Save Yourself, Save the World

If you destroy yourself with burnout, you'll be missing out on some great TV.

Would you like to destroy your career, ruin your health, alienate your family, and destroy the universe? I got you, fam!

Step 1: Be Competent ✅

Do your job. Do it well, deliver what’s expected, sometimes a little more. Maintain a high standard of quality. Be reasonable, rational, dependable, and effective. Earn trust with your colleagues and your bosses. Let it be known that you’re hoping to advance.

Step 2: Gain Responsibility ✅

Your manager, recognizing your excellent performance, will reward you with incrementally greater responsibility. This will require a little extra time from you each week. You’ll borrow the time from your friends, steal it from time with your family, and you’ll gradually reduce time spent doing the things you love.

Your health and wellness will suffer. Don’t worry — there’ll be time for that later, right?

Step 3: Cause the Heat Death of the Universe ✅

You’ll begin sapping energy from the environment as you enter a tightening spiral of satisfied expectations, increasing responsibility, and dwindling interest in the people you love. Your keyboard will glow with a radiant intensity as the the sky above you begins to darken. It’s a small price to pay for achieving your OKR’s, even if it means accelerating the climate crisis, ultimately destroying the source of all organic energy in the universe.

These are not my rules, people. You want to argue, take it up with thermodynamics!

Save the World

If that sounds like a bit much, there is another way. It’s not very exciting, but it does have the benefit of avoiding the destruction of humanity in a global cataclysm that destroys humanity and the promising Netflix series The Diplomat starring Keri Russell.

Step 1: Same as above. Do a good job.

Step 2: Same as above. Get more responsibility.

Step 3: In a meeting with a manager, say these words:

“Hey, I could use your help with something. I’m enjoying all the impact I’m having here, and I’d like to keep it up! I want to set some boundaries for my work/life balance that will ensure I can continue on this amazing trajectory you’ve helped me achieve. Could we talk about that on Thursday at 2pm?”

Like most managers, when I discover a high-performing and trustworthy person on my team, my instinct is to give them more responsibility. It’s my job — it’s my responsibility — to continue doubling down on my best people. It’s short-sighted, but it’s all I know! I’ll continue this process until they ask me to stop, they keel over, or they quit.

Which will you choose? There is nothing in the management handbook or on the wiki (yes, I checked) about preemptively giving out raises, promotions, extra time off, or re-balancing the workload of highly effective people. None of that happens, as a general rule, until or unless the employee says it must.

On some level, we all know this is terrible. But something holds us back from telling our bosses what we need. Maybe it’s a part of the money taboo. Maybe it’s a stereotype about how successful people are meant to behave. Maybe it’s gendered, patriarchal nonsense or part of our wicked hustle culture.

I’m not sure, but I do know it’s not healthy. There’s a saying on the internet: “Men will do anything to avoid going to therapy.” Most of us will do anything to avoid letting our managers know we need help. Many would rather change jobs than reveal themselves this way to their bosses.

Keep yourself safe by asking your manager for help when you need it. Be honest and straightforward about your desire to protect a healthy and sane work/life balance.

If your manager can’t handle it, then it’s time to find a new boss. Just make a decision before it’s too late.