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Glad you dropped by. This is an intervention.
The Minnesota-based punk band Banner Pilot can teach you a thing or two about work-life balance.
Their song Intervention details a guy fighting with his girlfriend and trying to deal with his crippling alcohol addiction. Fair warning. There’s some language.
In the song, our main character knows he has a problem. He knows he’s screwed up his life. But as he sobers up, all his hopes and dreams become an impassable mountain range in his mind. He doesn’t even want to try, because he just expects to be met with disappointment.
What struck me was one particular line.
Toward the end of the song, our protagonist repeats over and over these words:
“I don’t have time for an intervention.”
This isn’t an essay about addiction, though I do think addiction is far more related to everyday, normal issues than we’d like to admit.
This is actually an essay about time. It’s also about emotional burnout, work, and what to do when everything feels stacked against you.
I may not have resisted a traditional intervention, but I’ve found myself saying similar words to our hero in the song.
“I’ll go see a therapist when life is less hectic.”
“I’ll get organized when work slows down.”
“I’ll take a break when I’m not so stressed.”
“I’ll look for a better job once I get this one under control.”
I can’t be the only one who’s said things like this, right?
I think we all do this sometimes. It’s far too easy to get caught up in whatever busyness or stress is keeping us down, only to find out another 6 months have passed, and you still haven’t made that doctor’s appointment, started that podcast, or applied to that job.
If there’s one thing my own experience has borne out, and one thing history suggests, it’s that you need to find time for that intervention.
Take a break before you break.
“How could I possibly be expected to handle school on a day like this?”
–Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
This is your body on burnout.
When it comes to burnout and rest, two examples stand out in my mind.
The first comes from Lottie Unwin. She runs Up World, a group of 1,200 entrepreneurs and marketing leaders who meet up and collaborate on various cool projects. This all started from a small supper club called Copy Club, just a few friends getting dinner and chatting.
She’s quite open about her mental health journey, and she talks about how for several years she’d work super hard for 6 weeks and then completely crash. Her business partners joked about it and called it her “quarterly burnout.”
In an interview with Dan Pope, she talked about how in April 2021 this got so bad, she couldn’t speak. She lay in bed and just texted her friends a number, on a scale of 1 to 10, of how she was doing.
This lasted for 3 weeks.
She’s not the only entrepreneur facing this challenge. Chris Williamson, the host of the Modern Wisdom podcast, talks about how he used to suffer from severe depression. Or so he thought.
Prior to hosting the podcast, he ran nightclubs in the northeast of England. After staying up until 4 a.m. for days on end, he’d end up stuck in bed for a few days, sleeping and ordering takeout.
Looking back, he says that what he thought was severe depression was just a severe lack of balance in his life. Extreme tiredness and extreme depression look pretty similar sometimes.
I’ve never faced anything quite like this in my life. But, I’ve had smaller versions of the same thing. In grad school, I often would get sick at the end of every finals season.
Or, when I was stuck for several years in a job I disliked, my stress would get so bad that I’d end up needing to take a random day off when my immune system crashed.
I think we often feel guilty taking a day off. Or, our bosses make us feel guilty.
Whether the tyrant in your life is an internal or external one (or both), the outcome is the same.
If you don’t end up taking some rest just for fun, your body and mind will force you to.
If you remember the classic 80s film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, you’ll remember that you have two options when you hit that emotional and physical wall.
Be like Cameron and lie in bed, too sick and depressed to do anything.
Or, be like Ferris. Pretend to be sick, and go have an adventure instead.
But neither of these options is very sustainable.
Maybe it’s better to find a healthier alternative before you hit that breaking point. Instead of playing hooky from work and gallivanting off to Chicago, maybe just take more breaks.
If only there were one or two days set aside per week to get some rest…
“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.”
–Sir John Lubbock, the founder of the British bank holiday movement, in his 1894 book The Use of Life
Thank God it’s Friday.
Have you ever wondered how we got the weekend?
The modern 5-day workweek was popularized by Henry Ford. He wanted his employees to have a day off (Saturday) to buy cars. Sunday was for church, and stores were closed.
But why the weekend at all? Why the rest on Sunday?
According to the Judeo-Christian tradition, God created the world in 6 days and then rested on the 7th. Now, whatever you believe about God, you have to admit, it’s an interesting story.
Why does an all-powerful God who just created the universe need to take a day off to rest?
Did He get tired? Doesn’t that mean He’s not all-powerful?
Early scriptural texts provide more context, but I think the clearest answer comes from Jesus of Nazareth, thousands of years later.
There’s a story where Jesus and the 12 disciples are walking through a field on a Saturday (the Jewish Sabbath), and they pick some grain to eat while they walk.
A group of conservative religious leaders observe this and criticize Jesus. According to their moral tradition, picking grain, even in a casual manner like this, is work.
And doing work on the Sabbath is totally forbidden.
In response, Jesus tells them “Man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for man.”
Here’s where it comes full circle.
God didn’t rest because He was tired. He didn’t require people to take a day off just for arbitrary reasons. No, He set the example of taking a day to rest, because it would be good for humans.
In this tradition, the Sabbath is a day to re-align with God, take a break, and revisit what’s important in life.
From this same tradition, we get the concept of leaving land fallow every 7 years. Turns out, modern science has verified that soil really does need time to rest to restore its nutrients.
Much like humans.
I think we can all agree. Whether you take a Sabbath on Saturday or Sunday, and whether you take it for religious or practical reasons, more rest is probably a good idea.
But when you have a full-time job (or a family to take care of!), this is easier said than done.
“You may drive out nature with a pitchfork, yet she will always come running back.”
–Horace, Epistles, written around 20 B.C.
This is a letter from management. You have to work this weekend.
Humanity hasn’t always had a 7-day week.
But, man, do we seem to need it.
The ancient Egyptians had a 10-day week, including 2 days of rest. The Romans had an 8-day market cycle, though this wasn’t quite the same as a true workweek.
While the lengths of the weeks differed, the important thing was that both cultures took some time for rest.
Here’s where it gets interesting.
Humans have tried to ditch tradition, use pure reason to redesign the week, and get rid of all that useless downtime.
It didn’t go well.
During the French Revolution in the 1790s, rational thinkers tried to organize the calendar from the top down. There would be twelve 30-day months, split up into 10-day weeks.
Work 9 days. Rest on the 10th.
As you might imagine, this was extremely unpopular and resulted in a lot of people unofficially taking off Sundays or slacking off at work.
Wow. Turns out Gen Z didn’t invent “quiet quitting.” Those pesky young people.
Napoleon eventually killed the 10-day week. This was in part to get the Catholic Church on his side, and partly to keep the people from rebelling against him. Pretty good thinking on his part.
When you take away someone’s ability to rest, spend time with their family, or invest in meaningful community activities and faith traditions… well, bad things happen.
Even though both the French and the Egyptians tried 10-day weeks, it seems like the Egyptians were onto something with that 2-day weekend.
As a more recent example, in 1929, the Soviet Union spent 2 years trying to implement a continuous, revolving workweek. Everyone worked for 4 days and got a 5th day off, but everyone was on a different schedule.
Oddly enough, 1 day off in 5 might seem better than 1 day off in 7. But no one had the same schedule, so families rarely saw each other, community meetings were difficult to schedule, and people felt hurried and exhausted.
The system gradually broke down and was replaced with a 6-day work week. Finally, right before entering WWII, the Soviet Union changed its schedule to align with the rest of the world.
If there’s a principle we can learn from this historical walkthrough, it’s that random schedules, a lack of time for community, and overly long weeks don’t work.
Pure rationalism, separated from the natural human rhythms of life, doesn’t really work.
Humans need structure. But that structure needs to include real rest.
Festina lente.
“Hasten slowly.”
–Emperor Augustus of Rome, on leadership and rash behavior (as recorded by Suetonius in the 2nd century.)
You’re only as busy as you feel.
I’m not always great about going slow and taking rest.
When I managed a team for the online high school program where I worked in my early 20s, I often talked about the importance of rest. I’d encourage my team to go on walks, take breaks, or leave early if they were completely burned out.
But, at the same time, I was notorious for working at night, working on weekends, or having strict vacation policies around certain points in the school year.
I even came to work one day right after having minor dental surgery. My face was totally swollen, and I’m not sure exactly what I was trying to prove… except, “I’m still the boss, and I won’t let this stop me.”
But, good business practices have to come from the top down. If God took a rest, maybe I should have too. Dental surgery is a pretty good excuse, right?
People follow examples a lot more than they follow words.
Things really started to come to a boil the year before I left the team. We were absolutely drowning in work, the phones were ringing off the hook, and we had a team of mostly new people.
Everyone said they were too busy.
They were busy. There’s absolutely no doubt about that.
But the real issue is that they felt busy.
Perception shapes our reality.
I made a few changes that helped. We had a more clear structure of who would answer phones. We also tried to implement a rule that there’d be no meetings for at least 2-4 hours every morning.
These measures helped, but it wasn’t until after I left the team altogether that I finally started to get a clearer picture of all this in my mind.
One year later, in the summer of 2019, I was doing digital marketing work in Wilmington, Delaware. By chance, I stumbled across a New York Times article about how procrastination was an emotional problem, not a time-management problem.
Dr. Timothy Pychyl & Dr. Fuschia Sirois started studying this issue back in the 1990s and early 2000s, but their collaborative paper in 2013 really made the connection.
Here’s what they found: Procrastination isn’t really about laziness. We procrastinate because we’re tired, scared, anxious, burned out, or just don’t feel like doing the work right now.
It’s typically not because we don’t have the time.
I think burnout and procrastination might be cousins. Obviously, some people are just bad at time management. But, more importantly, a lot of us are bad at emotional management.
Sometimes when things feel like they’re moving too fast, like you’d absolutely lose control if you slowed down or took a break, that’s exactly when you need to take a break.
If you don’t go for that walk, you’ll probably just end up scrolling on your phone between meetings. In the end, you just feel worse.
“A stitch in time saves nine.”
–18th century English proverb, recorded first by Thomas Fuller and later attributed to the American Ben Franklin
Take a cue from punks in white collar dress shirts.
I looked up the band Banner Pilot to find out more details.
Turns out, none of them are addicts. It’s all just made up stories based on other people.
In fact, none of them are even full-time musicians. They’re guys with white-collar jobs who play shows on the weekend.
I’m dead serious. The band members work in investment banking, mortgages, healthcare administration, and theater operations. They use their corporate vacation time to do small tours and play shows on the weekend.
Not bad for a 21-year career and 4 studio albums.
So, I guess these guys really do know about work-life balance.
I could give you a long list of things you could do to find more balance, but I think you and I both already know the answer.
Obviously, if you have a serious problem, go see a doctor. Go see a counselor. Go to the AA meeting. Find a better job with a boss who likes you.
But, for a lot of life, it’s the simple solutions that hold the best answers.
It seems fitting that at the end of the song Intervention, the guy says all he wants is a ride home and a couple days of sleep.
Maybe mom was right. Good food, sunshine, and sleep do cure a multitude of ills.
Beyond taking care of yourself, if you’re a manager at work, I think part of your job is to take care of your team too.
Obviously, you can’t (and shouldn’t) micromanage every aspect of your employees’ lives. But, you can make sure they’re not on the brink of burnout or a breakdown. And if they are, you can take real steps to come up with a better plan.
Having an Employee Assistance Program or a wellness program doesn’t make up for being a bad manager. That’s just neglect dressed up with an HR name badge.
It’s not easy to find balance. It’s not easy to provide it for your team.
But let’s put it this way. If a bunch of white-collar guys from Minnesota can find the time to do full-time jobs and play some punk rock shows on the weekends…
I think you and I can figure it out too.
Let’s go find some balance in our lives. Or, at least go for a walk and get some sleep.
Don’t wait until you actually do need an intervention.
Want to read more like this?
Here’s a few of my favorites.
Hey Colin, very good stuff. I really enjoyed it all the way. No skipping, no early exit!
Balance is key and you explained it perfectly.
Oh, and this was my favorite section. I like that humor!
Wow. Turns out Gen Z didn’t invent “quiet quitting.” Those pesky young people.
I think we misconstrue the concept of "rest," and it starts from an early age, because when you get sick, your Mom says you need rest--and chicken soup--and you'll be right as rain. And she was right about that.
But I think "rest", in the everyday 'stay grounded and keep yourself sane' sense, is more about stillness and presence and joy than it is about sleeping, necessarily. ...I think you are right, Colin, that rest becomes the need for sleep or putting down the work in favor of time on the couch because we tend to push ourselves too hard for too long (I know I have been guilty of this) and it's all we have anything left for.
I also agree that burnout and procrastination are likely close cousins--and that material on the 2013 study was super interesting (I definitely recognized myself in the information).
But in the end, as the boys of Banner Pilot can surely attest to, trading time of grinding--or putting off what we could do today because of anxiety or exhaustion--for time of pursuing passions and things that bring us joy (and therefore refill us) are what all that grinding is for in the first place.
Great piece!