Maybe You’ve Just Been Strong for Too Long?

Because one of the most exhausting feelings is working all day and then going home in the evening knowing that everything is still unfinished.
And by “unfinished” I don’t mean that I haven’t done anything. Quite the opposite – the day can be completely insane… meetings, conversations, decisions, questions, emails, someone needs help, something needs an urgent review, one issue needs an opinion, another needs a decision, with a third you need to get your own hands dirty… and while solving one thing, three new ones appear.

By evening you’re tired, the day has been packed to the brim and at the same time you may not even have opened the thing you wanted to finish that morning.

You’ve worked all day, but you don’t have the feeling that you’ve actually finished anything... and that feeling is exhausting...

At first, I just borrowed a little from the evening. At least that’s probably how I described it to myself :)

In reality, I knew pretty precisely how long I could still focus really well at night – until about 1:30 a.m. I’d leave the office at two... and at 6:45 I’d already be meeting a client at the gym :)

Writing this now, it sounds slightly absurd… because this was no longer “I stayed a little late today”. It was basically another workday added onto the first one...

But there’s one really important detail here – I absolutely love my work... like, genuinely genuinely love it!

I haven’t spent years gritting my teeth through something I hated and then finally collapsed. Quite the opposite – these topics still light me up today! I love untangling complicated things, finding connections, building something new… that moment when a huge mess slowly starts turning into some kind of logical whole is genuinely satisfying to me... And evenings were perfect for that...

The noise of the day disappeared, the phone stopped ringing, the meetings were over, Teams stopped flashing, nobody appeared with the next urgent question… and suddenly I had several uninterrupted hours in which I could actually use my own brain... And then came the flow... Not the “oh God, I still have to work” kind, but a genuinely enjoyable, mega-productive flow. My thoughts moved freely, things started falling into place, and something I might have struggled with in fragments for an hour during the day suddenly took shape in a couple of hours at night.

And just try going home at ten when you finally have that feeling of now I can actually work :D ... I’ll just finish this part… write down this one thought… this table is almost done… it’s flowing so well right now, I’ll just finish it… and suddenly it’s 1:30.

The sneakiest part of all this is that I didn’t leave the office at two in the morning feeling like I had tortured myself again. Sometimes I left feeling really satisfied. Finally, something was actually finished... and that’s probably exactly why I was able to keep doing it for so long.

Burnout doesn’t necessarily mean you hate your work

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, because when people talk about burnout, there often seems to be a fairly specific picture attached to it – someone becomes overloaded, loses motivation, starts resenting their work and eventually doesn’t even want to go to work in the morning. That’s not what happened to me... because I still really like my work and I can still be completely exhausted by it...

And I’ve actually started wondering whether loving your work can make it even harder to notice your own limits?

If you hate what you’re doing, you’ll probably notice fairly quickly that you’re giving too much to it. But if it excites you… if you genuinely want to know how something will turn out… if a great idea appears at eleven at night and you want to work through it immediately… if finishing something that has been hanging over you gives you real satisfaction… then those extra hours don’t feel like pure sacrifice – you’re getting something back. And that makes the whole thing pretty sneaky, because your body doesn’t keep score based on whether I enjoyed writing that document at one in the morning or not. I still slept less, there was still less time for recovery and the next morning another day started all over again.

The fact that my brain can suddenly shift into another gear at ten at night because something interests me doesn’t actually mean I’ve somehow recovered in the meantime. But it’s incredibly easy to confuse the two. See… I have energy. So everything must be fine... Except what I really had was energy for that particular thing... And maybe I was able to work beyond my limits for so long precisely because I love what I do.

Luckily, alongside that work, I have another kind of work too… working with people... and that gives me a completely different kind of joy.

When your athlete succeeds… when they do something they couldn’t do just a little while ago… when someone finally learns to listen to their body a little better and take care of themselves… or when they casually say one day, you know, I only just realized I don’t wake up in pain anymore...

Those moments genuinely matter to me... Not because I somehow “fixed” anyone. I didn’t. They did the work themselves. But getting to watch someone become stronger, braver, more confident… seeing them develop a new understanding of their body or themselves… that feeling is immediate and real. And in this work there are more of those little moments when you can actually see that something changed...

Today that movement was better... Today they dared to do something they were afraid of before... Today they realized that waking up in pain doesn’t have to be their normal... Today something got a little better...

Everything isn’t finished… and it doesn’t need to be... but the change is visible.

And maybe this work has made me realize even more clearly how much I need that feeling that something is actually moving. Not just another new issue arriving before the previous one has even had a chance to end :) ...and there’s another rather ironic part to all this...

I talk to people about recovery all the time. About how the body doesn’t become stronger just by being given more load, but also needs time to adapt... That more isn’t always better... That sometimes the smarter choice is to do one workout less... That pain and fatigue are information... :D

Those things are somehow much easier to say to other people. But when it came to myself, for a very long time I thought being strong simply meant being able to keep going a little longer... and when eventually I couldn’t anymore, my first thought wasn’t that perhaps I had been doing too much for too long.

My thought was… what happened to me?

...and then I started thinking I had become weak :)

When I eventually couldn’t keep going anymore, my first thought still wasn’t that maybe I had simply been doing too much for too long. It was – what happened to me? I used to manage. Why can’t I now? Maybe I need to organise myself better… prioritise better… let myself be interrupted less… become more efficient… focus more… go to bed earlier… recover better.

All perfectly reasonable thoughts... but underneath them was a much more uncomfortable one – maybe I’m just not strong enough anymore. That’s a pretty awful feeling when you’re used to being the person who can handle things... So naturally, you do exactly what you’ve always done – you try even harder to handle them :D

If I’m tired, I pull myself together. If I don’t have enough time, I find some more somewhere. If I can’t finish it during the day, I do it in the evening. If I’m exhausted, I’ll recover over the weekend and try again on Monday. Until eventually a completely different thought occurred to me… Maybe I haven’t become weak? Maybe I’ve simply been strong for too long?

Maybe for too long I’ve compensated with my own time, sleep and recovery for the fact that everything that was supposed to fit into the day simply didn’t… maybe for too long I’ve treated it as normal that if I want to finish things, I have to take time from somewhere I really shouldn’t be taking it from anymore… and maybe for too long I’ve measured my ability to cope by how much I can still carry...

Because as long as you can cope, everything seems more or less fine... You cope... Until you don’t...

...but why is it so difficult to simply rest?

Then I came across a post about unfinished tasks and what our brains do with them.

It talked about cortisol, the nervous system and made some pretty bold claims – not all of which I would necessarily accept as fact. But one idea stayed with me…

What if that constant feeling of “everything is unfinished” is actually part of the reason we never really switch off?

Because unfinished things have one annoying habit – they tend to follow us home.

Psychology talks, among other things, about the Zeigarnik effect – the tendency for unfinished or interrupted tasks to remain active in our minds. Research has also found associations between unfinished work tasks and how much work continues to occupy our thoughts outside working hours. And honestly, you don’t need a huge amount of science to recognize the feeling. I never replied to that email… I didn’t get around to that document… I absolutely need to talk to that person tomorrow… what’s going to happen with that decision… how on earth am I going to get all of this done…

You can be sitting on your sofa. Your computer can be closed... but work hasn’t gone anywhere.

But what if it isn’t actually the amount of work that’s the most exhausting part?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about whether part of the exhaustion comes from the fact that work never really ends... At least my work is largely like that...

Big topics don’t get finished in one day, some don’t get finished in a month. A completed document means it now needs to be implemented, one decision creates the next set of actions, solving one problem reveals another one underneath it… one larger change contains dozens of smaller things, and quite a few of those depend on other people as well.

There is always something else you could do... Always something that needs attention... And for someone, their particular issue is always the most important thing right now... So eventually the question isn’t even whether I did enough today – that feeling of “enough” simply never arrives.

If the problem were only my time management, I could learn to manage my time better. If the problem were only prioritisation, I could learn to prioritise better. But if everything you are responsible for simply cannot fit into a reasonable working day, then prioritising ultimately means making a decision every single day about what will remain undone today... And then it becomes so easy to borrow just a little more from the evening – because maybe then at least one thing could actually be finished.

But “finished for today” is not the same thing as “everything is finished” – that’s something I probably should have learned much earlier. Everything will never be finished...

But that doesn’t mean the workday itself can’t be finished. “I still need to deal with this” and “I’ll take the next step tomorrow” are two completely different things. Just like “this is still unfinished” and “I’m not working on this anymore today”. Or probably the hardest one for me – “I should do this too” versus “this isn’t a priority right now”... Because consciously choosing not to do something is also a decision...

And the funny thing is, in my personal life I do this all the time. I simply put things on a shelf. I decide that I’m not dealing with this right now… and I attach a date to when I’ll pick it up again. Not “sometime later”, but an actual specific point in time. Then that thing doesn’t need to remain open in my head all the time. It hasn’t disappeared, but it also doesn’t require my attention right now... and only while writing this did I realize what a huge difference that actually makes.

Finished for today… not dealing with this right now… waiting for an answer… I’ll do it next week… maybe I won’t do it at all.

All of those leave somehow more room in my head than one huge, vague everything is unfinished.

...but I also don’t want to turn this into yet another self-help guide :) – because it would be so easy to go from here to: write down three things you accomplished every evening, do breathing exercises, consciously close your workday, go for a walk, meditate… yes, all of those things are in my own toolbox, and they’re very good tools.

But I’m increasingly bothered by the way systemic overload gets translated into an individual recovery project.

If someone constantly has more on their plate than can reasonably fit there, the entire solution cannot be teaching them how to calm down better in the evening. If someone works until 1:30 in the morning just to finally get to the things they were actually supposed to do, the first question shouldn’t be which breathing technique will help them fall asleep faster afterwards. Not even if they genuinely loved the work they were doing until 1:30.

Because you don’t have to cross your own limits reluctantly... you can do it with enormous enthusiasm too... and I think I seriously underestimated that part in myself.

I’ve reached a point where a small break is no longer enough... at the end of September, I’m ending my long-term employment, and for the first time in a very long time, the next job isn’t already standing at the door waiting for me... It’s a conscious decision... I want to spend some time at home… recharge… give everything a little room to breathe.

At first, even the phrase “recharge my batteries” sounded slightly silly to me. As if it immediately required an explanation – but what are you going to do? For how long? What comes next? When are you starting a new job? What’s the plan?

Because obviously there always has to be a next step... But maybe this time there doesn’t... Maybe part of the problem has been exactly that – there always has to be something next… the next goal, the next project, the next problem that needs solving, the next place I need to get to...

For the first time in a very long time, I’d like to leave that next step a little open. Not because I’ve lost my ambition or don’t want to do anything anymore. I probably have more ideas than would be healthy anyway. And this break doesn’t mean I’m simply going to lie on the sofa from October onwards either :). We have a family business and a gym in Finland, which until now have largely had to fit around everything else. From October, I’ll finally be able to give them more of my attention too. But somehow that feels different. It isn’t the next “I need to build something huge immediately” project. At least I really hope I don’t turn it into one myself :D

It’s more about having the chance to actually be present… calmly look at what the gym really needs… do some of the things that have been waiting… work with people, the website, design materials, events and all the everyday things that come with it... and I like the idea of being able to do all of that without another full-time working day constantly running somewhere in the back of my mind.

Maybe that’s what I really mean when I say I want to give things some room to breathe – not that I’m going to stop doing things... but that I don’t have to do everything at the same time.

But I want to find out what happens when there is genuinely a little more space between all of it... and I really don’t know what October will actually feel like – maybe there will be an enormous sense of relief… maybe there won’t... maybe I’ll just be tired for the first few weeks... maybe by day three I’ll already be inventing a new project for myself because doing nothing feels weird :D

That would be very me... and I don’t believe that on 1 October I’ll simply close one door and suddenly everything will be fine. You take yourself with you… including the same habits that got you to this point in the first place... But I want to know what happens when that endless list is no longer there… when I don’t spend my evenings thinking about everything I failed to get done that day… when the next week doesn’t already start running through my head on Sunday evening… when I don’t have to rest simply so I can function again tomorrow...

Maybe I don’t need to learn how to cope with more right now

Not that long ago, I probably would have looked for a solution in how to manage my energy better… how to become more efficient… how to recover better… how to fit everything in more neatly… how to become my old self again. But today, I’m not actually sure I want to become my “old self” again. Because that version of me was really good at coping. Really good at pushing just a little bit further... really good at finding a little more time in the night when there was nowhere else left to take it from... and really good at switching herself back on.

That last one may be the most deceptive part... Because even when I was completely exhausted, something interesting could light me up again in the evening and I’d think – see, everything’s fine… I still have it in me... And I did... For quite a long time.

Maybe one of the darker sides of strength is that it doesn’t necessarily protect you from burnout – quite the opposite… it may simply allow you to keep going for a very long time...

If you always manage, other people get used to it. But even more importantly, you get used to it yourself. And when one day you suddenly can’t anymore, your first thought is – what’s wrong with me? Why can’t I do this anymore?

Right now, a completely different question feels much more interesting to me – how did I manage for so long?

And maybe I don’t need to learn how to become strong again as quickly as possible. Maybe for a while I just need to stop being the person who always manages. Not optimise my recovery… not turn this break into my next project… not make a plan for getting back to my previous level of productivity as quickly as possible.

Just give myself time… sleep… move… train when I feel like training… do something around the house or do absolutely nothing… spend time with my people… think when I feel like thinking… and hopefully, every now and then, not think at all :D

This time I don’t want to use rest simply as a tool for becoming productive again as quickly as possible – I’ve done enough of that already.

And maybe I wasn’t weak when eventually I couldn’t keep going anymore… maybe I had simply been strong for too long.

xxx
Jana



PS. This article is for informational purposes only and does not replace medical advice. For health concerns, diagnosis, or treatment, always consult a qualified specialist or physician.