self-care: or else! 🌱

(3 minute read)

Hi! Welcome to Our Best Work Weekly, a newsletter from Healthy Pour where you'll get weekly tips on creating a healthy workplace, becoming a more compassionate leader, and cultivating a regenerative relationship with work. 

It's that time of year when we see some of my favorite messaging all over LinkedIn and Instagram: “If you don’t take a break, your body will take a break for you—and it won’t be at a convenient time.” (It’s not my favorite; I’m being facetious. I hate it.) 

The end of the year is challenging for much of the workforce. It’s the end of the quarter, and for some organizations, the end of their fiscal year. People are working hard to get their numbers in, finish their projects, bring in enough business to weather the slow season, and meet their goals for their bonuses—all the while trying to prepare for holidays (looking at you, parents). Then, they’re also told to rest. "Just fit that rest in somewhere! Sneak it in! And if you don't or can't, you failed, and it's your fault. Make sure to drink water and walk 10,000 steps today!"

The reality is that if we’re at the end of the year and experiencing or embarking on feelings of burnout, the problem most certainly didn’t start this month; it’s been present all year—maybe even the year before, and potentially the year before that.

The reason this platitude (arguably not a platitude, but it’s a platitude to me) infuriates me so much is because:

1. it unjustly puts the onus on stress and burnout prevention on the individual rather than the organization or environment

2. it suggests that physical stress symptoms and burnout are solely caused by not taking breaks (it's not)

3. It’s deeply unhelpful to suggest to someone fighting for their paycheck (and, in an era of layoffs, potentially their job) that “they need to take a break.” We all know that breaks and holidays are only restful when our needs are met, right?

I’d be much happier if this platitude-ish comment were directed towards companies and read: “Budget for your teams’ support and care, or it will find its way into your budget—and it won’t be cheap!” The Harvard Business Review reported that stress costs companies in the United States “anywhere from $125 to 190 billion dollars a year—representing 5 to 8 percent of national spending on health care.” That’s a lot of cheddar! 

Companies would benefit from implementing recovery and preventative systems through culture development and adopting a more people-centric approach. However, this cannot be a one-off initiative; it needs to be baked into the organization's foundational strategies and behaviors. The sooner you can start, the better. Don’t wait until the problem is out of hand to act.

Instead of telling someone to rest, ask them what support they need.

• "What can I do to take something off your plate?"

• "Let's figure out what can be pushed until after the holiday."

• "I'm going to make lunch for us, and we'll figure out who we can appropriately and fairly delegate this to."

And just one more note about rest: you are entitled to rest. We all are. We deserve rest. But we need to help each other because our working systems and cultures make it very hard...sometimes impossible. Community care is the way. 

OK, that’s all I got. See you next Monday!