“Know contentment, and you will suffer no disgrace; know when to stop, and you will meet with no danger. You can then endure.” – Lao Tzu
During my last quarter of undergrad (around the time I created the PMBA), I pushed myself to the breaking point.
I was taking 22 credit hours of classes across three subjects: Business Information Systems, Real Estate, and Philosophy. Almost every class that I took had some kind of senior capstone project. Two of the courses I was taking were graduate level, and required writing two 20+ page papers on very complex topics to pass. I had a lot of work to do, and not enough time to do it.
By the last two weeks of the quarter, I was an absolute wreck. I was sleep deprived, run down, and stressed beyond belief. Everything got done, but the workload took its toll, and it took me a few weeks of doing nothing after graduation to fully recover.
The Benefits of Reaching Your Breaking Point
Even though it wasn’t pleasant, I’m glad I found my breaking point. Here’s why: now I know how much I’m capable of doing, and how much is too much. I know more about how my mind and body react to stress, and I’m better able to identify the warning signs of taking on too much before things get out of hand.
As a result, I’ve been able to keep myself running at about 90% capacity, which is enough to get a lot done without burning out. Right now, I’m working on a book, consulting with my clients, and working on a few interesting side projects. A few weeks ago, one of my friends told me, “you’re looking pretty good for being in the middle of writing a book.” It’s true: in contrast to my college experiment, I’m handling everything that’s going on pretty well, and knowing my breaking point has made it much easier to know when to push and when to slow down.
The Breaking Point Experiment
It’s impossible to know how much you’re capable of until you decide to push your limits. As long as you stay safe (i.e. experiment with things that won’t kill you or do permanent damage), you can learn a ton about how you work by stretching yourself to the limit. The knowledge you gain will help you make better choices in the future about what projects to take on and how much is too much.
Have you ever reached your breaking point? What did you learn?
(Photo credit: saavem on sxc.hu)
{ 14 comments }
I took 24 hours my final semester of undergrad. My breaking point was Friday of finals week after everything was finished. I was on my second pot of coffee trying to make it through the rest of the workday when my boss told me to go home. Between the sleep-deprivation and the reliance on caffeine, my body was on the verge of falling apart.
On the bright side of things, by graduating a year early, I managed to score a great job just weeks before Bear Stearns collapsed and the economy fell apart.
At one point in my life I had just changed jobs, training for a triathlon, on the verge of having my first child, experiencing a major outsourcing at the new job, assigned my new boss’s job after he left because of the outsourcing, and found myself in India when a close family member passed away. All that over 18 months. That was a slow break. Nothing as quick and intense as you describe but the results were similar and I think the cracks ran deeper. That experience affects the way I manage my priorities today.
The closest I’ve gotten to staring my breaking point in the face was this May. We were working on the capstone project for my MBA. I’d signed up for other participatory online training. I had a full-time job, a stressed husband, and an 18 month old who was going through a world-revolves-around-Mommy-Mommy!-Mommy!!! period.
The most frustrating part was actually afterwards, when I had all these other plans I wanted to accomplish and couldn’t go start them because I needed to recharge. I still wonder if I needed to have taken longer than I did with the resting part. Maybe I’ll get a few more things set up and try again.
My breaking point happened in a bathroom. I’d been working too hard for too long at a fast-paced and kind of desperate company that kept handing me one giant make-or-break project after another. I had recently learned that a good friend had died suddenly of a brain aneurysm. I had just gotten notice that my apartment building was going to be torn down that summer to make way for unnecessary new townhouses. I’d just flown from the east coast to the west coast AGAIN to talk to people who were about to be laid off from a company they loved, another make-or-break project for my job.
I had to sit in the airport for thirty minutes before I could get in a cab because I felt like throwing up. I took a cab to the hotel, dumped my luggage on the lobby floor and sprinted to the bathroom to throw up and got it all over my shirt. I checked in, went to my room, took off my shirt and started crying and spot treating the vomit stains in the bathroom sink. I looked at myself in the mirror and said–this is too much. I don’t want to work like this or live like this any more. It was my breaking point.
Shortly thereafter, I left that job but kept the company as a productive freelance client. I signed a few more freelance clients. I moved out of my building and in with my boyfriend (now my husband). It’s been more than three years since that breaking point and in some ways I’m still recovering, but my life has recovered a great deal.
Josh–your PMBA list has helped me so much in rebuilding from that breaking point. The things I’ve learned have helped me grow my business without having to get too close to that breaking point again.
thank you!
Glad to help, Bridget!
Heh. I had a few semesters like that in college – 20+ hours, lots of extra-curricular activities and a double major.
Almost hit my breaking point this week. This was a timely post. Thanks for sharing.
Another good resource for when you’re feeling burned and contemplating quitting is The Dip by Seth Godin. Came across that book a few weeks ago when I was wondering if all my feelings of frustration were evil or just natural. Godin has some good things to say about when to stick and when to quit.
Josh,
How’s it going? Yes understanding my breaking point was important as well, but I never thought about it concretely in written words..thanks for that.. FYI, mine was creating a non profit cricket tournament with 12 teams with about 11-15 players on each..most of the volunteers were “busy” so had to do most of it on my own. Creating a nutraceutical company and a pharmacy, as well as working as the PIC (pharmacist in charge) at a pharmacy in south central.
What helped me was running, meditation, and yoga. Regulating and decreasing the sympathetic nervous system is key because this is the system that causes adrenaline and all the stress hormones to be released. I’m sure as an individual gets trained to work in strenuous conditions for long enough he/she maybe be able to increase his productivity. What are your theories.
I have been trying to incorporate Pareto’s 80-20 Principle into my businesses and life….specifically the part where the investment of time should be chosen so the most output is created. Based on this rule certain things are better outsourced to other more knowledgeable experts leaving us more time to do what we are good at.
Incorporating Pareto’s 80-20 Law when a person has a new business or project is very tough esp when Im dealing with lazy people…..Do any of You have any ideas on how to use this law better?
My breaking point happened when I had 30 days to live. Not “30 days till I ceased to breath” but 30 days before I got fired. This happened on a project that was going horribly wrong. We had every problem imaginable. Everyone was pointing the finger at everyone else. It was a mess.
It happened after the meeting with the CEO. He basically told our whole group that if we did not fix our problems in 30 days, he would fire all of us. It hit the whole team hard and everyone was in a daze. For me, I just could not fathom why he would result to such extremes to “motivate us”.
The breaking point came the next day when he emailed the whole team saying ” You now have 29 days left. I hope you used your first day wisely.” That just put me over the edge. At that moment, I knew it was time to move on.
As an aside, we fixed the problem in 30 days and kept our jobs. I left the company about a year later.
My final undergrad semester- My grandmother died Jan 1, got back to classes a week later and I had a 20hr a week job, 10hr a week internship, I was a campus newspaper editor, I think I only had 12-15 hours but one was a lab class that was 3hrs in the evening. I had had a car accident early in the semester right before MLK Day, not my fault, but I think it physically ruptured something inside me. X-rays, ultra sounds, pills and more pills, my regular doctor on vacation in Mexico until I could get in over spring break. My mom said my graduation photo I looked washed out, no color, and I am a black woman. I was anemic, stressed, but I was there and kept going until May 10…
Where is that tenacity I had because this recession is breaking me though…
My breaking point was at 30, after 8 months working overtime in a poorly managed software project.
It started when I relocated to a new city, to join a new company, little after starting a new relationship (which became a long distance relationship), and working with a new programming language. I was in a two people team, which became a ‘one person team’ since my colleague left. The (freelance) manager was not paying attention at all to the project, and I was getting other tasks from other departments of the company (30 people sized). I would inform my manager and other superiors about the lack of time, and how delayed all the work was, but no one seemed to care.
I was traveling every 2 weeks to my hometown to spend time with my girlfriend, in the midst of many remarks she was putting on me.
The breaking point was announced by the end of the relationship, and by the sight of my reflection in a mirror in my bathroom, looking physically exhausted after getting home from work close to 11pm, with an empty fridge. I got a promotion, but weeks after I quit the job. And decided to go for a public servant job, which at least for the moment is giving me more time and quality of life, and allows me to dip in a couple of side projects.
The point I got about all this, is relaying more in daily meditation. To be aware of what I really want, and in what proportion my decisions/ commitments to work, family and personal projects consume my energy/time/vitality. This way I can as I go day by day look inwards and see my emotional landscape, what’s fine in my life and what’s burdening me, what decisions/attitudes are not yielding the satisfaction I had expected, what strategies are not working right and why, so I can revise my short/medium term goals, and do/enjoy what I really want to do/enjoy no matter I thought differently with less perspective a few months ago. For me meditation makes all the difference, though is sometimes hard to keep the daily practice. Around 30-40 minutes of mantra chanting (nam-myo-ho-renge-kyo), helps me develop confidence and courage to launch any project I feel I want to bet for, and helps me to keep personal-balance bringing out some sort of practical wisdom that comes out deep from my own life.
Thanks Josh for your post, and inviting us to do a similar reflection.
I learn a lot about breaking points the 20 years ago when I was in the Brigada Paracaidista, a spanish special military force. When you stress yourself hard and long enough you first receive alarm signs. You learn that there are a lot behind then, that you can do a lot more; but you must monitoring yourself carefully because you can reach the phisical collapse without warning. The people that run long distance know a lot also about it.
But you can’t work at this level for a long time. For me, as a entrepeneur, it’s more important, and dificult, to find my maximum continum workload.
My breaking points would be defined when I get physically sick, alergic to conversations and mentally in lala-land talking to myself while day dreaming about having 5 billion dollars under my bed. Currently, i’m doing the 9 to 5 hootnanny, raising a family, taking my MBA part-time with night classes, recording a music album, and a “wish I was” great part-time writer that nobody’s ever heard of. And to add, my city has the worst traffic jams in the world. Its been proven somewhere on some kind of world census. Basically, days can be alice in wonderland and worst than the remake of twillight zone. Living in a tropical country, I was diagnosed with dangue fever twice this past year and that would be the physical breaking point in which I know I’ve gone over board with work and unbalanced life. Currently, when I begin to feel week physically, I cool it off a bit and put it on cruise control as I contact the hibernate foundation to donate lots of sleep. When I know nothing is in the way, then again I throttle full speed on the pedal.
But when I start to break mentally, I just put on some music, get on my zone and write songs. This has always been therapeutical with mental overloads.
I completely agree with you Josh, if we know our breaking points, we’ll do a heck of a better job in controlling our optimal productivity to for the days to come. Ok then, keep cooking us them tasty and delicious food for thoughts. Keep up the Chuck Norris.
There is no face to know and test the breaking points in life. Stress, fatigue, pressure could be the tools to test our breaking points. The one that tested my breaking point is my patience. I thought I had enough patience to handle any situation, whether at my work or my personal life. 2006-07 was the year where my patience was tested to its extreme. Hoping to pursue my PG, I had taken few entrance exams and the results were not in my favor. My personal life had some hitches. Work-life balance had taken a shape of complicated puzzle to solve. I knew the time will heal the wounds, but scars would remain for my entire life. I had started hating everyone and was angry for most of the time. My parents supported me in those dark times. Now I know my breaking point of patience has certainly increased its upper limit. I can take decisions more rationally. After reading this article, it reminded me of that period of my life. Thanks Josh.
Great post Josh–I think it’s important to know the limits and then run up right to them because that’s how you build capacity. Not that you should do that constantly, but different spurts of it over time is like a workout for work/life capacity.
I think the key to surviving those moments of 90-100% is having well defined habits or rituals. If you can move to 95% and still maintain a good diet and exercise, you’ll maintain the energy to keep it up.
I wish I was to the point that I could do that more consistently (it sounds like you’ve found the sweet spot), but I’m still searching for the right balance between the corporate job, stand-up and improv, and writing / blogging.
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