Welcome to episode 127 of the Nerd Journey Podcast [@NerdJourney]! We’re John White (@vJourneyman) and Nick Korte (@NetworkNerd_), two Pre-Sales Technical Engineers who are hoping to bring you the IT career advice that we wish we’d been given earlier in our careers. In today’s episode we share the 3rd and final part of our interview with Tom Hollingsworth. We’ll share ways to determine if you’re burned out or on the brink, ideas to help recover, and how to set goals so you can avoid burning out.
Original Recording Date: 06-01-2021
Tom Hollingsworth has been the Tech Field Day event lead for about 8 years as part of his role at Gestalt IT after serving as a Network Engineer for many years. Catch part 1 and 2 of our interview with him in Episode 125 and Episode 126
Topics – Signs of Burnout, Grinding Away to Nothing, Closing Thoughts
2:11 – Signs of Burnout

* Tom wrote some very good blogs recently on burnout.

* Racing on the Edge of Burnout
* The Double-Edged Grindstone

* Tom thinks his career change was motivated by burnout and at times felt like he was rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

* It seemed like resellers were slowly getting pushed out of the picture with companies wanting to sell direct or only rely on large partners.
* "When you are hitting the ceiling and it feels like the walls are closing in on you, that’s burnout." – Tom Hollingsworth
* We all have times when we don’t want to work on something, but getting to that point daily, it’s a sign.
* Burnout isn’t always when you don’t care anymore. Burnout can be when you don’t think anyone else does. When you feel like no one else recognizes your efforts or something you put your heart and soul into, you are there.

* This means you have put more effort into something than perhaps you should have and that you are running your engine in overdrive.

* In the last year, we are more burned out than we are willing to admit.

* It’s the stuff on your to-do list that keeps getting pushed down that you never get to that starts to eat at you.
* How many times have we been dragged into a task that hit us out of nowhere and had to be completed that day?
* Tom used to write whenever he wanted, but for the past month he has been putting it off.
* Pretty soon getting to something later means it’s been on your list for 5 months.
* People can get to the point where they throw their hands up and walk away from everything (and quit). But the burn out will follow them.
* The physical toll on someone can be high blood pressure, lack of sleep, etc.

* "The human body is a wonderful machine. You can run it in overdrive until it falls apart. And you will never know until something happens that you don’t get to walk away from." – Tom Hollingsworth

* Nick references High Performance Habits and the chapter on energy.