Boundaries by Szymon Janiak

The post was originally published in Polish on Szymon’s LinkedIn profile. Szymon kindly agreed to republish what we think is of great value to our readers.

Setting boundaries at work is not laziness–it’s mental hygiene. If you don’t take care of yourself, no one will do it for you.

Suppose you start a new job. The beginning is exciting: challenges, progress… You want to prove yourself, prove that you can do it. You take on more and more–because you can. Because ‘just this one more project.’ Because ‘it’s difficult now, but it will get better later on.’

And then you wake up one day and… you don’t feel anything anymore. All motivation evaporated. Every email irritates you. Meetings seem pointless. Projects that used to be exciting became another tick point. You have no strength anymore, but you keep working because… that’s the way things should be.

The effect is burnout. Contrary to a widespread opinion, however, it’s not a matter of weakness. This is the result of systematic ignoring of red flags.

I have been through this with many managers. For a long time, they think they are indestructible. They often said: ‘I agreed to everything because it was an excellent opportunity,’ ‘an opportunity that may never happen again,’ because ‘others can make it, so I have to do it too,’ and in practice it got them lost. The first symptoms were usually similar:

• Never-ending fatigue:sleep doesn’t help, coffee doesn’t work, vacation doesn’t reset.
• Irritability–one gets  irritated by everything and everyone.
• Lack of satisfaction–even successes bring no joy.
• Procrastination–one does stuff, but as if on autopilot.

And when a person thinks that they can hold on for a little longer, the body itself gives a STOP signal–with decreased immunity, insomnia, and other health issues.

Remedy?

You’re not a robot. If you drive at full speed all the time, you will eventually lose yourself.

Setting boundaries is not laziness – it’s mental hygiene. If you don’t take care of yourself, no one will do it for you.

‘I’ll take a leave and get over it’–you won’t. Burnout is not fatigue, it’s a lack of meaning in what you do. And it cannot be cured with a few days off. Take care of yourselves.

The comment section had to add:

Such mature businesspeople begin to promote mental health! Brilliant! We rediscover that we are living beings who create culture and are capable of reflecting and building relationships based on values and symbols. But what about the widespread promotion of corporate models and solutions that systemically rape the human psyche? What about chatbots that treat us like objects and let our brain run like an animal being led to execution? They force the person addressing them to act according to an algorithm with a psychopathic structure! It reveals no emotion and gives no human feedback. The entire world of digital production needs to remember that a living man uses cultural imagery, the language of metaphors, which are an expression of the human ‘soul.’ Scaling it is supposed to give more freedom and free creativity (level up) instead of degrading to a mechanical and binary being (level down). A very valuable voice of a man who knows business from practice and theory. Human first! Such ambassadors of mental hygiene in demand!

– Zenon Waldemar Dudek, President at ERANOS Foundation Institute of Psychology and Culture

It’s 100% true, burnout is a real threat to those who don’t pay attention to their stress levels.  Of course, leaders are more often exposed because the level of their responsibility is higher. But being aware of their own stress is not all a leader has to think about. Bringing stress to the team, consciously or not, increases the risk of burnout for team members no less than the team manager.

– Mikhail Lvovskii, Co-Founder and Chief Transformation Officer at LeanPeople