Sabbatikal is a paid or partially paid long vacation with a duration of three months to a year (or more) with guaranteed retention of a place for an employee.
- Sash, obviously, the work does not bring you pleasure, - Glory pronounced indisputable things. For the fourth week, instead of working, I rushed to the next children's football tournament. When you have three children, you can occupy 120% of your time with their hobbies. - I have an offer for you. Let's send you on vacation for a year? During this time I will close a business. Revenues are still halved. Then you will come back with new powers, and maybe I’ll go on vacation for a year.
Honestly, I did not think long over this proposal. From work really nauseated, and the prospect of a year to get rid of this source of nausea beckoned like never before. We shook hands.
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Three years? Three years. Three years ago
we left Habr , because our subjects moved to Megamind, and the audience was not there at all. It seems that it was seven years ago ... Since that time, we managed to do something:
- Come up with three new online manager training formats. In the last of them, a stream of 500 people has just been disaccustomed. And 90% reached the end of all classes (48 pieces, twice a week, yeah);
- To draw conclusions, which management tools are most useful in daily work, and which are not needed at all, although they are written about in many books;
- Over the last month, to accept diplomas from 200 students personally (these are individual calls for 15-20 minutes with each), in order to understand that besides knowledge and skills, a code of ethics of managers is needed. Some managers do not want to give a diploma, because their values are arranged in a wrong way that is very close to you;
- Assemble the department of producers of educational projects, make several successful projects and disperse the department;
- It is still unsuccessful to attract foreign companies from our subscribers to invest in $ 1M +, and then a year later (hello to British lawyers).
And ... (we end on this return-boastful part of the post) ... to bring ourselves to the degree of professional burnout, to go to the annual creative leave, and then suddenly find yourself in the same work. That's about it today and talk. And about the rest - a little later.
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Disclaimer: I am not a psychotherapist. I just saw a man who listened to a psychotherapist. And not a biochemist. All that is described in the article are my personal conclusions, the way I understood myself and other specialists.
Despite the fact that this is a long text, the article does not contain the only correct recipe - it is rather an occasion for reflection and reflection on your situation + links to places where you can start digging.
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For the first time, the burnout theme was faced at the end of 2014. Just then we launched the annual online training program for managers. Invented the structure of employment - all as expected. 500 people unexpectedly came to us.
Once again, realizing that all people are different (by experience, psycho-type, motivational factors, geography of residence, etc.), we decided that we would look who came to us to build a course order for each person.
We asked each person to first take a couple of tests (for psycho and professional orientation) + to write an essay on the topic: “Why did I come to learn, what I want to get in the end.”
The most curious was the test for professional orientation. We took the MMPI test in the old implementation (even under DOS, the blue text screen - everything we love). In this test there are 590 questions that need to be completed in about two hours. In addition to the idea of annoying everyone with a number of questions, in the test scales of rechecking and revalidation are sewn up. The same things are asked a little differently, so that you do not lie to yourself. You pass the test for two hours, and in the end they say to you: “Sorry, buddy, your results are invalid.” Very comfortably. But then, if they are valid, then these results can be trusted.
The test is used by psychologists for different purposes, we were interested in its last part about the propensity of a person to different types of activity. It looked like this:
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Administration Guide 5.50
Production 7.00
Office work 3.50
Service -2.00
Pedagogy 7.50
Expeditions 9.50
Science 9.50
Art -6.50
Sport 2.00
Military service 10.00
Programming 10.00
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Here, of course, required interpretation. For example, a high number in the “Military Service” does not mean that a person should immediately go to serve in the army. This means that it is very comfortable for him to work in structures with a clear system of subordination and responsibility, where all instructions are written out, where everyone knows what to do. And “Expeditions” do not mean that we should immediately run on campaigns. They mean that before starting a project it is important for a person to fully understand the “backpack layout”: what exactly and in what order we will do. And we need big accomplishments, not the 125th regular roll-out. Well, and so on.
What is interesting is that some of our students had an MMPI profile that showed the following picture:
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Administration Guide -12.00
Production -2.50
Office work -4.50
Service -13.00
Pedagogy -12.50
Expeditions -15.50
Science -1.00
Art -4.50
Sports -6.00
Military service -7.00
Programming 1.00
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That is, when asked what you have a tendency for, their body seemed to respond: “Yes, I don’t have any inclination for anything ... Can I reprogram a little more (the only positive factor) and finally die? ..”
SlavaPankratov and
I looked at the first 500 questionnaires personally. For a couple of weeks I had to fall out of life. My wife, I remember, then began to actively compare me with a teacher of elementary grades for checking housework.
The first minus profile caused curiosity, the second, third, fifth - alerted. Pretty soon it became clear that the situation is not easy. Negative profiles turned out to be ... 60%!
60% of the people who came to us to study, were in a zadolbannom condition. I even had a hypothesis why this is happening. It seems to me that the lack of pleasure from work was tied to the fact that "I have not studied for a long time." Here before ... I was young, I studied at the institute, and at work I didn’t like that. And now not rushing. Why? Because I have not studied for a long time! So, where are we taught? Oh, Stratoplan! Let's get your courses here ...
Six Stages of Burnout (Matias Burish)
In such a state, it’s not very much to learn ... It was then that I first dug in the topic of prof. Burnout. As it turned out, since 1974, when the American psychologist Herbert Freidenberger
coined the term , his fellow psychologists took the trouble and searched the topic well. In particular, they outlined the phases of this remarkable process. The
model of the German psychologist Matthias Buris looked at me most of all in
six phases :
It all starts with excessive participation in the work. Well, this is when from work you really rush - rushing so that you stay in the evenings. On weekends, some thoughts come to mind, you grab a laptop, and let's work again.
This is a paradox. If you force a person to engage in some tedious activity - he will not get pleasure, but burnout will not happen. Just because he does not give his emotions to work. But when it gives, when it is involved - here it is the first prerequisite!
If you work 12 hours a day, without especially thinking about rest, then (here is a surprise!) Exhaustion comes sooner or later. After that, the emotions subside. Indifference comes to replace them.
Well, yes, we have already released 25 versions of the product. Now we will begin the 26th. How interesting and exciting this is ...
You begin to feel that something is not right here, it is not yours ... Depersonalization arises. Previously, you didn’t take yourself off work, you were one powerful whole, rushing through the Universe with cosmic speed. And now it is trying to rush somewhere, and you understand that to you in the other direction. And we should get off this ship already ...
At this point, the rest of the colleagues who have not gone to this stage, in every way try to drag you back to the ship. Work does not go. There are failures. Who is to blame? Of course, colleagues! That they do not understand that this is not the ship. No, my friend, it's not them. That energy has gone into you.
Sometimes at this stage people start thinking about money. Like, I would have raised my salary, then everything would be fine. This is an illusion. If you are engaged in what brings pleasure, thoughts of money do not arise at all immediately. Well, the truth is, loves a man to ride a snowboard. Rides on weekends to the local ski resort, and let's rush along the slopes on the board. Why? Are they paying for it? No, on the contrary, he pays it. He just likes it.
Or here I am collecting coins. Well, I like this activity. Do I get paid for it? Again, the opposite - I'm crying.
The trainings periodically come across managers who ardently convince everyone that people are motivated only by money. It is hard to convince them. Do you understand why? Because, well, tell me honestly: the work does not bring me pleasure, so for me money comes first. But nobody will say the same. To admit this to yourself is not so easy.
After this stage, depression and aggression begin. Depression - everything is clear. When there is an understanding that time is running out and you are going the wrong way, this does not add optimism. But aggression arises spontaneously and towards anyone. Colleagues somehow did not make the decision, the children did not do their homework and (terrible thing!) Did not make the bed. Well, and so on. On trivial occasions, out of the blue.
Immediately there are disputes about anything. When you rushing, you do not argue who does what and in what order. You just have to do and everything - drove! When the sight is shot down, then you begin to argue about some nonsense. Why, why - then difficult to explain. But it takes a lot of time.
It is interesting that in personal life it does not get any better either. It would seem that work is not interesting - it means that on the other hand it should be flushed. No luck in the cards, luck in love - and all that. But no. Lost hobby. He came home after work in the evening, watched TV, read Facebook - and sleep. He got up in the morning, took the children to school, then went to work, spent the whole day in the office, came home in the evening ... Some kind of running in a circle in which there is no place for a hobby.
If you spend some time in these first four stages, then, Matthias Burish argues, the physiological and psychosomatic consequences in the form of insomnia, reduced immunity and, finally, diseases will be your reward. And the cherry on the cake - a sense of meaninglessness of life. The end of the model.
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I had to do something with the students, I had to help somehow. We started sending people on vacation:
- Tell me please, when was the last time you were on vacation?
- Uh ... How do you know?
- We do not know, we have "devices show."
- Three years ago…
Upon return, people once again passed the MMPI test, someone's situation was improving, someone's not too. We talked about
self-assessment tools and
questions for clarifying goals . We started inviting familiar coaches to the program who were conducting resource programs.
And so it took almost a year and a half until I found myself in the 5th stage of the model of the ill-fated Burish:
How did it happen? .. But I remember a time when I was overdone by the same work. We ran around with trainings throughout the CIS, read our comic couplets in all more or less large IT companies, caused irreparable use of webinars. People wrote “thank you”, muttered on our aggressive mailings, and we came up with new formats. They did 20 program launches in parallel. We lived it.
And now: there is no power even to write a new post on the blog. It seems that all this is not real. Some kind of fuss is incomprehensible for what ... Earn money? Well, you earn more - so what? To train another hundred managers? And for what?
I switched to children's hobbies. The eldest just strongly dived into programming and olympiads (at the age of 11 he wrote an operating system in assembler, with a loader, with all the cases, then Java, then that-se ...), the average went into football. I caught myself thinking that it would be much more interesting for me to spend the day at a football tournament with a child than to run some other educational project. There is football, goals, passion, life. This is the present. And at work, business, routine, boredom. Not real.
- Sash, obviously, the work does not bring you pleasure. Let's send you on vacation for a year. During this time I will close a business. Revenues are still halved. Then you will come back with new powers, and maybe I’ll go on vacation for a year.
Symptomatology (Dmitry Kovpak)
Two years after this remarkable moment, I sat at a lecture by Dmitry Kovpak, the president of the association for cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy. Dmitry just talked about emotional burnout, "caros" - a Japanese term meaning death from exhaustion at work (the Japanese keep official statistics on caros), and that's all. On the part about the symptoms, according to the method of Jerome K. Jerome, I began, in retrospect, to find practically everything in myself. When there is no pleasure in work and life, the person begins to compensate for this. There are several ways:
1. Shopmania - unmotivated, spontaneous purchases that bring short-term satisfaction.
2. Jamming of problems - when it’s depressing and nothing to take, go to the fridge, make a bottle.
3. Alcohol - you do not know how to spend the evening, pour whiskey and get into Facebook. Life will immediately sparkle with new colors.
4. Promiscuity - casual sex. No comments, who needs to know himself.
5. Drugs - see previous comment.
6. Extreme sport and leisure - one hormone is missing (about this below), let's replace it with adrenaline!
7. Gambling - an attempt to replace life with a game, where everything is easier and it is always clear what to do next.
8. Care in work. Someone said that thoughts about the meaning of life come to those who do not know what to do. Take care of your work, earn money!
Come on, this is somehow present to everyone, the brain began to justify itself. No, it is not all present, yeah. Or maybe it's just fatigue? Dmitry opened the next slide.
Fatigue or Asthenia?
In short, fatigue disappears after a holiday, but asthenia does not. If, after a vacation, after returning to work, you want to continue working with new forces, and this effect lasts longer than two days - it was fatigue. If the work starts to feel sick again - closer to asthenia.
Hormonal level
After the lecture Dmitry Kovpak I began to dig up, what else is about burnout. From a
lecture by Konstantin Volkov on how a programmer burned out, becoming a plant director, a hypothesis about hormones was formed. Surely pseudoscientific, but well laid on the prepared soil. (Gentlemen of biochemistry, I will be grateful for your comments on the article - I will rule it along the way.)
In the human body, there are five hormones responsible for joy, pleasure - the five hormones of a part: dopamine, adrenaline, serotonin, endorphin, oxytocin. Each of these hormones is produced due to certain activities. In an ideal spherical happy life in a vacuum, everything is balanced, and the person is engaged in both, and in this, so that all five hormones are worked out properly for him. Each activity takes time, and a person spends it in a balanced way:
In real life, things are different. For the pleasure of work and motivation meets dopamine. That it is produced when from work "rushing". If the work you captured so much that you spent on it all the time, interrupting only to sleep - it was probably dopamine. Perhaps, of course, close and hot deadline. But, rather, dopamine.
I clearly remember this moment, for example, when back in Intel we started the Apache Harmony, Java project from scratch in the open source. I then led one of the testing teams, and it captured me - from scratch to invent and test Java technology. So that no bug is dodged. And there were many such moments (not with Java technology, but with what captured).
Once having experienced a surge of happiness from dopamine, we begin to chase after it. Does work bring happiness? So, we need to work more - then there will be more happiness! And at that moment all the other activities are relegated. Family, friends, sport, sleep - all this later:
However, the sensitivity of dopamine receptors decreases - the body adapts. The first roll-out brings a splash of positive, the second - a little less, and from the 123rd it starts to get really sick. At this point, we either begin to work harder, trying to “catch up” with the pleasure (hey, dopamine, come back!), Or begin to compensate for it with activities that bring dopamine faster and easier.
Note: Does this mean that if you like TV shows, then everything is bad? Naturally not. But it can be a symptom of burnout, if we compensate with TV shows by the lack of pleasure from work.
Compensation is a dead end, because it does not solve the main thing: the lack of pleasure from the work to which we devote a third of life.
The theoretical correct path should be different. For the development of each hormone is responsible for something different:
1. Dopamine - you need a good rest and find a new target.
2. Adrenaline - periodically participate in any exciting activities: flying in an aerotube, some quests, etc.
3. Serotonin - fresh air, walks, sleep, healthy food, physical activity
4. Endorphin - strength exercises, sex.
5. Oxytocin - a meeting with pleasant images to you. When you meet with old colleagues, friends, and after the meeting there is a feeling that you are younger - that's just what oxytocin went ...
Sabbatikal as a problem solving
Going on annual leave, I came up with such a plan. For a year I will not be engaged in work (what makes me sick), but instead I will: read smart books, spend a lot of time with my family, travel to different cities and countries, change the context. And sooner or later the answer will come to my mind what to do next and in what capacity.
Invented - done. I finally read Taleb's Antifragility and a bunch of thick and thin, but surely clever books. About finding yourself, inner silence, etc. We traveled to the sea with our family, then to London. With older boys flew to launch a spacecraft to Baikonur.
And it did not help in any way. Not at all. I remember this moment when the crew of Novitsky-Whitson-Peske on a rattling kerosene barrel flew into the sky. And in my head the thought: “Well, people are flying into space ... But you, Orlov, what will you do next ?!” And there is no answer ...
It has been eight months sabbatikala, and I caught myself thinking that I increasingly like to relax ... But the contract was that after four months I return to the business, which is still nauseous. It became uncomfortable ...
How to understand what you want to do next? You can not find the answer yourself - contact a specialist.
Four ways to find yourself in coaching
I wrote to our friend Coach Philip, with whom we did programs on energy sources at work for our students. We agreed to drink tea. I described my situation, Philip said: well then, the picture is clear. Many business owners sooner or later come to such an existential crisis. Already not bad - I am not the only such foolish person, it remains to find out what to do next.
Well, look, ”Philip began,“ there are four ways to work with this state:
1. Children's dreams. “Here I worked with the owner of one company. For ten years he has been working for a while; We found out with him that his childhood example was his grandfather, the sea captain. In the end, we tried this task with him: to keep a company logbook. Two weeks later he comes with burning eyes: everything, he says, Philip, it works! I am keeping a journal, a Czech boatswain (his deputy), I realized that I was the captain. The man came together. Or another customer wanted to be a Boeing pilot. To the question "why" he says: well, how? 300 people are behind my back, I am at the helm, and the life of these people depends on me. And then we tied his work as a general director to this dream. ”
Who did I want to be in childhood? Astronaut It really helps, yes. And, still a detective. That's what I liked about testing. You are like a detective, you place traps to catch a criminal (bug). And if the bug is floating - this, of course, is a maniac. He is here and there. It became a little clearer why I liked testing. Yeah.
2. Stories of power. It is necessary to recall the moments when you really pearl, and it seemed that the whole world is at your feet. When you were proud of what you did.
Well, at school, when I went to All-Russia in mathematics ... When the salary was raised twice, there were several such moments. When children were born. Then when your business flew. Stories of power - not very helpful yet.
3. The pain. Think of what annoys you most at work. And convert this to sources of support. I somehow immediately put off this method, because I always liked to think more about positive moments.
4. Call. Every day there have been, are happening and there will be events that, as it were, call you somewhere. "Like in Alice in Wonderland," the rabbit dived into a burrow, Alice followed him, and it started. The rabbit is a call. Such calls can be learned to see and follow them. And they will certainly lead you to the right place.
It sounded very strange. But why not try? Doesn't that sound strange? We started dating Philip once every couple of weeks. They drank tea, talked about different things, sometimes delved into some topic, often Phillip asked strange questions "what do you feel now?" But what is interesting, after five meetings, it came to my mind in what format I want to continue to live and work. With all my skepticism in relation to the corporate words “mission, vision and values”, I still came to my vision. I realized that
I like to do cool, useful things to people in the mode of "pirate raids .
" That is, it is not two years to methodically develop some kind of program, but to quickly come up with, quickly launch, quickly do people good, so that they bring us money. And not every month to make a foray on the same route, and then there, then here, then in a new area.
At the same time, old acquaintances began to appear, new projects were discussed, life scored, if not with a key, then with a key. And no longer on the head.
It would seem that the puzzle cubes are formed.
And then everything almost fell apart ...
Just before returning from the Sabbatikal, we flew to a conference in San Diego. The four of us
flew : our producer Danya, my business partner
SlavaPankratov , me and my newly-born vision.
A conference about marketing, we fly there every year: 3,000 people, a lot of reports, ideas - everything is as it should be. And that colleague started gushing ideas:
- Sasha, I understood everything! We need to make covers for antique books.
- Uh ...
“How does this fit in with cool, useful things to people in the mode of pirate raids?” - spun in my head. It seems that way. But this is my business partner, it is necessary to support his initiatives too, otherwise what is the point of a business partnership?
- Slav, let's count this idea?
- Come on.
The next day:
- San, I thought it was about something. But I thought of everything! Let's buy a garbage collection franchise in the States?
- Shta? ..
“What is a franchise? What kind of rubbish? ”I have a vision, and then a deductible in the garbage. And so four days passed. There was a strict feeling that I understood what I wanted, but they were pulling me somewhere in the wrong place.
Interestingly, the partner had his own feeling: whatever he offers, I do not support. Excellent Sasha went on sabbatical. 10 points out of 5.
We decided to disperse. We talked about the details of how we will divide the business. At the last moment, having realized it, they began to talk, discuss, and remained to work together.
It was the third time when we almost dispersed. And the first two times were on my initiative.
As it turned out, everything is not so simple. Hormones, sabbatikaly, goals, visions - it's all good, but the main problem was not there.In head fig figure it out. By oneself.
It would seem - well, the partner suggests some idea. You don't like her, so what? Why not just say this? Why do you supposedly agree to "support a partner"? Or your partner does not support your idea? Where does such a bathert and the desire to break off all come from?From the unspoken, from the unexplained. From false expectations. From strange installations.For example, there is such a term “Profleksiya”. This is when you do to another what you want yourself. Psychologists say that proflexion often arises when we are told in childhood: “Take care of others first, then of yourself.”As a result , you step so slightly on the throat of your song. Then he gave way, he moved there. And after a year of working together (life, friendship), the cup overflows, and the thought arises: yes it is not worth all this! Bamz, let's disperse.And who taught you all the time to yield a little so that others feel good? Yes, the devil knows ... The head is arranged in a very strange way. Something is introjected into us by family, something by experience, some psychological defenses arise.If you select an analogy, then there are professional runners who run beautifully, quickly and not too tired. There are amateur runners. And there are a large part of people who do not even walk, and they stumble around their business to their job seekers. And I'm among them.In the youth of a lot of energy, so we hobling cheerfully. But sooner or later you get tired. You think: aah, so this is just no goal. Well, it is necessary for the coach to clarify his goal. Here it is a new goal, a new vision. And stumbled to him. Fatigue will come quickly.Understanding it alone is hard. And do not understand - little will change. Why hard - yes because it is hard to be both the object and the subject of the study.What happened next? The gestaltist wife gave the contacts to a good psychotherapist friend. Honestly, before I had a clear statement that psychotherapy is needed for those who have a cuckoo completely lost on its side. And the scenes with the reclining of a couch from American films were perceived as exotic, yes. But stick trees, why not try something? Always have time to refuse., 10 . : . , . 40 , .
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3. If you think that the annual vacation will save you - no, it will not. The current situation zadolbannosti you led the device of your head. You rest, and what's next? Further you exactly as yourself zadolbat. Only faster.If I had rewound time now a couple of years ago, I would not go on vacation for a year. Rest is useful, but the year is not needed. The answer is not there.4. The balance between life and work is needed. How long have you been spending time with children? So as not to look into the phone every five minutes. How long have you met friends? How is your hobby? How with physical education and sports?5. If asthenia occurred, do not read Habr. Whether books and articles will help - the big question is whether to self-medicate. True, this is probably curious and informative, but there will be little sense from this. Better go to a good specialist. Most likely, this will be the best investment in recent years. And the cost will be cheaper than a vacation abroad. I will not give contacts in the article, the article is not advertising. If you have friends who you trust, try with them. If interested - ask in PM.6. We are often asked what qualities should the right manager, team leader, director have? Over the years, I have answered this question differently. Now it seems to me that the main skill is awareness. That is, understanding how and what is happening in your head, where the emotions come from, these are the very thoughts. And the ability to work with it all. This is not the only skill that a manager needs (and not only him), but is definitely important.*****
The first post of the new corporate blog is done. The second time in the river called Habr. Great weekend to everyone. We will be in touch.