Why & how I stick thru for 8 months with burnout

Disclaimer: I don’t recommend doing this because mental health is very very important and it should always always be your top priority.

Backstory : I had a Terrible burnout in December 2023 but I could change the job only in Sept 2024. Consequences of this

Why?

1. Being a foreigner with a number of rejected PR applications, the stay in 🇸🇬 kinda depends on the job and I need to stay here which means I can’t quit my job unless I have the next one ready.

2. I don’t want to just change job anyhow and change again because it’s just too much of stress.

3. The job market was tough and I couldn’t land an offer which suited my needs for visa sponsorship, salary, benefits as well as stability.

4. I learnt the lesson from my burnouts and I became more picky about the job role.

5. I stubbornly wanted to see the product I was building as part to go production!

6. I was waiting for the bonus payout, I wanted to get every single penny coz they made me suffer.

7. I thought it was an industry thing.

8. Fear of the unknown, I knew it’s bad there but I found a workaround and I was so scared to get into a worse place

How did I do it?

1. First and foremost, very fortunately, I had very nice peers (even though we all are from different companies, working for the same project and most likely in similar positions like me, they could really understand me.) it’s so funny that we all were suffering together, yet still helping each others out. Going through the same $hit together really strengthens the bond.

2. I have a very supportive family. My parents are positive and supportive people even though they do not stay with me. They told me to just quit the job if things were too tough.

3. This Might be a bit towards toxic 😵 but i had gaslighting buddies who were on the same boat and we would tell ourselves to be happy if we could leave office before 8pm or any of the chaotic bosses does not come to office. Everytime we try to make sarcastic jokes about these, our super GenZ colleague would say that it is not funny and it makes him sad to see us suffer and we’re still brainwashing ourselves to pretend we’re ok. (We were a layer of seniors stuck with layers of directionless leadership yet we tried our best to not make the new joins suffer as much as we do and they saw that, they jokingly suggested us to join forces and throw letters so that management knows what is going on but we were just not brave enough)

4. I schedule my workouts like crazy. I made sure I had something to look forward to on weekdays. I will schedule dance classes near office after work on Mondays 9PM+ (coz that’s my normal ending time) and morning pilates classes on Thursdays. My morning workout classes can start from 6:30 AM coz I don’t have control on what time I will be done with work. I will go hiking or cycling on weekend mornings, before my manager will start pinging random non-urgent issues as urgent.

5. Find something interesting near the office are. I find nice aesthetic coffee shops and I dedicate myself to explore one shop at least one day a week.

6. Be specific about the work I spend time on. I would choose the work I like instead of following my boss’s directionless instructions. No matter how big the fire is, I would just do what I wanted to do (It did backfire me but I needed it to survive)

7. I learnt to live with incompetence. Is it their incompetence causing fires that I had to keep putting off? I closed my eyes and let it burn. After all I wasn’t a superman and one person couldn’t be doing the jobs of 3 people. Instead of going crazy over the chaos, I would just walk away in silence and sat in the balcony corner. If they expected me to fix it, I would just tell them to adjust their expectations.

8. I got support and recognitions from other teams’ managers. Even though my direct manager was too clueless to handle his own situation, other teams’ managers start eyeing me for I am the one delivering and getting things done amidst the chaos. My struggles being too obvious, they offered directions and help to me and my team even though we are different companies and they don’t usually interfere.

9. I celebrated small wins everyday. Not feeling frustrated at what I would normally be frustrated, that’s a win. Not dash out at clueless random questions from my clueless boss, that’s a win.

10. I focused on what I could do instead of the big picture. I learnt to speak and complain. I don’t care the big picture, if it’s not okay for me, it’s the management’s responsibility to figure it out how to do it, not mine. And I stay loyal to my boundaries.

11. Around April, my directionless direct manager was removed from my team due to the client’s management level complaint and a new manager came in. The new manager wasn’t a technically skilled person but he was a good people manager so he did listen to feedback and tried to make my life better.

12. I started journaling and being mindful about my frustrations at work.

13. I started interviewing and taking tests and that made me feel like I have a light at the end of the tunnel.

Thanks to my new manager and team’s joint effort, when I left it was already in a much better shape.

“I can do it with a broken heart” 🥹

#burnoutrecovery #beatburnout #copingskills

#MentalHealth