Are YOU Burning Out?

[Gustav 6,400]

It's always going to raise some questions when the #1 poster in the league Discord server steps down as commissioner and talks about general lack of enthusiasm. It's also always going to raise some questions when one offseason sees three GMs step down after a period of not much turnover (granted, not all of those, if any, had to do with burnout).

 

What is burnout? Say you find something you really enjoy doing...we'll use the VHL as an example. You love it, you want to be a part of it, you are a part of it, you enjoy everything you're doing. You do all your tasks early. One week, you can't think of a good article idea, so you decide to wait until later on in the week. Monday turns to Wednesday, and before you know it it's Sunday night and you don't have any interesting ideas. So you knock out 500 words on something super generic because you have to keep your earning up. 

 

Well, it's Sunday again, and it's Monday again, so you take a break because you just did something yesterday...and it's not like you have a good idea after a day. Before long, you're putting off all your articles until the last minute. Every week, everything is now getting done as late as possible. Writing has now gone from something you liked to something you have to do every week. One week you even forget to log on on Sunday and you realize that you weren't all that negatively affected on a personal level by missing a week. One missed week turns into another, as "I need to be doing this" has stopped being a thought of yours, and eventually you just stop visiting the site. Not because you're making the conscious decision not to, but because you haven't enjoyed the league in a long time and your first thought in your free time is far from "I wonder what's going on in the VHL".

 

So what's going on with you? Are you doing OK? Do you enjoy what you're doing? Do you feel like the tasks that you do and the time you put in here is something you need to be doing rather than something you enjoy? I'm not saying "go inactive if that's true", simply "be aware of yourself". Be aware of what you're getting out of the league and learn to recognize burnout when it happens. And at that point, I won't definitively tell you what to do because nobody knows you better than yourself. Give yourself an honest evaluation, find out what you're having fun with and what you're not, and make an informed decision. You obviously can't force yourself to like something, and in fact that will probably make the situation worse. We've just seen that burnout happens to the best of us--and that's ok. Being active and invested is great. Just be as active and invested as you want to be.

[BOOM 8,726]

Yes. But don't tell anyone. 

[Beketov 9,005]

Honestly this mindset everyone has that they need to earn every last drop of TPE every single week and do 5 jobs for the site on the side doesn’t help. Blue burnout is a whole other thing because we have a lot to deal with but for the average member situation you describe... just take welfare. Or if you did your PT and are just missing some minor stuff, that’s okay. No one is going to fault you if you end up at 1300 TPE instead of 1400. Take care of yourself and use the systems we have in place to make life easier and the league for fun, that’s why we have them.

[RomanesEuntDomus 442]

It's definitely a factor for me even as someone who treats this as a side-league without the expectation to go for the full 12 every week. The tasks themselves are not overly work-intensive but there simply is a constant grind to them where you have to do the same 4-5 things over and over every week. And I'm not even doing Media Spots at the moment, from the outside they seem extremely unappealing to me unless I have a great idea for something I wanna write about which happens like once a year. 6 TPE for 500 words sounds reasonable but at the end of the day it's actually just 1-2 TPE for those 500 words since you can always get 4-5 through Welfare, and that ratio looks particularly unappealing both for the effort you need to invest in the writing itself, but even more so for the creativity that's required to come up with up to 52 of those pieces a year. It's good that we have Welfare because without it me and many others wouldn't be here, but it makes Media Spots etc. even more unappealing than they already are.

 

PS: Can we claim Review TPE for VHL.com articles ?

[Beketov 9,005]

2 minutes ago, RomanesEuntDomus said:

Can we claim Review TPE for VHL.com articles ?

Could post it as an op-ed piece to claim for yourself haha

[RomanesEuntDomus 442]

1 minute ago, Beketov said:

Could post it as an op-ed piece to claim for yourself haha

 

Haha good point

[McWolf 3,115]

3 hours ago, Beketov said:

No one is going to fault you if you end up at 1300 TPE instead of 1400.

I will fault me. I have high demands for myself.

[Beketov 9,005]

1 minute ago, McWolf said:

I will fault me. I have high demands for myself.

What’s worse though, losing 100 TPE over a whole career or having such high standards for yourself that you ruin the entire hobby? I’ve seen both and would definitely say the former makes for happier members.

[Eynhallow 412]

This conversation is starting to leak into that perennial topic of how games, like this, affect your RL (such that it is these days).  I, personally. enjoy the VHL(M) but only spend time on it when and if I feel like it.  There is absolutely no way I will take a game too seriously.  I will do what I can to improve my player and support the team on which he plays, but I am not DRIVEN to be a HOF'er.  So, chillax and enjoy the ride !!

[McWolf 3,115]

1 hour ago, Beketov said:

What’s worse though, losing 100 TPE over a whole career or having such high standards for yourself that you ruin the entire hobby? I’ve seen both and would definitely say the former makes for happier members.

In all honesty, I have gotten better at not being mad at myself for not going 12 capped every week. I'm better now.

[bigAL 2,176]

I think you noticed this happen with me in cricket league and I feel bad for that. I was super active and hype over there, and then as things got more hectic in the other leagues and in real life, I had to start prioritizing. The tough thing about prioritizing (and the whole dangerous perfectionist mindset overall) is that something has to give and you really want to do everything, or else you're a loser and suck and shouldn't do anything at all. Big yikes on those negative thoughts infiltrating your rational brain. It's really really hard reckoning with the fact that you can't give 100% to everything, because there are many, many competing interests for that 100%. Coach can tell you to give 110% but that's an awful mentality in everything except a one-hour practice. Giving more than you're physically, mentally, emotionally able to, especially over a long period of time, is a recipe for burnout.

 

I like all the conversation though. We all have felt burnout, we've all seen things go south because of burnout, and I'd like to think that our collective awareness makes it easier to avoid or manage burnout. No good GM or teammate is going to get grumpy about someone stepping back, taking a breather, or becoming a clicker for a bit, because we all 'get' burnout now. Putting yourself first doesn't mean letting everyone else down, because in the long run, you'll get to be the best version of you that you can give for even longer. I think we'd all rather a 60% member for two years than a 110% member for 6 months.

 

Since you asked about ME in the title, I think I'm lucky to still be going for a lot of reasons. I'm coming up on my 1 year anniversary here in the next week or two, and I'm proud of that. I came in as a 110% member, got to give it all to a great cause for two seasons (getting Miami up and running) because my life allowed it (job I didn't love, working at home, pandemic life, etc), but I was also able to let myself take a bit of a step back when life demanded it. I moved 8 hours away, I didn't have internet for a month, and I was forced to take a break. It allowed me to really enjoy my limited time here. My favourite memory from that time was having the S75 VHL draft happen on my birthday and get a shoutout from Eno and the crew! I got to prioritize, and gave myself the space to choose the fun events like the draft stream over the more onerous chores. (I still max earned but that was more a challenge to myself that kept me motivated. One Sunday night I had to drive to the parking lot of the rec centre nearby to mooch their wifi to get my media spot in on time!)

 

One thing that I'm learning as I continue my managerial career with the WJC is that you have to find ways to make earning not a chore for you. Everyone brings a skillset to the VHL that they can either easily do, enjoy doing, and/or want to learn to do better. I joined because I was looking for places to do more writing, and so I really enjoy the media spot writing aspect. I always wanted to get into professional talking, but would not have ever had a reason to try a podcast without the VHL. I had photoshop for a bit and tried my hand at graphic design, but it wasn't fun for me so I stopped doing it. As management and teammates, we have to make sure to find out those strengths and support members in doing what they do best and making it fun. I love seeing idea sharing, and encouraging others to write or create something that they might not have thought of. I love to see the collaboration with the podcast world going on now, people good at the same thing sharing their talents to help each other and the podcast-listening community. I love to see the Sig Shops where people can give gfx whizzes ideas and specific projects to work on when they want to. These specific, targetted challenges help us support each other, cut down the stress of the idea-creation process, and focus on the things we want  to do versus the things we have to do.

 

You know what they say, "you'll never work a day in your life if you do what you love," and that's got to apply to sim league life. If you enjoy content creating, whether it's writing or podcasting or graphic design, then hell yeah steer into it in a way and on a schedule that makes it fun for you. If you like the community aspect, chillin in the discord, playing games in vc, then prioritize that and click the welfare button more often. If you bounce between those two groups, then bounce away! Do whatever it is you have to do to enjoy your time here.

 

And, maybe most importantly, the better you can articulate your needs, wants, and limitations to the people you feel responsible to, the less guilt you will feel about not being the 100% version of yourself you probably want to be. Trust me, the great people around here will understand.

 

Gus you da man always putting out the most deep, thought provoking articles. I'd love to spend a week in your brain

[fishy 1,757]

As always, Gus and AL have nailed it - mindfulness is incredibly important in all things you do, and it's difficult to keep tabs on how you're feeling about something that, at one time, was a source of fun.

 

I suppose the only thing I have to add to this conversation is the fact that we had a huge influx of of people (including myself) who joined the VHL near the beginning of the pandemic. I don't know about everybody else, but I definitely have used VHL as a sort of escape from the incessantly whirling bullshit of everything happening in my "real life." Reno wrote a really great article in the EFL when Turner stepped down about how escapism can really affect your experiences. I think it's unwise to consider VHL, simply because it's virtual, to be a benign and "Other" part of your life. You are real, you are living your life, and for now, VHL is in it. I think that sometimes our escapes become less and less effective. There comes a point when running to the same place or person just gets... redundant or stale, and that's okay. I don't believe that we as humans are meant to do the same shit all the time everyday.

 

I don't know about anybody else, but I'm burnt out. Not just on the VHL, nor school, nor work, etc. I'm burnt out on waking up every single morning and remembering all the things that feel like they're going wrong. Without turning this into a post about mental illness, I think it's important to understand that, yes, burnout can happen anywhere, regardless of how much hype you initially had. Being alive is exhausting sometimes, and something that I've learned in the past year is that you have to recognize when you're tired and figure out how to rest.

 

So, yeah, be aware of yourself. Stop doing things that make you feel like shit and replace them in your routine with things that make you feel alive. If leaving the VHL is best for someone, then that's great, we'll be here if they decide to return. Life is just far too short to waste your time doing things simply because you're used to doing them.

[frescoelmo 1,275]

I've always felt TPE earning in this sim league requires such a small percentage of the time I actually spend on this site overall.  I guess I just don't really fret about the extra 1-2 TPE that I could conceivably find and claim every week.

[eaglesfan036 4,598]

Having been in the league on and off for almost a decade I've been burned out for a while, but it doesn't take that much work to do welfare + practice facility + 590 + press conference a week - like 10 minutes. So I do it and check in and hang out. But I honestly couldn't name more than 5 players in the VHL right now lol, I rarely check in on the games other than a quick look at Malones stats. If London makes playoffs I start checking the threads a bit more

[a_Ferk 764]

One I'm done with this player I'm going to do welfare + the small tasks. Will probably do the theme week media spots just so I don't lose out of the TPE there as well

[OrbitingDeath 3,181]

17 hours ago, McWolf said:

In all honesty, I have gotten better at not being mad at myself for not going 12 capped every week. I'm better now.

 

Teach me

[diamond_ace 3,111]

On 3/7/2021 at 2:59 AM, GustavMattias said:

Do you feel like the tasks that you do and the time you put in here is something you need to be doing rather than something you enjoy?

Yes, and even then I still feel obligated to do it most of the time