well, you can argue with reality, but a hundred percent of

the time, reality is going to win.

And that's the bit that's really uncomfortable for me because

I'm often arguing with reality.

In fact, all the time, I'm arguing with reality.

I shouldn't feel this, this tired, and well other people

cope, therefore, I should cope.

And, well, I used to manage this okay.

Therefore, I need to manage it okay now.

You know, it's just medicine.

Hundreds of people do this job.

You know, I signed up for this.

I'm paid well, someone has to do it.

Now, all of this is true.

Or partially true, but none of it increases your actual capacity or

gives you more than 24 hours in a day.

And remember, you've also got to sleep and do an awful lot of other stuff.

So you can turn it into a moral failing.

You can compare yourself to other people.

You can make yourself far more disciplined.

You can just carry on, but reality will still win and something will give.

Now, It might be patient care.

You might find yourself making mistakes at work, with patience or

with clients or with your teammates.

But often it's not the work mistakes you have to worry about.

And here's something that I, I've learned in the past couple of months

that has really stuck with me.

Now I often talk about the stress curve.

That's the Yerkes-Dodson pressure performance curve, which shows

what happens to your performance under increasing pressure.

Of course, at first, your performance starts to go up under increasing

pressure, but soon it plateaus off, and as the pressure builds,

your performance just drops off.

So it's this bell shaped curve.

Now we understand that in burnout, our performance goes down.

But when I was talking to Dr. Richard Duggins, who's been on a past You Are

Not a Frog episode, he talks about the burnout cliff that actually in high

stakes, high stress professionals, they keep functioning at work, their

performance doesn't go down until they hit this, this performance cliff.

And I said to him, well, I don't understand because you

know this Yerkes-Dodson curve, we've been using it for years.

Does it mean that the curve is wrong?

And he said, no.

What happens, you think about that curve as your overall performance, but

if your performance is staying steady at work, something else has gotta give.

So often, what gives is your home life.

You borrow from your evenings, your sleep, your exercise, your

hobbies, or your relationships.

Your relationship with your children, your partner.

You borrow from intimacy, you borrow from your rest so that you can keep

your performance going at work.

And doctors and other professionals.

We will keep our performance going at work and sacrifice everything else.

And this will work to the point.

And then you'll just reach this cliff and suddenly you'll drop

down and go off the burnout cliff.

So on, on paper, it looks like you're coping.

It looks like you genuinely can do the 60 hour work week and your clinical work.

Well, it might be fine.

Your patients might be safe and your colleagues will respect you, and you

look like you are delivering stuff.

And because your performance of work is still intact, you'll

tell yourself it's manageable.

But your partner will be feeling it.

Your kids will notice you are distracted all the time.

And mine have noticed so many times and they're talking to me and I'm

just looking at emails or messages, and my head is still at work.

Or you're canceling plans with friends, or perhaps you are snapping,

irritable, and you stop doing the things that really bring you joy in life.

And here's the really unfortunate bit.

Often we only start to panic when our performance of work starts to

drop, and we just ignore the erosion that's going on everywhere else.

And we don't often call it a problem when our home life is really suffering.

We often call it dedication and professionalism and a busy

season, although it's never normally a season, is it?

It's often going on for years.

And one day, the, the borrowing just, it just catches up.

And when your work finally does start to suffer, then that's when

we say something's wrong or our colleagues starts to challenge us.

The problem is that, that cliff edge of the burnout cliff that Dr. Richard Duggins

talks about, it didn't appear overnight.

It was gradual.

You were gradually easing towards it.

And even though burnout can look like a dramatic collapse, it's only because

there's nothing left to borrow from.

It's been going on for weeks, months, even years, and that's

why this really, really matters.

Cause what happens if nothing changes?

I just want to offer a bit of a reality check.

And this episode, it's not here to reassure you that

everything's going to be okay.

Sorry about that.

It's actually here to help you face reality and look really clearly.

Because if nothing changes, where does this lead?

In five years time what will your health be like?

What will your relationships be like?

And what will have changed about the way you feel about your work?

And it's not gonna happen dramatically, but it will happen really steadily.

And so what we need is some courage, not to quit everything and leave.

That's not what I'm asking.

It's the courage to actually look at what's going on and also the courage to

stop denying there's a problem or soothe yourself with I just need to cope better,

or it's going to be better when, you know, when I get a couple more colleagues,

when we finally manage to get another partner or a decent practice manager.

I think many of us avoid doing anything about it because sometimes

it can be easier to stay in the known discomfort than the unknown uncertainty.

Because actually questioning what I'm doing, questioning my

workload, it feels a bit dangerous.

Because if I truly admit that the work is unsustainable, I can't carry on

like this, then what are my choices?

And we can also beat ourselves up by telling ourselves even questioning.

It feels selfish, ungrateful, disloyal, letting people down

or admitting we can't hack it.

And that feels shameful.

It feels like admitting we are not good enough, even though we know that

no one would be able to cope with a workload like that for very long.

So we sort of do something that feels a bit safer to our nervous system.

So we try and do more things just to cope, and we try to solve an

overload problem without actually dealing with the overload.

So we try and meditate ourselves out of a 60 hour work week.

It'll help a bit, but it's not gonna solve the problem.

Nor is becoming more disciplined or more productive.

And we lie to ourselves.

If we were a bit more calmer, a bit more intentional, more

organized, this would be manageable.

And I have lost count of the amount of books, the amount of systems, everything

I've tried to put into my life to try and overcome just what is too much to do.

A workload problem.

And in fact, when I was talking to AI and asking them to give me this

sort of brutally honest assessment of how I was doing, it came out with

a line that was absolutely gutting.

It said, you keep trying to systematize your way out of a chronic yes problem.

So I'm looking for systems, for ways of being more efficient.

That's gonna mean I can continue to do everything rather than

make those difficult choices.

And this is where I need to be really honest.

You know, I have tried doing all the right things, the mindfulness

and the journaling and the planning.

They did help a bit, but nothing changed until I was willing to change things,

to actually stop doing some things.

Things I wanted to do, and until I was willing to tolerate the discomfort

of leaving some of the work that felt really important, and willing to

face what it was really costing me.

And I got to a point in my business where I had so much to

do, I just couldn't do it all.

But I was trying to, 'cause I didn't wanna let my colleagues down.

I didn't wanna let my podcast listeners down.

I didn't wanna.

Let the people that had booked me for speaking down.

I was trying to manage it all and I remember talking to my psychiatrist, I

was having an ADHD review, and she started asking me questions about anxiety and

depression, because some of what I was feeling really looked like depression.

Mostly it was sustained overload and stress.

Because when demand exceeds capacity for long enough, it does look like

all sorts of things, especially anxiety, depression, and burnout.

So you can get low mood and irritability and numbness and anxiety and detachment.

And if you have any of these symptoms, please, please, please

go and speak to a doctor about it.

But sometimes it's not pathology that's going on.

Sometimes it's a, a maths problem.

You're trying to cram too much into something that actually won't go.

What do you do with all of this?

So I'm gonna suggest right now, don't fix it, but don't panic.

Don't make any dramatic decisions.

The first step is just to stop guessing, because a lot of the time we don't

actually know what is on her plate.

Like I recently wanted to start eating a lot more healthy, and

I've started keeping a food diary.

And you know what I, I never really realized exactly what I was eating

and how erratic my eating habits were until I saw it written down.

Nothing's changed in the way I'm eating.

I'm just seeing it.

And with that food diary, I've looked at it and gone oh, that's

why I tend to have these massive sugar crashes late in the afternoon.

That explains it, rather than beating myself up for feeling

really hungry and then going for the really unhealthy snacks.

Most of us have never actually seen what actually goes on in our working

week, so we just experience it in little fragments about, you know,

working that extra evening or Sunday afternoon or checking emails in beds

or finishing up and catching up so we don't actually recognize it's 60 hours.

It just feels like a lot small, necessary things.

So if you wanna start somewhere with all of this, don't start

with a massive big change.

Start with clarity.

'Cause the first step to being able to solve all this is actually

knowing what you are dealing with.

So why don't you start with mapping out your actual week.

Every single session you work, every time you have paperwork, every time you check

your emails, do your emails, do any admin, every time you have a conversation with

a colleague or have to support a trainee, every teaching session, every bit of work

you do at home, put it in black and white.

We've provided a tool called the Thrive Week Planner that you

can download and use to do this.

I used this while I was coaching a GP.

He'd come to me saying I'm so overloaded, I just want to get my day off.

And we'd looked at his workload, we'd mapped it out on a week's

calendar, you know what a typical working week for him looked like.

And he told me he thought he was working seven or eight sessions, and after we'd

put down every single thing that he was doing, including being a partner,

being a associate specialist at the local hospital, being appraiser, doing

all sorts of other stuff, and when he did it, he just looked at his plan.

And I said, well, what do you notice?

He said, I appear to be working about 12 sessions a week, not seven, not eight.

So no wonder he wasn't getting his day off.

So it's really helpful just to get it out there.

You're not judging it, you're not redesigning your life.

First of all, you're just gonna see it.

'cause it's really hard to argue with reality once it's written down and

then you know what you're coping with.

Now you may be thinking okay, I get it.

High workload, it's too much.

We all know it's too much, but it's never going to change.

In fact, it's only gonna get worse.

So what's the point of even looking?

And I get it.

And underneath that you may be feeling one of three things.

Firstly, really hopeless.

You know, that's just it.

The system is broken, it's never gonna improve.

And yeah, that might be the case.

You might also be feeling a bit scared.

You know, if I admit that this is unsustainable, I might

have to do something drastic.

I might have to leave, I might have to disappoint people, I might have

to have conversations I don't wanna have, and what would I do anyway, okay?

So that sometimes means that we don't even start to look at the problem, but

you know, that is like way, way down the line and there's lots of things you

could do before you get to that point.

The third response you might have to, that is just avoid looking at at all.

Sometimes just freezing as in that fight, flight or freeze response thinking.

It's just safer not to know.

And if I don't look too closely, I'm just gonna put my head down and keep going.

And all of that makes sense.

But getting clear, it's not about being unduly optimistic and believing that

the road is magically gonna improve, and it's also not about fixing the system.

It is just about working out what you are doing unconsciously.

What are you sacrificing unconsciously?

Because if nothing changes, if the workload remains the

same, you have two options.

Option one, you can ignore that nail and you can continue borrowing

from the rest of your life without noticing, Canceling all your plans,

keep working in the evening, losing patience and narrowing down your world.

And keep telling yourself that it's fine.

'cause your performance at work still looks intact, but you will

be edging near that burnout cliff.

The second option is actually make a conscious decision.

Decide what the job, what the work is allowed to take from you, and

you're not being really dramatic, but you're just being really deliberate.

You could say I realize that if I'm gonna choose to stay with

this workload, I will never get to play tennis on a Thursday evening.

Or I will realize that I, this hobby is unrealistic for me

if I continue with this work.

You've chosen it.

It's conscious.

And that might be enough.

You see, clarity doesn't guarantee change, but it does stop you

drifting towards that burnout cliff.

And you know, we think the burnout cliff sounds like you go over

suddenly, but actually you are slowly going towards that and adjusting and

compensating until one day you know there's no performance at home left

to borrow, and you go off the cliff.

And this is where it gets a bit existential because you can

survive like this for years.

But the question here is, well, what version of you survives?

And if nothing changes, the question does become, what am

I willing to exchange for this?

My health, my sleep, my relationships, my presence with my

children, who I am outside work?

And that's not a question about productivity, that's a life question.

You might think the exchange is worth it.

I've got a colleague who just loves working.

He said if he could, he'd work 24 hours a day, and that is all he wants to do.

But he's chosen.

That is conscious.

Let it be chosen, not accidental, and not based on denial and

refusing to look at what's going on.

So clarity isn't about fixing the system.

It's about, like, your own conscious consent to what is going on.

Now here, here is another option, here's a third option.

You could look clearly at what's going on and you could decide, well, I'm not

willing to let this take my health, or I'm not willing to keep borrowing from my

life to keep up my performance at work.

And then something very important shifts.

And it's not the system, it's you.

Cause what you're doing, you're not consenting to this unlimited

sacrifice and this erosion of, of everything else in your life.

Because once you've stopped consenting to this, sacrificing your life

outside of work, you can't really continue unconsciously, and you are

going from like drifting towards that burnout cliff to actually choosing.

And that does not mean resigning tomorrow.

It means that you stop pretending that everything is equally non-negotiable.

When I was in that period of overwhelm, I had a good friend and colleague and

he sat me down in front of a whiteboard and he said, right, let's list out

everything that is on your plate, Rachel.

Everything that you think is non-negotiable and you have to do.

And we listed out everything.

And just by talking to him for an hour, we crossed off at least a third of them.

And believe me, they were really important at the time.

So if you'd have asked me, I would've said I couldn't possibly drop them.

But having that permission from somebody else was really, really helpful.

And we've also put the Overwhelm SOS Toolkit in the show notes, so if you

want to go through that exact system that I use, you can do it, like

getting everything out and thinking what is, what can I just drop and

what can I let go of right now?

Because when you stop telling yourself there is no choice, you

start asking different questions, and the questions aren't, what else

do I need to do to cope better?

The questions are, okay, what is actually mine to carry?

What really, really, really, really needs to be done rather than what

really, really needs to be done?

The other questions are, what have I just assumed that I must do that

maybe nobody else is expecting?

And what is genuinely non-negotiable and what have I simply

treated as, as non-negotiable?

And you'll be working in the same system.

You might have the same rota but you won't treat infinite sacrifice as this

sort of default level of professionalism.

But here's the uncomfortable bit.

There is a cost.

And if you decide that you aren't willing to sacrifice everything,

something will have to give.

Not in a really dramatic way, but just because capacity is

finite and there is a cost.

If you refuse to work in the evening, then that work won't get done in the evenings.

If you refuse to let your health suffer, then you probably won't meet all the

expectations that everybody has of you.

And if you refuse to keep borrowing your performance from your family

life, then yes, some work requests will have to be declined and

people might think less of you.

You might even be seen to be dumping on your colleagues.

And that is not being difficult, it's just maths.

And that is where the real courage sits.

Not in quitting everything, but it's actually tolerating that discomfort, that

discomfort of the limits that you have.

And yes, you might disappoint someone, you might not be seen as being endlessly

available, you won't be the superhero.

But that's not failure, that's reality.

And you know what?

Reality wins.

And side note, I do think we have this myth in medicine that, well,

I'm just gonna have to put up with second best in my work, in my career

if I decide not to sacrifice my family or my home life or everything.

And I think that's a bit of a fallacy.

I think that actually, if you decide what's really, really important at

work, what's in your zone of genius, and you focus on that and you do less,

you will do that one thing better.

You'll have a better impact.

And actually that is when you'll do your best work.

And genuinely, I, I've seen that in my own life.

But right now, if you feel too tired to choose any of those options, that's okay.

Clarity has got to come before action.

And if this has resonated with you and you want somewhere to start,

don't start with changing something, just start with getting clear.

So you can download our Thrive Week Planner and map your actual week in black

and white, not redesign your whole life.

Don't panic.

Just to see what's really there.

And if your head feels too full to think straight, grab the

Overwhelm SOS guide as well.

And that's a really simple way of getting everything out of your

brain onto paper so you can see what you, you're actually carrying.

Not about fixing stuff, it's not about big decisions, it's just about clarity.

Once you start to see, see things clearly, you'll stop trying to

argue with reality, and that's where real choice really begins, and

the next step will reveal itself.

And when I sat in front of that whiteboard with everything that was

on my mind, clearly mapped out in front of me, I needed permission.

I needed permission from my colleague just to leave half the stuff up there.

So before we finish, let me offer you a few permissions.

Not to escape responsibility, but just to stop fighting reality.

So you have permission to stop arguing with your own exhaustion.

If you are tired, that is information, it's not weakness.

You have permission to treat how you feel right now as data, not something to

override with yet more self-discipline.

And you have permission to stop adding and adding and adding

to your coping strategies.

Adding all these wellbeing tools, tips, techniques, is something

else on your to-do list, because the issue isn't coping better.

And you have permission, even if it's just privately to say this

might not be doable as it stands.

And you don't have to fix it today.

You don't have to confront anybody.

You don't have to leave, but you can stop pretending that it's doable.

We need to be honest about what is.

That's not self-indulgent.

It's just the first step.

You can argue with reality, but reality wins every single time.

So the question isn't, how can I cope harder?

The question is, are you willing to really look clearly at what's going on?

And if you are, that's where change eventually becomes possible.

But clarity comes first, always.