Question for the #neurodivergent community (specifically #AuDHD
I am noticing more and more that since I am running several different projects (try to grow my self-employment, day job, building a pagan church, fiction writing, homestead projects, etc) and have basically worked off of rolling "to do" lists for years, my brain is now like "TOO MUCH TOO MUCH" and shuts down.
No, I can't cut anything out.
Does anyone else experience the TOO MUCH and how do you juggle?
@KitMuse @neurodivergence I second everyone's worries that you might be in burnout territory, but maybe it's useful to get an objective view of your energy levels first.
- for short-term mental fatigue, there's the VAS-F questionnaire: https://link.springer.com/10.1007/978-1-4419-9893-4_100
- for mid-term mental fatigue there's the Need For Recovery Scale: https://europepmc.org/articles/pmc1765728?pdf=render
- for long-term fatigue (aka burnout) there's the Maslach Burnout Inventory with surveys for several populations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslach_Burnout_Inventory
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The scale consists of 18 items relating to the subjective experience of fatigue. Each item asks respondents to place an “X,” representing how they currently feel, along a visual analogue line that extends between two extremes (e.g., from “not at all...
@KitMuse Or you could look into Freudenberger's stages of burnout, I found them quite illuminating for myself.
If any of the questionnaires indicate a problem, I'm afraid there's probably only these ways to go:
1. You choose what to let go of/get help with and build more recovery into your schedule.
2. One day your body will drop anything it cannot manage anymore, and this is usually chaotic and frightening and you might end up with much, much less than if you made the trade-offs.
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@KitMuse When I'm confronted with IMPOSSIBLE choices, I do pair-wise comparison. There's better explanations but the basics are:
- list all projects + add both mental and physical health as items
- compare all items 1:1 by asking "If you could only do A or B, which would you choose?" (eventually there's the decisions between projects and health items, these are usually painful but sobering)
- rank the items by matches won
- look at the bottom items and figure out what needs to be done
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@gettingunstuck Thanks. Yes, I had THE BIG BURNOUT that I am coming back from and I am very aware of not falling back into it.
But also, avoiding burnout is a privlege for those who have support systems and help, of which I have neither being alone in the Ozarks. (My spouse is also ND and needs more support than I do.)
Kit Muse
getting unstuck