Keeping the Plates Spinning -> Burnout and Imposter Syndrome
It's easy to try to keep up with everything. What happens when you can't?
I want to stick with the mental health topic this week and talk about 2 loaded terms: burnout and imposter syndrome.
They’ve been at the forefront of my mind over the past week. And I think they are often more closely related than people realize.
What happens when you feel like an imposter? You push yourself harder. You want to prove that you belong. You push and you push, because you’ve got to prove everyone wrong.
But you are just trying to prove it to yourself, aren’t you?
(Note: I’m 100% talking to myself here, but I’d be shocked if this doesn’t resonate with you too.)
Last week, I talked about feeling a lot of anxiety and trying to deal with that. I thought I had done well to control it and push forward. So I kept pushing and pushing through, and that worked great.
Until it didn’t.
I’m used to being able to solve problems pretty quickly. That’s always been my superpower. You put a puzzle in front of me and I eventually solve it. When I want to do something, I figure out how to do it. That’s how I’m able to manage everything I’m juggling. I’ve figured out how to use speed to my advantage and increase my volume.
Here’s what I feel like:
Just gotta get the plates spinning fast enough to stay up, right?
But then something stops a plate from spinning, and it’s the most important plate. So other plates start to fall and shatter on the ground. As the other plates fall, you start to question your ability to spin plates at all. You wonder if you were meant to be spinning plates at all. You see others spinning their plates effortlessly. You wonder why you just aren’t as good.
Sometimes, you’ve just got to stop keeping the plates up. When they all start to fall, it’s ok to take a break.
Something to remember: these plate spinners are only on stage for a short period of time, they don’t spin them all the time. And you don’t see the plates they break as they are practicing. And maybe some of them have plates attached to poles that spin on a motor. You just don’t know. All you see is the plates spinning.
Ok, I think I’ve pushed this metaphor about as far as I can, but this is exactly what I see happening with social media. It’s really easy to see others doing all sorts of things effortlessly while you are struggling. But you don’t see what’s happening behind the scenes. They likely have systems and help.
Sometimes, I think imposter syndrome is based on the fact that we see others doing things easily via help and experience, while all we know is that we are struggling.
And pushing ourselves to keep up the public appearance to match is where burnout starts creeping in.
That’s what I’ve been experiencing. I’ve been fighting a problem at work. No matter what I seem to try, it’s not getting fixed. So I keep putting more and more pressure on myself to figure it out. And when I can’t, I start questioning my ability. And when I’m questioning my ability, other things I’m working on start dropping off. Because if I can’t do this thing here, why do I think I can do this other, completely unrelated thing?
And that’s when I start to shut down. That’s when everything becomes difficult for me. I hate this feeling. So as I started feeling it toward the end of last week, I decided to shut myself down completely for the weekend and give myself a real break. I didn’t want to push my brain at all. Because that’s where I’ve had really bad things happen before. I end up pushing and pushing and pushing, and then my brain gives out on its own. And when it does, it takes way longer for me to recover.
It’s hard for me to put everything down like that. I feel a ton of pressure to push through and I see everything that needs to be done. And now, I feel behind. But I needed the break. I needed to give myself a chance to recover so I could make sure I’d be able to keep going. I don’t want to burn myself out again. The last time I did, it was bad.
I was also hoping that after a couple of days away, I would come back to the problem I was working on and magically see the solution in front of me.
Turns out, nope! It’s still all broken and I don’t understand what’s happening. But that’s ok. I’ll figure out how to get this plate spinning again and then I’ll start adding the others back in.
And if some plates get broken, that’s ok. There are more where those came from.
Content Corner
The idea of how imposter syndrome is playing a bit of a role here came to me when I discovered a new podcast, No Clear Answers. It’s 3 coaches talking about various issues they help people with.
And episode 1 was on Imposter Syndrome!
I’m a big fan of Corey and he’s been really helpful in a bunch of ways. So it was cool to see him in this discussion and I loved the different ways they approached the topic.
On a related note, Corey just sent out the 100th issue of his newsletter and wrote some reflections on it. I highly recommend his newsletter. One of my favorites that I read every week.
On a different note, there was a guest that appeared on two different podcasts that I listened to last week, and I was honestly really surprised with how much I resonated with what he had to say.
Here’s Adam Draper on Danny Miranda’s show:
And here he is on KP’s Build In Public Podcast:
Funny little link: I was actually on a Zoom call with Adam Draper’s dad, Tim, when I was working on my first startup. I finished in the top 20 of a pitch competition and had a chance to pitch him for a chance to be on his TV show. I completely blew it,but it was a cool experience early on in my entrepreneurial journey.
Here’s a blog I wrote after the experience.
Finally, here’s one of my videos from last week, where I explored what I’ve been doing with buildinpublic.coach and how I’m thinking about getting users to build a habit of using it:
See you next week!
~Leo