GNT #181: Why your own yard is the worst

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read time: 3.5 minutes

When I go help my sister in her yard, I come home dirty, worn out, and weirdly happy.

The same yard work at my own house sits undone for weeks. And when I finally get to it, it's a slog start to finish.

Same jobs. Same tools. Somehow the complete opposite experience. For the longest time I never stopped to ask why.

When work is wearing you down, you get the same advice from every direction. Do less. Cut back, guard your time, take things off your plate. Sometimes that's exactly right.

But a lot of the time it's the wrong lever, and it took a couple of lawn chairs and sitting with a good aviation friend at EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, WI this year to show me why.

Let's get to it.

Same shovel, different job

My friend Tim is a builder. Airplanes, yes, but also the kind of person who would rather drag branches to the burn pile than "take a walk." When Tim talks about work, he means the real thing. Digging. Hauling. Literally building something useful.

He put it to me this way. Pouring your own concrete slab is a miserable job. But go help your buddy pour his, and it's just as much work, and you don't mind it a bit. Same shovel. Same mix. Same sore back in the morning. One is a chore. The other one isn't... it might even be fun.

Then there was the mud.

A few summers ago a hard rain turned our Oshkosh campground to soup, and a row of campers got their rigs stuck. Everybody came out. We got under the bumpers, got filthy, pushed and dug and winched by inches until every last one was free.

"I didn't even care that we worked that hard," Tim said. "I thought it was a blast."

Nobody out there was doing less. They were doing miserable work in the rain. And it was the best night of the trip.

Where "do less" goes wrong

Here's what that advice keeps missing.

The concrete slab is the concrete slab either way. The mud was miserable for everyone in it. The amount didn't change. The difficulty didn't change. What changed was who the work was for, whether I was sealed off, or whether someone was standing next to me.
 

What actually wears you down is doing it sealed off from everyone

You can do the whole thing solo and be fine, as long as you've let people in. None of this is about being around people more. Even the work you do completely alone can be for someone.

Seal the work off, do it where no one can reach you, for no one you can picture, and all of it sits on your back. Nobody is coming. Let people in, do it for someone real, do it where the people you love can see it, and the weight changes even though the workload doesn't. You've just stopped carrying it in the dark.

Sometimes burnout really is too much work, and less is the answer. But a lot of what I see, in myself and in the people I work with, is a different kind of tired. The kind that comes from being sealed off inside the work. You can tell yourself it's for a good reason. For the company. For the mission. For some payoff down the road. And still be doing every bit of it where no one can reach you. That's pouring your own slab in the dark, with nobody rallying.

That's why cutting back so often doesn't fix it. You trim the load, and you're still under what's left, by yourself. Lighter, and just as sealed off.

One thing before you take this too far, because Tim caught me on it. This isn't about being less selfish or giving more. In his words, "really what you want is you want it to come around. You want to go help somebody and you'd love it when they show up and help you." Everybody in that mud knew it. Next time it might be their rig, and someone would come.

Takeaway

So the next time a stretch of work is emptying you out, before you figure out how to do less of it, try the other fix first.

Let someone in. Show them the hard part. Do it for a person you can picture. Get a set of hands beside you if the work allows it. You don't have to shrink the load. You have to stop carrying it sealed off.

Same shovel. Same dirt. Somehow it stops feeling like work.

I'm always rooting for you. See you next week.

-Colleen

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