Overcoming Burnout — Episode 9 of Career Coaching with John
Episode Nine - When Hard Work Stops Working
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You can lift it. But should you? This episode explores the hidden cost of capability—how strength, hustle, and good intentions can trap us in outdated versions of success. Featuring utopian French socialists Etienne Cabet, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, and one very tired admissions officer, we look at the shift from doing the work… to defining the work.
Music: Theme: Smooth Chill Jazz by AllWorldMusic from Pixabay
Intermission: Jungle Waves by DIMMYSAD from Pixabay
Outro: Vintage Rock by DIMMYSAD from Pixabay
Read Transcript — Episode 9: When Hard Work Stops Working
You're listening to career coaching with John, the awful approaches for lasting change. My name is John Fialkowski and welcome. Today's episode is all about the changing definition of hard work.
Side note, let me admit something to you up front. I have an obvious interest in utopian colonies, the places where people tried, sometimes sincerely, sometimes delusionally, to build something better in reaction to societal change. I think it's because I see these colonies as moment in time foreshadows of the world we live in now.
Our values are different, but our fears are the same. Let's then talk about a man named Etienne Cabet. Cabet wrote his sweeping utopia novel Voyage uniquely, where property was shared, everyone worked, and no one got rich.
It was equal moral, and it was, at least on paper, sustainable. The book made him famous, and the followers of the carnism sought to establish these ideals in a practical setting. Now, France of the 1840s was far too rigid to society for something like this, so they went where all dreamers go.
Illinois. Well, specifically to a town called Novu, where the Mormons had just left. Now, Cabet was unquestionably the leader. He was part prophet, part bureaucrat, and he had a very clear idea of how things should run.
Under his leadership, the colony thrived as a cultural hub, appearing to those Kurian principles. At one point, though, Cabat returned to France to settle a legal dispute with with his former followers, and when he came back to Illinois, he was expecting discipline and harmony.
But he found something else entirely. His followers were being human are they chatted while they work, they took breaks, they smoked tobacco and hell they even went for drinks after work. Now, none of it was scandalous.
It was ordinary to them, creating utopia after all this hard work, grading someone else's utopia is even harder. Grading someone else's utopia while they enjoy the profits and take off to France and leave you without leadership. Well, you know where this goes.
Well, I bring this up because I've been thinking a lot about how our own relationships to work evolve over time and how badly we are prepared for that evolution when we are young. You learn to work hard by moving fast, staying late and pushing through. Whether for strength or beauty, we use young people for our their bodies.
I don't find that exploitive necessarily. It's what you have to offer when you learn how to be part of the workforce. But eventually your body changes, your mind changes and your priorities change.
And suddenly that old way of working hard, it stops fitting. So today we're going to talk about that uncomfortable invisible shift when the old work ethic doesn't work anymore and you finally have to teach yourself how to be a grown up.
Well, this is career coaching with John episode 9, when hard work stopped working. Stay with us.
Welcome back to Career Coaching with John. When I first started learning about history as a boy, it was all names and dates, wars, treaties, protest kings and prime ministers. The good stuff.
It was about learning who the good guys were, who won, who lost, and what it all meant for our national pride. That was the goal, I think, to instill a sense of belonging, a sense of patriotism. But university, things got more complicated.
We weren't just memorizing facts anymore, we were pulling them apart. We looked at interconnected events, conflicting motivations. We moved away from the idea of simple heroes and villains.
Mostly, though, we were taught to look at the evidence, to interpret the world for ourselves by looking at what was there, not just what we were being told. And then somewhere in the last few years, we've swung again. Now the dominant lens seems to be a bit, I don't know.
Different revisions may be looking at who held the power, who didn't, who got ridden into the story and who got left out. We're asking new questions. Who was the oppressor? Who was the oppressed? What is the consequences of silence?
I remember the first time I encountered this. I was confused by what I was hearing. How could someone see an event so radically different than me? In fact, the very same thing happened to me this week and I'm finding myself almost no hurt.
We'll talk about being reminded that I don't know everything. Hmm, has value, right? But sometimes I still think we're missing the point. Because when I look at history, when I sit with it, what I see is people.
People under pressure, people trying to survive, people stuck in systems they didn't build but had to navigate. History teaches us what's normal. It shows us how things work, how power works, and how it shows us how fragile order really is.
And most of all, it shows us how people behave when they are tired. That's where you see what people are really made of. When the idealism starts to fall apart, they're left trying to hold it together anyway.
And that, honestly, is why I'm doing this episode. Because in work like history, there is a moment when the story, even telling yourself, no longer fits the facts, and either you cling to the old version or you start writing a new one.
And that process and that rewrite it takes work, just not the kind we've been trained to recognize. I don't remember exactly who said it, but I was working alongside an older man once and he paused before lifting something heavy.
He said I have to tell myself not to lift it. I am perfectly capable of doing it, it's just not a good idea anymore. At the time I didn't think much of it.
It sounded like a lion from a guy who's been around the block a few times and I'm a team player, so I picked it up. But now I hear it differently. My last job was physical I I worked in a bike shop.
It was hands on, fast-paced. There was a lot of movement, a lot of hauling gear, a lot of hanging bikes and awkward hooks. I like that part of it. I like doing things, but eventually I started to resent what it was doing to the rest of my life.
I'd come home completely spent, not in a good way, you know? There's nothing left for myself kind of way. I had no energy to pursue other goals, no focus for creative work.
Hell, I worked in a bike shop. I didn't even want to ride a bike. That doesn't sound like a good way to live to me. I remember looking at the younger staff, the 20 somethings who spent their paychecks and parts in gear, and thinking, why would I spend my money on a bike that I never have the energy to ride?
We'll talk about a talk about cultural shift, right? And it doesn't because I couldn't do the work. It's because I started to realize it was taking more. It was taking more than it was giving.
I started seeking advice from the older men around me, the ones who had been there already, and I could tell that subject still made them uncomfortable. And now, Fast forward to this week.
I just got off a call with a client that brought up that feeling again. She's in her 40s, working in a private school admissions department. Officially, her title sounds quite straightforward, but in reality, she stuck between two directors stretched across 3 departments with no clarity, no structure, and a whole lot of expectations.
She's responsible for everything and yet in charge of nothing. When we first started working together, she didn't even really know what she wanted. She just knew that she was tired.
Tired of holding it all together. Tired of being pulled in five different directions with no recognition or end insight. We've been in this space now for a few weeks, trying to sort through it, trying to make sense of what's hers to carry and what's not.
Because the job is the job. She's tried to talk about it. She's tried to reduce the level of responsibility because she's been giving. But again, the job is the job, and that has been made abundantly clear.
I don't think it's about fixing the role as sometimes it's about deciding what version of yourself you're going to bring to it. And we're not done with that work yet. But I'll tell you this, she's capable and that's never been a question.
I think the question though is at what cost? Where does this exactly leave someone like my client? Mid career, tired but not broken, capable but worn down.
The job is job after all, and it's not all that bad. There are some perks. It has great time off, it has a decent culture, a mission she believes in. So we we, we talked about it and we discussed some options that are on the table.
Here they are. Option one, suck it up. Well, let's be honest, there are reasons to do this. Sometimes you can ride out a rough patch.
Sometimes you take a breath, you pull back emotionally, and you remind yourself that not every job has to be perfect. Sometimes we can reframe the role, adjust the expectations, hang on for what we hope will be a better season.
We talked about dialing herself back too, not checking out necessarily, but maybe not carrying everything. Maybe the job doesn't need her to be a superhero, it just needs her to survive it. There are plenty of reasons to stay here too. Sometimes we forget that stability is also a benefit.
Well then there's option 2. Quit. You'll find a new job and then you'll leave because yeah, those perks that she's enjoying, they do exist elsewhere.
There are other schools, other teams, other jobs that might have more structure, clarity and less chaos, and they might pay the same or more. And sometimes that's very much the answer.
Sometimes we reach the limit of what we can reasonably give and what they can reasonably give us. The mistake people make is assuming that leaving is failure, that quitting means somehow that you weren't tough enough.
But that's the old story talking, right? The sunk cost fallacy. That phenomenon whereby a person is reluctant to abandon a strategy or course of action because they've heavily invested in it, even when it's clear that abandonment would be far more beneficial.
Nobody's the one where people say real workers push through. Well, no, I disagree. I think real workers decide.
They weigh the cost, they weigh the reward and they make the choice. And again, that's what we're trying to do here. We're not necessarily going to fix the job.
We're not going to shame the impulse to leave. We're just going to look at it clearly because in mid career there is a new version of hard work. You know what you need and you need to give your permit self permission to want it.
Which brings us to option 3. Stay, but negotiate. We're not talking about negotiating the pay or the workload or even the boundaries. We're going to renegotiate the terms of how you're seen and how you perceive and perceive yourself because that's what I actually think this job is.
It's a leadership role, and whether or not her title says it, this client is already functioning as the connected tissue between departments. She's managing expectations. She's making decisions, organizing information, holding people accountable.
To me, that's leadership. But what happens, what happens to a lot of people, especially in jobs that grow organically or slowly get more complicated at any rate, is that they might lose perspective of what their job actually is.
Well, they keep showing up like it's the same job they started with, even though that reality has changed and grown with them. They're at the centre of it all, but they're still acting like they're on the edge.
So when that happens, they don't get included in big conversations, they don't get credited for the things they keep on track, they don't get paid like decision makers.
So what if option 3 then is step into the job for what it actually is. Present yourself as the leader you've been all along. We're not talking pushy or aggressive.
We're saying with clarity, this is what I'm responsible for, this is what I'm actually doing, and this is the level that I need to be operating at in order to make this work. I don't consider this ego, I consider it alignment.
This is the difference between being used and being recognized. But it takes guts because when you stop acting like a cog, some people are going to get uncomfortable. But it's the price of stepping into leadership.
You don't just do what the job you define it. Now let me pivot for a moment. Years ago I started working with somebody who wanted to start an HR program centred around how to speak with a trauma informed lens at work.
To me, the idea was simple but powerful. If you want of effective communication within a group of people, especially when those people carry their own trauma, how do you say or do things within an organization without making that trauma worse?
How do you avoid triggering the very people you are trying to lead? I was asked to help craft a marketing plan for that program, and in my enthusiasm for the project, I reached out to a couple of my associates just to explore how we might actually pull this off.
I'd mentioned that I had done that and the reaction stunned me. They were angry. They thought I was trying to take it away from them.
It didn't make sense to me at the time. I wasn't being paid. I had no interest in running such a program. I was trying to help but now I see it differently.
I wasn't helping. I was doing exactly what they were trying to prevent, because good intentions don't cancel out impact. So here then is the real question.
How do you win in a situation like that? How do you give the right advice to someone who is exhausted or hurt? And conversely, how do you receive the right advice if you can't separate the past from the present?
We are informed by our experiences, our history. We don't walk to work as blank slates. We walk in shaped by everything that has happened to us up into that point.
And then someone tells U.S. business isn't personal, it's business. Well, now business is personal. It's people interacting with people for the purpose of profit. The rest, my friends, is power.
And that is what teach history teaches us. Not who was right or who was wrong, not who won or lost, but how the powerful get ahead, how systems maintain themselves, and how exhaustion gets ignored in favor of outcomes.
So if you're that person, my client, caught in that system, caught with everything that I had just said, tired and still trying to exist, where do you find your power?
Well, she said to me after her meeting with the head of school, he basically said if I drown next year, I am not doing my job well. All right, let's study the history of that interaction.
Over and over again, this person has avoided the real conversation. The headmaster, I mean, about everything, about her exhaustion, her role and her reality. He doesn't know how to help.
Meanwhile, her direct supervisors are trying to lead by removing work from their own plates. They offer plenty of sympathy but little action.
And thus she's left in the middle of that with a work ethic built over years of saying I can do it, I'm capable, I don't give up. Everybody sees me working hard. That is where my strength is.
So let's reflect on what that statement actually means. If you drowned, you're not doing your job well. There are two ways of hearing it, and they are dramatically different.
One, I don't care about you, so figure it out on your own. Or two, I believe in your ability. You're here because I think you are capable. I want you to succeed. I want you to lead.
There is a tremendous difference between those two statements. The work now is deciding how you're going to interpret it, how you're going to read the room, read the history, and decide whether or not you want to thrive or you want to stay afloat.
Well, this is career coaching with John. Let's take a break.
Although, right, that was Demi sad with the song Jungle Waves. Hailing all the way from the Russian Federation, their bio says they're a musical duo consisting of guitarist and songwriter Dmitry Sandoval Boy, formerly of the band Nischwitz OK, and DJ producer Alexander Plot.
You know what? I kind of liked it. I like drum and bass. Or was it jungle? I don't know. Anyway, I'm doubly Peugeot Wich and welcome back to career coaching with John. I'm John. Let's pick up where we left off.
You know, one of the patterns we see in history is this change happens slowly and then all at once. The other day I stumbled across video footage of Romanian dictator Nicolae Churches School's last two days in power back in 1989.
One day you see an aging but confident man standing on the balcony of his resplendent resplendent palace, speaking in front of an enormous crowd and waving kind of awkwardly. He actually has quite a goofy little wave.
And the next day he's on trial in the small little room crowded with, well, a number of kind of angry looking Romanians. And he's convicted. And then he and his wife Elena's hands tied, were taken out back and shot.
It happened so fast, apparently, that the cameraman couldn't even make it in time to capture it the moment properly. The trip Tesco era was over and Romania became a free country just at the very moment it seemed like nothing could topple his power.
You know, we convince ourselves that when things are at their worst, they can't change. And then, like magic, they do. Because it's not magic. It takes years of hard work, of disappointment, crafting a message and getting people on board.
So we have to ask ourselves, what is the hard work that needs to be done? Is the one that our demons are telling us to do, or the one that actually helps us move forward?
Ansley, I feel like I'm at this moment, right now as moment when everything might change and despite everything you saying, it can't. So I'm asking you to join me. Let's praise the work that we've done in the past, but also acknowledge that's not who we are. That's just what got us here.
Alright, thank you for listening to Career Coaching with John. I want to thank Dimmy Sad for that uplifting bit of drum and bass. We're going to let them play us out with vintage rock, or what they see as vintage rock in Russia.
I want to thank the people in my life who keep reminding me that I don't know everything. I want to thank all of you for trying. There is an Irish saying and says God loves a Trier which roughly translates to and I look this up.
You made a complete and utter balls of it on how we love you. Anyway, you have permission to suck, so try again. If you need to hear someone, or you know, somebody needs to hear this, please share the episode. Leave a comment on Find Me at johnfilkowski.com.
I think I'm going to change the format of this show moving forward. I am actively looking for people to discuss their while their work lives with me. So if you are interested, please draw me a line.
You can also find me on YouTube where I am making a complete and utter balls of answering career advice questions that I find on Reddit. Good times.
Anyway, this was Career coaching with John episode 9 When hard work stops working. My name is John Fialkowski of course. Now go enjoy your day at work.