Of Pool Fobs and Stress Overload

The loss of the pool fob was the last straw.  After all, in SoCal, a replacement pool fob can run you anywhere from fifty to several hundred bucks, depending on where you live.  Plus, there’s the hassle of having to physically deliver an actual paper check or money order to the HOA management office in exchange for a small piece of plastic that will make or break your friends’ and family’s vacation to the Left Coast.

The pool fob itself was not that big of a deal.  The fact that the losing of the pool fob came along with the recognition that I had screwed up my Invisalign schedule, forgotten to call the caterer for a memorial service that was less than 5 days away, double booked a vacation flight AND was late for delivery of a blog post  (this one) was what made it the last straw.  Or the straw that broke the camel’s back. Or…see there I go again…UNFOCUSED. Sure sign of stress overload—or burnout, as some call it.

That’s why THIS blog post is about recognizing stress overload, the deluge, being slammed, drinking from a firehose, burnout - whatever we choose to call it—and what you can do to regain focus, clarity, and control over the deadlines and obligations you’re facing.

Identifying Burnout

It seems to me there are two kinds of burnout.  There’s burnout that results from too many irons in fires all over your life.  Your work life, social life, family life, and whatever other lives you have going are ALL in the midst of upheaval.  That’s the kind of overload I’m experiencing (and which you, lucky reader, get to relive with me as I seek out methods to dial back the stress and anxiety levels).  Then there’s burnout from just plain too much to do in one aspect of life.  You have taken too many electives and now you have a law review article due, a moot court brief to write, and five actual exams to study for.  Or, you have four closings at the end of the week and the lender’s asking for last minute document changes, the escrow company needs organizational documents (which you are redrafting for the fifth time after the last negotiating session with the JV partner), and title just found another exception which could render the real estate materially less valuable, while your SECOND partner just told you he needs you to draft all the exhibits for a multimillion dollar construction agreement.

In either case, you may be better equipped than most to handle this level of bananas, but you may also be driving precariously close to the cliff edge, where you too will be paying hundreds of dollars for pool fobs, or new invisalign trays, or flights you are unable to make because you will be on a DIFFERENT flight.  As one author notes, “Burnout doesn’t arrive all at once. It creeps in like a silent fog, obscuring your sense of joy, dulling your sharpest thoughts, and dimming your inner light.” 

It can be hard to know when you are reaching the point of burnout, but here’s a few signs to watch out for:

• Like me, you start misplacing important items and forgetting to schedule certain deadlines.  Just one lost item may not be a reason to pause and take a breath, but if you feel like you’re constantly running hither and thither to recover lost items or make it to appointments or meetings you forgot (or forgot to calendar), you are there, my friend.

• In spite of how much is on your plate, you feel paralyzed to take action to complete the tasks at hand.  It sounds weird, but when we are overwhelmed, our brains can shut down emotionally and intellectually.  You could actually feel bored even though you have more to do than ever.

• Ever heard someone say “Sorry, I got my deals confused”?  I’ve heard it a million times, and said it many times myself over the last twenty years.  This is a sign of cognitive fatigue; thoughts are cluttered, it becomes hard to focus, and as the brain’s hippocampus is impacted by stress, memory suffers.  This can be a particularly dangerous part of stress overload, where critical mistakes can be made if we don’t discover some tools to mitigate the stress.

Tips for Managing Stress Overload

Breaking through stress overload can be difficult, particularly since the whole cause of your stress—whether that be work overload, school overload, or life overload—won’t just “go away.”  But there are some tools you can use to work your way through the stress without sacrificing your performance or having a breakdown.  Some of these tools are just common sense, others are more sophisticated strategies to cut through the pile of “stuff” you’re stressing about and put yourself back in the saddle, reins in hand.

• Ask for help.  I don’t know why this is inherently hard for professional women in the work context, but studies show that it is.  Although we may readily ask a spouse or family member, or even a good friend, for help in our personal lives, we resist doing so at work, for fear of being perceived as incompetent or weak.  One author suggests a couple of ways to combat that fear.  First, identify potential resources for help, as you’ll be more comfortable approaching them with your request.  Frame requests specifically and identify why the helping hand benefits everyone, including the company or your client.  And finally, know that asking for help and delegating work are skills that distinguish leaders from workers.  Think about it: how many great presidents have succeeded by having a well-selected cabinet?  They wouldn’t think of trying to handle that job all alone.

• Figure out which responsibilities can be delayed by a few days and request an extension on those.  Whether it’s a paper for school or a writing assignment for work, often the requestor will gladly give you more time, since they too may be running behind on their part of the project.  An added benefit of getting a bit more time (aside from the breathing room for that assignment) is that your other work will benefit from your ability to tend to it in a less rushed, more thoughtful way.

• Instead of looking at the entirety of the workload you’re facing, break assignments down into manageable chunks.  It’s much easier to overcome stress paralysis by conquering a task or series of tasks that will take a couple of hours.  This involves prioritizing.  Narrow your view temporarily; what’s the next part of the assignment your partner or boss (or client) will be asking about?  What elements of the exam you need to study for are your weakest points?  Tackle those now, and feed off the sense of relief and accomplishment from killing those off to bite off the next piece of work.

• Use visualization to help motivate you and bring solutions to the forefront.  There are many methods of visualization; what works for me may not work for you, and vice versa.  I personally like to visualize how I will feel and what I will do to reward myself once I have completed the mountain of tasks in front of me.  For others, simply picturing the stressors as resolved or completed is enough.   Still others may find relief from stress and the ability to move forward from visualizing a favorite memory or a peaceful place, sensory imagery that can help one detach from the immediacy of the stressful situation.

• Put things in perspective.  I can’t tell you how much sleep I’ve lost, nails I’ve bitten off, and headaches I’ve generated from placing too much importance on life situations that to the rest of the world are a minor blip.  As a first year associate, I was assigned to draft a deed of trust for one of the senior partners who was visiting LA from the New York office.  I spent a good eight hours of my life drafting a customized California-compliant long form trust deed, complete with statutory waivers and every lender protection one could imagine.  Stayed up half the night, then drove an hour in rush hour traffic to my office in LA.  Bleary eyed, I presented the document to the partner, only to hear him tell me it was way too long—he wanted a short form deed of trust (which I could have pulled from any of the title companies we worked with and simply filled in the blanks).  The most important lesson I learned (other than to understand the assignment!) was that some assignments which in the moment seem excruciatingly crucial to your academic or professional career may just not be that important.  

At the end of the day, this last bullet point is probably the most important.  At my ripe age, there’s a lot of water under the bridge.  Looking back at a 30-plus year law career, I can see how little some of the things I over-analyzed, stressed about, and suffered migraine headaches over just DID. NOT. MATTER.  Remember the FIve Year Rule:  “If it won’t matter in 5 years, don’t spend 5 seconds worrying about it.”  Instead, use that 5 seconds to use one of the methods above to save yourself from burnout.  You’ll be glad you did.

As a veteran of thirty years of legal practice, Melanie Houk welcomes the opportunity to look back on a career nearer to completion than commencement. A graduate of Loyola Law School, Melanie initially took a nontraditional direction, leaving a first-year position at Whitman Breed Abbott & Morgan to take a job as a consultant. Eventually returning to private practice, Melanie spent nearly a decade developing further public law expertise with redevelopment agencies and municipalities before gravitating to an in-house position at Lennar Corporation, where a markedly convoluted path led her to a promotion to Deputy General Counsel, a position she has held for close to fifteen years.