Thread by @johnath

Every day we see people giving 8 hours a day to their jobs, and it's not enough. The org needs more time from them just to get their stuff done. So they give 10 hours a day. But the org needs more. So they give 10.5 hours a day and 8 hours on the weekend. But the org needs more…

We've worked with thousands of leaders from hundreds of organizations. Here's the thing.

The org will always need more.

The organization will take whatever you give it. If you let it have 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, it will put them to use.

You will be more in the thick of things.
You'll feel more essential, and maybe even more heroic.

But you still won't get everything done.

If you give the organization 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If you stop sleeping or eating or seeing your family or going to the bathroom, the organization will find a use for all of it, and still want more.

It will always want more.

Managers should defend against this on your behalf but a lot of them don't. HR *should* help, labour law *should* help. A union can help if you're in one. But this is the reality for many many people today. And in the absence of those protections, there's only one way out.

At some point, you have to say no.

You have to say that you've given enough and if there's still leftover work then we need more people or less work.

I know how impossible that is for a lot of people. People who will be fired for saying no, or shut out of opportunities, or feel like they have let down their team. People who don’t have the privilege of saying no, where harm-reduction is the only viable approach. I get that.

This isn't a thread where I pretend that it's an easy problem to solve because I've lived my own version of it and I know that it isn't. I’m just telling you that working a few more hours won’t solve it.

I honestly wish that I had better advice to give. There are certainly lots of things that can ease workload, clarify priorities, reduce wasted and duplicated effort. Things we teach bosses every day. But you can do all that and still have the company test your boundaries.

A lot of people would rather quit than set a hard boundary. Quit and hope the next place treats them better. Sometimes it will. Sometimes the burnout cycle will repeat itself slowly over the next 6-24 months.

Taking a bit more and then a bit more and more and more.

We see it with junior hires, and we see it with managers, directors, and executives, too. Orgs don't often teach you to set boundaries on your way up. Much more often, they reward the lack of them. They celebrate the people who harm themselves. And makes it even harder to say no.

If you’re in this spot, I guess I just want to say that I see you. And I’m sorry it’s so hard. Especially right now. And to remind you that saying no is an option. It has risks, yes. But it’s not like you’re not taking risks running this hot anyhow. ❤️