job burnout
I can’t believe this happened to me!
One day, around the beginning of May, I just didn’t want to help anyone.
I stopped answering calls, and I didn’t want to do this work anymore.
In hindsight, I can now see it had been building for a few weeks…
- i’d often work 10 or 12 hour days, for 6 days per week.
- I have very high expectations of myself, and the quality of my work.
- Mandy would book anyone who called… which would sometimes mean 5 or 6 customers per day.
Luckily I managed to not let my apathy show, while I was onsite… But a few minutes after leaving a customer, I would have an overwhelming feeling of sadness.
The weird thing is: I couldn’t understand why.
Well, me and Mandy managed to get over it.
As soon as possible, we arranged for me to take a week off (although I still had to do some “catchup work)… I spent a lot of the time sleeping, feeling depressed and withdrawn. By the end of the week, I was feeling better.
The week after was “reduced” duties (max of 2 customers per day).
The week after, I took another break, and did a lot of things that I had been meaning to do, but just kept putting off, as my workload had gradually increased.
Taking a “step back” as I did, I can see that Computer Aid is now a successful business, and it provides a high quality service, at fees lower than the industry average.
So we had to decide where to go from here…
There were many options:
- Sell Computer Aid (not what I really want to do).
- Work less (and increase my fees, but accept a lower income)
- Just shutdown Computer Aid
- Go to a purely contractor model (I do the occasional job)… but this option has its own set of headaches.
- Franchise. I don’t believe this works well with this type service industry
At this stage, I’ve reduced my hours to something more normal, and I will consider my future options carefully.
From now on, I’ll be sure to take regular vacation time… it doesn’t matter how much I like my job, its still possible to overdo it.
And for those of you who really like my blog, and might be worried that I might start posting less frequently: I don’t think so. I usually “buffer” my posts, so that they appear regularly… so they can take up to 2-3 months from when they are written, to when they get posted.
Happens to us all.
It’s just a case of when.
I pushed too far and ended up ill.
Why does it happen?
Here’s some of my reasons.
…………………………………
The constant stress of diagnosing
and being expected to fix every problem.
People ringing constantly to ask dumb questions
with no prospect of my time being paid for.
EG. What printer should I buy? What’s a .pdf?
Intermittent faults.
“Well it WAS doing it before you came”.
Brand new parts DOA. Especially “on site”
The downward spiral of prices on
hardware as complexity increased.
Hardly worth fixing and impossible
to charge a true hourly rate.
The sheer boredom of cleaning up
the millionth infected computer,
and then explaining to the owner
how to prevent reocurrance.
The Vista mess.
The depression comes when you
realise that you have invested
years in learning and yet would
have a better lifestyle cutting
grass.
And a more secure income.
Good luck.