I have mentioned burnout on this blog before, but you can be utterly exhausted and still not burn out, indeed some people don’t have that option and just keep going come what may, 1 Now many people will give you ways to identify how you know you are exhausted and warning signs and such, but say you take a holiday or a break or even a change, how do you know when you have recovered? not having a firm description will often lead people to think they are fixed when they are not.
To me the best description has always come from the book ‘Kim’ by Rudyard Kipling, after Kim has recovered from both physical and mental exhaustion:
“and with an almost audible click he felt the wheels of his being lock up anew on the world without. Things that rode meaningless on the eyeball an instant before slid into proper proportion. Roads were meant to be walked upon, houses to be lived in, cattle to be driven, fields to be tilled, and men and women to be talked to. They were all real and true—solidly planted upon the feet—perfectly comprehensible—clay of his clay, neither more nor less. He shook himself like a dog with a flea in his ear, and rambled out of the gate. “
Sometimes the classics are classics for a reason.
- I always remember going to the office at 6am for years, watching the shift change at the main post office in Farringdon as I walked past, and seeing the utterly exhausted expressions of those who were finishing a night shift else where and were then moving on to their next job at the post office knowing, they did this week in week out.. so I would shut the hell up and get back to my corporate job knowing it could have been a hell of a lot worse.[↩]