Doing more to feel less exhausted?
As I reflect on forks in the road taken and future paths yet to come, I revisited a book that I recalled being helpful when I first read it: Give and Take by Adam Grant.
I have done and continue to do a lot of mentoring for former employees and colleagues. Those conversations, coupled with what feels like a monthly ice water bath of bad jobs news, have led to a lot of talks with a lot of burned-out people. I returned to Give and Take because I had a vague recollection of a teacher from Philadelphia who added more to her schedule and became less burned out. I couldn’t quite remember the whole story, and I definitely couldn’t fathom how adding more stuff to an already packed calendar was a solution to burnout, so I re-listened to the book to get a refresh.
Conrey Calahan taught at the Philly school Will Smith attended, leading him to write the lyrics for The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. The lyrics about the fighting, that is. Conrey, a Teach for America teacher, burned out after a year or two of breaking up fights, tracking down absent students, and feeling generally exhausted from too little support for too big a job. Instead of leaving, she started a non-profit and spent her nights and weekends building a community around helping low-income students prepare for college. She kept a full teaching schedule and volunteered on the weekends. It completely reinvigorated her.
Based on Conrey’s story, the research by Adam Grant, and my conversations with burned-out friends and colleagues, I think two significant elements of burnout are:
Values misalignment; and
feelings of futility.
Values misalignment can be big and obvious. In the last decade or so, many people have felt that the other half of society is misaligned. For a long time, half of the country has felt that they were not being represented by the national level leadership, and that can grind a person down. But values misalignment can also be small things:
Feeling like your boss just doesn’t hear you.
Having a coworker emotionally dump on you because they can’t figure out how to deal with the hot mess that is of their own making.
Feeling like you are constantly having to defend yourself and your decisions to your peers.
The sense that your environment is eating at you a little bit each day, and you just thought things would be different when you got to this stage of life.
Futility can manifest in many ways, but mostly I’ve seen it as a feeling that, no matter how hard you work or how many hours you put in, the outcome just won’t matter:
Not seeing the outcomes of your daily work, particularly when you work incredibly hard each day.
Struggling to effectively advocate for your team as a supervisor or senior leader.
Feeling that your day-to-day activities go unnoticed by the hierarchy above you.
Knowing that you have to just do everything you did today over again tomorrow.
One of these challenges is difficult enough for an individual to process, but the combination is a sure recipe for burnout. Conrey’s work on the non-profit she launched gave her motivation because she could see the results of her hard work, and the work itself aligned with her values.
In July, I started volunteering with Arlington Neighborhood Village, and it has been such a refreshing experience. ANV offers support services to help elderly community members stay in their homes. I have met so many new people, and have developed friendships with incredible people who have incredible life stories. One of the members I assist fled Nazi Germany with his parents at the age of 6 by sneaking into the Netherlands. Another is filing for a patent on an algorithmic process for monitoring electrical grids at the age of 83. Assisting members by taking them to medical appointments, running errands, or just going for a walk and having a conversation are simple acts, but for the members, they mean a great deal. What started as a service I was providing to people in need turns out to be something that has helped me push through the burnout I experienced in my previous career. My time matters, and serving a mission aligns with my values.
This comes from a position of privilege. I was able to start volunteering because I took the Deferred Resignation Program and left my government job. That program has meant a paycheck while I searched for next steps and launched this company with my best friend. Not everyone can find time in their regular workday or even on weekends to volunteer. None of the moms I know have the time or energy to do this, and I cannot imagine how it will be possible to carry on volunteering when I find my next full-time role.
And, yet, I find myself looking at roles that allow for more flexibility and thinking, “If I can work remotely on Mondays, can I still give a medical transport ride in the afternoons to my dialysis patient? If I can work from home on Thursday mornings, maybe I can sneak in a walk with my walking buddy on my way into the office.”
What tangible thing can you accomplish that will help you know that your time matters and your values matter? As you roll into the new school year and start thinking about 2026, consider what small thing you can do to make your time feel valuable and your values respected. The fall rush and holidays will be here in the blink of an eye. You’ll soon be wondering how to make 2026 better than 2025.
Maybe it is volunteering at your kid’s school. Maybe it is helping an elderly neighbor. Or organizing a clothing swap or a carpool that will make the lives of women just like you a little easier. What small thing can you do now to position yourself to remove at least these two factors of burnout?
