How Much Is Too Much? - One Way to Prevent Burnout

"The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings," said Robert Louis Stevenson in one of his most famous quotes. 

I'm sure many of us resonate with this. I know I do—I have about as many interests as a porcupine has quills, and I badly want to pursue all of them. If only I didn't have basic human needs like sleep, food, and rest, I'd never be bored a day in my life.

Many of these desires are quite wonderful. I want to help out in church ministries, start Bible studies, and improve my skills for the glory of God.

Surely these are good things. Right?

Yes. But when I tried to pursue them, I find out that even a wonderful thing can be damaging if you aren't careful.

If you load yourself up with responsibilities, you may be able to handle it. 

At first. 

And then you start not being able to handle it, and feeling tired.

This is just an off week for me, you think. Tomorrow I'll catch up. 

But you don't. You've pushed your body to the brink of exhaustion, and the burnout that follows isn't something that you can dismiss.

What causes burnout? Why does it happen? And how can we avoid it?

 

Two causes of burnout

One cause of burnout is our own arrogance.

We expect that we can do far more than we actually can. When you set yourself a goal, you think to yourself that it'll be easy. That you'll be able to do it with no problems.

You can't do everything. This is obviously true, but a more relevant way of  phrasing it is that you can't do as much as you think you can.

Do you think you'll be able to cope with an insanely busy schedule? You might be able to. But you also might not—and it's important to know your limits.

Human beings are fragile creatures. We shouldn't expect we'll be able to move mountains in a day.

Another pitfall to watch out for is misapplied priorities. 

Work is good. And it helps people.

But it isn't the only thing that's important.

My favorite Dickens novel is Bleak House. In Bleak House, there's a character who is so caught up by works of philanthropy that she completely neglects her own family and household while furiously dictating letters to send to Africa. Her loved ones are rarely fed or clothed, but at least she's hard at work!

We don't want to be like this. We shouldn't get so caught up in our work that we neglect the other duties and responsibilities that we have.

The qualifications for church leadership that Paul lays out in Titus 1 include the deacon's family. He must be a good husband and a good father before he can be a good church leader.

Though we aren't all deacons, we can still learn from this. Family is important! And we shouldn't neglect our loved ones because we have to raise money to put towards the church's building fund.

Even beyond this, we have duties to ourselves.

I'm not about to start telling you that you are your highest priority, like so many Disney movies claim—God is your highest priority, and Jesus tells us to consider others as more important than ourselves.

But at the same time, we shouldn't think that difficulty is always good. 

Men's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. If you've fixed your schedule so that you're spending so much time glorifying God that you don't have time to enjoy Him, then something's wrong.

Rejoice! Enjoy the gifts that God has given you.

Because they're intended for us to enjoy.

 

A Way to Prevent Burnout

The best way to prevent burnout is to be careful, and not to push yourself beyond what you can actually do.

It's OK to take a step back. If you need to rest, rest. As the saying goes, "an ounce of prevention is a pound of cure."

You do need to balance this with still being productive and accomplishing your work, but still keep your energy level in mind.

If you refuse to let yourself step away from things, then it'll lead you to a bad place.

I'm not saying that you should abandon every project when you encounter even the slightest bit of difficulty, because that's a separate problem. But if you won't step back from anything?

I've felt a lot of unnecessary stress and unhappiness that came because I foolishly assumed I was stronger than I was.

And the thing is, I was doing it all because I wanted to be a more effective servant of Christ. A good motivation, right?

But this isn't the way to do that.

God is more powerful than we are. He can use jars of clay to hold his treasure.

His work doesn't depend only on you! That's the wonderful thing about all this—you can work as hard as you like, and nothing may come of it.

Psalm 127 says, "Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain."

If God isn't on your side, then it won't matter one whit whether or not you get this done today.

And if he is? Than your work will bear fruit.

Period. 

It's literally as simple as that.

So, don't act like it all depends on you to save the world. It doesn't. Jesus already did that.

And we can rest in the light of that reality.