Understanding burnout for writers – 4 concepts that are changing my life
Last week my monthly newsletter went out, and I shared what I’ve been learning about burnout from Becca Syme, creator of the Better Faster Academy.
I learnt about Becca through another author in December and, once I saw she had burnout-related content, I devoured it. I read her book on the topic, binged her podcast series about it, and even signed up to an exploratory coaching session. (If you’ve done any coaching with her team, let me know what your top Clifton Strengths are – it’s super interesting.) For the first time, I found burnout described in a way that felt actionable to me, and in a way that made sense for my dreams as a writer.
While I’d originally planned it as newsletter-only content, I think it’s something that could help a lot of writers, so thought, why not share it here as well?
The most helpful thing for me was the language she gave me to describe burnout – energy pennies, plates, pits, and ladders.
Before we get into that, though, I send a newsletter once a month that shares an inside look at my writing life, new release updates, interviews, events, giveaways and occasional deep dives like this. If you sign up below, you’ll also get the first three chapters of Powerless for free 😉
Energy pennies
Energy pennies are fairly straightforward – everything you do (mental, physical or emotional) has an energetic cost. Some activities cost more than others – a six-hour, uphill hike will cost more than a 20-minute stroll on level ground. And if you have to use willpower to do something you don’t want to do, that costs more again – because the willpower costs pennies in addition to the task you’re trying to complete.
This is similar to the spoons theory, where each spoon represents a certain amount of energy, but I find the idea of energy pennies to be far more intuitive. Pennies are a type of currency and, even if I can’t put an exact value on the balance in my account, or the cost of certain activities, I understand the ideas of spending and saving these. Spoons never quite clicked in the same way.
Beyond spending your pennies, there are also things that can give you energy pennies. Eating and sleeping are obvious ones, along with activities you find nourishing. In my case, reading, walking and singing are big ones. But there’s a balance – if I’m pushing myself to read a book that I’m not getting into, that can end up costing me pennies instead of creating them. Similarly, walking can be a bit of a challenge – I used to love long walks (90 minutes plus), but now I find that anything over 45 minutes puts me into risky territory, and sometimes I can only manage 20. When you’re burnt out, the challenge is maintaining the balance.
Plate size
Plates relate to the idea of having a lot on your plate. Becca says everyone has a plate, and they may be different sizes. So some people might naturally have a size 10 plate, which means they have the capacity to get a lot done, while others might have a size three plate, and aren’t able to manage as much.
Your plate size tells you how much you can comfortably take on without getting burnt out. When you start to take on more than that amount, the contents on your plate start to bleed from the main part of the dish (where you would put a meal) to the lip around the edge. If this keeps happening, your plate will overbalance and flip over. This is burnout. If you go through burnout, when you recover, your plate often isn’t the same size it was before. This has been my experience – when I think back to my first couple of years in business (if you’re new here, I had a publishing company called Grammar Factory from 2013 to 2019), I definitely had a size 10 plate. Even now, I’m in awe of how much I managed to get done, how much information I could hold in my head, and how many balls I could juggle concurrently.
The pit
Once you burn out, you fall into the pit. This is the lowest of the low – whatever that might mean for you.
I struggled to claim the title of burnout in the past, because I didn’t think things were bad enough. I read articles about people who were unable to get out of bed for six months and, being a very literal person, I thought that if I was getting out of bed, I must have been okay.The ladder
The final metaphor is the ladder – this is how you get out of the pit. You see, the pit is too deep for you to just jump out – you need to build a ladder.
The challenge is that it takes energy to build that ladder – every rung costs energy pennies. You might build a rung, and then get stuck there for a bit while you save up more pennies.Recovery
When I came across these ideas in late December, for the first time I felt like I had language to describe how burnout worked. The plate metaphor helped me understand why I don’t have the same capacity I used to, while the energy pennies and ladder metaphors helped me understand why I haven’t been able to push or challenge or hustle my way out of this.
In 2024, my top priority is recovering from burnout. That means being very careful with my energy pennies – taking time to do things that replenish them, and avoiding things that drain them where possible.