9 minute read
From Where I Stand
Michael Gungor
The word on everyone’s lips this year is “burnout.” ILCA has laziness and entitlement. Oversight by field staff makes us doubt had in-person committee meetings for months and the most frequent their ability and acumen. Problems with a supplier means they don’t topic of conversation isn’t covid or supply chain care about you as a customer anymore. We go wide shortages or labor issues or weather — it’s with everything and start every assumption off on burnout. Landscape workers, at all levels, are the negative. We also conclude that everything has just exhausted. The impact of client demands, changed and it will never go back to the way it was. labor challenges, soaring sales, and a chronic, Our jobs and industry have eternally changed for seemingly endless pandemic have brought the worse. This is all a result of failing to check our down even the most motivated and chipper of stress levels. employees. Once we create our blast radius of cynicism,
We need to ask if burnout is avoidable or we enter the final stage — feelings of reduced inevitable. Is burnout simply the result of choosing professional ability. The stress started within, was an industry that compresses its workload into eight sent outward, and has now looped back around to be breakneck months? We all know landscaping is internalized once more. Doubt in our acumen does not for the weak, but in late June, even the toughest not mean we forget how to design, build, sell, or struggle to pop out of bed when that alarm clocks negotiate. It means we don’t know if we can cut it says 5:00 am. This column will examine what anymore in an industry that we have concluded has burnout is, how it can destroy productivity, and changed for the worse. finally, how it can be tamed. We wonder that if clients and coworkers and First, what is burnout? One would think the concept of burnout would trace itself back to when The vendors and the industry’s culture have changed, if we even fit in anymore? If the grass is greener Edison invented the lightbulb. In reality, the term is somewhere else. Some employees actually quit less than 50 years old. It was first found in a book by Herbert Freudenberger entitled Burnout: The Burnouts and leave. Others stare at ceilings fantasizing about getting out for good. Of course, the feeling of High Cost of High Achievement. Freudenburger being trapped in a job we are no longer good at is a succinctly described burnout as, “The extinction of depressing and terrifying prospect. Most of us lack motivation... especially where one’s devotion to a cause fails to produce the stupidity/courage to actually leave, so we just sit and internalize the desired result.” In other words, our incentive to work diminishes our struggles. The burnout has become a perpetual motion machine when the results of our work fail to please us. — stress has arced to create more stress.
That really nails it. That moves beyond simply being tired So, now that we know why and how we burnout, what can we do which is a common feeling on Friday after a 60-70 hour workweek to actually avoid it happening. Pulling out of the death spiral is easier or three-months in the grinder. Burnout can occur on a Monday at some points than at others. The simplest way to avoid eventual morning. It can occur on a Thursday night. It is the palpable feeling burnout is to avoid stress in the first place. I mean, that’s simple that what we are doing is not worth the cost of doing it. The author enough, right? Just don’t have stress during a 75-hour workweek goes on to identify three main characteristics that manifest with filled with labor, client, and personal demands. prolonged job stress: exhaustion, cynicism, and finally a feeling of Stress in the landscape industry is not going to be eliminated, reduced professional ability. but it can be managed. In an industry that is always racing the clock,
No one would watch a landscape company work and be shocked salvation lies with slowing down. The worst part of anyone’s day is if the employees said they felt exhausted. The work is physically that feeling of a truckload of work beginning to pile up. This usually demanding. The days and hours are long. There are long drives and happens about 20 minutes after morning coffee and pleasantries are traffic jams. Landscapers are dependent on a supply chain, subs, exchanged. All of a sudden the calls, texts, emails, and questions permitting officials, and each other just to complete a day’s work. come bursting through the door. The next 8-15 hours are critical... but The weather is unforgiving. People eat and sleep and drink like crap. not every one of those hours is the same. Personal relationships suffer. And I haven’t even mentioned clients The most stressed out people I know are the ones who never stop yet. The stress that comes from exhaustion and the exhaustion that working out of fear that stopping working will lead to more stress. comes from stress are both intertwined and inevitable. The landscape This mindset is as illogical as it is common. It would be like a person season is grueling and unforgiving and stress begins to build up in the trying to avoid a hangover by drinking more. Eventually, we all need body like plaque deposits in our arteries. to stop and the stress cascades down like Niagara Falls. Thinking we
This exhaustive stress leads to step two towards professional can outrun and outwork stress is the wrong way to handle it. burnout; cynicism. As stress levels grow, we begin to take a harsher, Instead, the trick is breaking our day into smaller, more colder attitude to our jobs, clients, and professional responsibility. manageable chunks. Let’s say a 12-hour day awaits. The sheer Our elevated stress makes us misinterpret normal interactions thought of a meandering, overloaded, and triple-booked day is through a negative prism. If a client makes a demand that three enough to get anyone stressed out before 6:00 am. Instead, break that months ago would be brushed off as normal, it is now widened to 12 hours into four- or three-hour chunks. In each segment, formally be, “clients are changing” or “it didn’t use to be this way.” schedule time to externally communicate with clients, externally
A mistake by a younger coworker is chalked up to millennial communicate with coworkers, internally work on short or long range
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projects, and take personal time to eat, drink, and recharge your batteries. If you can’t answer all your client texts or calls in the first segment, there will be another segment later on. If you can’t get them all done today, you can prioritize them for segment one tomorrow.
The reason that chunking works, is twofold. One, it better structures our day so we feel more productive and accomplished. Two, it makes us avoid procrastination by focusing on tasks that allow us to avoid other tasks we like less. If you are the type of account manager who loves to talk to clients, but hates working on that proposal for a new HOA, you will try and talk to clients as much as possible while that RFP burns a paper-shaped hole into your desk. Chunking your day and using hard stops means you have less time to blame procrastination on “being busy.”
Burnout is very real and very destructive. We need to avoid the mindset that burnout can only be fixed outside of the office on weekends, vacations, and fishing boats. Correcting burnout has to start while we are at work, not when we collapse on the couch after a long day. We can’t cram to avoid burnout by taking a Friday or Monday off in the summer. Those days are fun, but they are fleeting and the stress, cynicism, and doubt in our ability return the seconds the morning shower water circles the drain.
Taking blocked time for ourselves is important throughout the day. That can mean peacefully enjoying a cup of coffee without distraction, talking to a coworker, or taking a 15 minute walk around the shop or need a client’s house. It is ok to break away because those short breaks are making one more, not less productive. The key is to make sure these moments of respite become part of each daily chunk. These are not times to squeeze in because they will be the first part to be ignored as burnout returns like a cancer. These are moments where you clear your headspace and can think more clearly about the road ahead. They are as essential as any work task.
At the end of the day, we don’t like ourselves when we are burned out. It is the work equivalent of being hangry. Our tempers are short, we are tired, we are irritable, we become depressed, and we even fantasize about escape. We lash out at anyone within arm’s reach. Yes, it always seems to improve when the weather chills and the work begins to slow. However, according to those who work in this industry, the offseason has gotten busier and busier. There is “no slow time, anymore.” Is that true or just the cynicism that comes with burnout? Who knows, but not having chunked weeks and months to avoid burnout means it now must happen during the season.
Make no mistake, burnout is a mental health issue. It does not mean someone is weak or not cut out for the demands of the job. It is also safe to talk about in mixed company versus beginning a conversation with, “My elevated stress levels are making me cynical and causing me to doubt my professional ability and role in this industry.” If we cannot solve this internally, then a mental health professional can also examine the situation and make recommendations for a lifestyle change.
Burnout is common, but not chronic. It can be fixed through the right combination of managing stress and avoiding the warning signs of cynicism and doubt. Burnout, a word for machines and matchsticks, can only be fixed when we embrace our vulnerability and fallibility and take the first step towards becoming human again. After all, as the old saying goes, empty tanks take us nowhere.
