Burnout And New Beginnings, With Laura Nguyen

Ever feel like you’re constantly running on empty, pushing yourself to the brink of exhaustion?  You might be experiencing burnout, and you’re not alone. J.R. Lowry sits down with Laura Nguyen, a marketing executive-turned-burnout coach and author of Career Break Compass. Together, they explore the signs, symptoms, and surprising causes of burnout, which has become an all-too-common phenomenon.  Laura reveals how she hit the “invisible wall” and made the difficult decision to take a career break to prioritize her well-being. Laura also breaks down the practical steps she took to create a structured and fulfilling time off, including embracing play, mindfulness, and intentional planning.

Check out the full series of “Career Sessions, Career Lessons” podcasts here or visit pathwise.io/podcast/. A full written transcript of this episode is also available at https://pathwise.io/podcast/laura-nguyen

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Burnout And New Beginnings, With Laura Nguyen

Author Of Career Break Compass

Introduction

We are going to talk about burnout. My guest is Laura Nguyen. Laura is an experienced marketing executive and entrepreneur with an extensive background in data-driven marketing, digital marketing, and communications for Fortune 500 companies. She is now the founder of Solle Solutions, a marketing consultancy, and she is also a certified executive coach, helping mid-career, high-achieving leaders go from burned out to balanced through her coaching program and online community. In our discussion, we’re going to be covering Laura’s own career journey, how it led to burnout and recovery, and her new book, Career Break Compass.

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Laura, welcome. Thank you for joining me on the show.

Thanks for having me, JR. Great to be here.

It’s great to be here as well. Let’s start with your background, give us an overview of your career journey prior to the realization that you were burned out.

Just to go backward in time. I started my career on the agency side. Marketing communications agency, a global firm. I had really wonderful experiences, to be honest with you. It is a great opportunity to work with major clients on a consulting perspective. Being able to provide great counsel to these clients. I took a lot of those learnings from the agency world. I was working on clients.

A lot of them were pharmaceutical clients. I had a lot of healthcare clients. I had agriculture clients and I worked a lot on the corporate side. Mergers and acquisitions and integrations. I took a lot of that experience and switched over actually and worked on more of the digital side of the house. What ended up happening was the recession of 2006 hit. A lot of my pharma clients and a lot of my M&A clients really disappeared.

I needed to learn a new craft to be able to get me through. I have found a wonderful mentor and learned digital marketing. Through there, I was really learning how to build sites, how to structure digital campaigns, and all of these fun things. Switched over and actually went to another agency specializing in digital for pharmaceutical companies and led that team for a few years before I decided that I’d move over to the brand side.

I went in-house and I’ve been in-house ever since up until probably about the last two years. I worked at DuPont. I’ve worked at Mercer. A lot of large-scale organizations as well as private equity-owned organizations help them grow their businesses. My focus has always been on the marketing angle, which is like what levers do we need to pull based on data to be able to help them make good decisions and being able to drive lead generation and revenue generation, and growth.

You’re trucking along and all of a sudden something happened, right?

Yeah, I think that something happened were small signals over time that I honestly ignored. Even in my first job, I was having a lot of headaches and a lot of GI issues. I couldn’t figure out what was causing that. I just thought, maybe it’s because I’m on the road a lot and I’m eating a lot of crappy food. That’s probably what’s causing it. I’d go to the next job and the same things would happen. I was struggling with a lot of chronic headaches, to be honest with you.

Like I said, a lot of GI issues, a lot of fatigue. What I started having major challenges with is I’ve always been someone who has had a really clear picture of a plan. I’ve always done like a 1, a 3, a 5, a 10-year plan, and I always knew trajectory-wise, like where I was going. It got to a point where I think it’s probably it’s post-COVID and I think a lot of us start to question some of our mortality during that time period. I started asking myself like, is this what I want to be doing for the rest of my life? Is this the environment that I want to be in?

What is the level of impact that I want to have not only within the organization that I’m working in but also just like in my life? I was talking to someone earlier and she talked about burnout as like an invisible wall. I thought that was a really good metaphor because you hit the wall, but you don’t realize that you’ve crashed into it. That was my realization was all of these symptoms, these feelings of lack of autonomy and agency, these feelings of not being able to make the impact I wanted to and trying to find another way, that all came to realization in probably like I would say early 2022.

Pivotal Moment That Changed Everything

Was there a pivotal moment when you realized that you were hitting that invisible wall or was it just a realization from all of those things that you were just describing, piling up on each other?

I think a couple of things, the pylon was happening and I was noticing the pylon, but I would say probably the last needle or the last fragment that really made me recognize something had to change was that I had hired someone onto my team, and probably about three months in or so, she had shared that she had been diagnosed with cancer. They caught it early and that they’ve got a protocol and they’ve got a plan they’re working on.

She has like two small kids roughly the same age as my own. Working through that process, I saw her go through her treatment plan and she had taken a medical leave, and unfortunately, she passed away in the summer. That for me was a moment of recognizing that if I knew that I only had say 16 months left, what would I do with that time? Also like we have kids who are the same age and it was this recognition for myself as well of where was I spending my time, effort, and energy. Also, what are the memories I need to make sure that I’m focused on making?

I think a lot of people that I talked to who experienced burnout and who were trying to figure out what they were going to do next, or maybe that pivotal moment that you had asked, losing someone that they cared about was more often brought up than I thought. I think that was maybe a helpful recognition for myself that I wasn’t alone in that journey, but also one that it’s a sad one at the end of the day.

Three Causes Of Burnout

You’ve talked to a lot of people about burnout at this point. You’ve done your research on burnout. One of the things you talk about in your book is research that shows that burnout typically happens in three circumstances. Can you describe what the three are for us?

Most of us think burnout is a result of overwork. The truth is that it’s not always overwork. We think about it as just the number of hours we’re putting in that we’re not resting enough and that leads us to burnout. That is a component of burnout. That’s one of the areas that someone can burn out. The other two areas are under-challenged and neglected. Under challenged when you think about burnout is you might be in a role that isn’t being able to tap on the areas which you inherently have the most strengths.

Where you’re able to grow and you’re able to learn. You’re just doing the same monotonous thing and it’s not getting into the next level. Next level, not meeting next. Not next title level, but next level, meaning like what you’re learning and growing and developing in. There’s neglect, which is there’s feelings where I have talked to people and they struggle with their manager keeps canceling one-on-ones with them. They’re not feeling like they’re appreciated. They just are existing in this space. That could also happen in our lives.

I think that’s the other factor when we think about burnout. We so often talk about burnout as a workplace challenge. I did have challenges of burnout at work for sure. Also, we don’t talk about burnout as a part of caregiving. Like whether you’re caring for an aging parent or you have children or even in our relationships. The human relationships with other people, whether with our spouses, our partners, or even our family can also lead to burnout as well.

When I think about burnout, I’ve recognized for myself that burnout was not just a singular thing in terms of overwork at work, but it also had other aspects to it as well, which was in all the other aspects of my life. Also to our point earlier on, under challenge and neglect, like those are other realistic areas that I have seen others burn out into.

It wasn’t that long ago in the news that the Surgeon General was saying that parenthood is a health crisis. Just because of the fact that so many parents just feel like they cannot keep up with things. As you say, we should have learned this from COVID. If anything, that caregiving can be just as much a source of burnout and family responsibilities as you said a minute ago, as things that are happening at work. Certainly, the two of them together can give you a cumulative effect that’s maybe more than either one of them added together simply.

Parental burnout is so real. To your point on the Surgeon General announcing that being a parent and what that means from a mental health perspective. It’s a few fold. It’s definitely the mental health component, but we also miss there’s a physical health side to it as well. It’s interesting looking back on, as a part of the process of writing the book. My first few chapters really dig into parental burnout, almost unintentionally.

It really was more of me just sharing what my present moment was and the challenges I was struggling with in that present moment and going back and almost rereading. Some of those areas, I was like, so much of this was parental burnout and having young children or taking care of an aging parent. These are real circumstances that we don’t talk about enough and how does that impact how we show up at work?

I see this just in the people that I work with who are going through some situation, with a spouse or a child or a parent or whatever. Are they bringing their best selves to work at that point? Absolutely not. If you cannot have a conversation about that and figure out how you work through it, you’re really not helping them at all. You’re just making life harder for them. I think that’s what happens too often. People say, separate your work or your life, your problem, come to work, be a machine. It’s like that show severance where they forget home when they’re at work and forget work when they’re at home. It’s not that simple.

I mean, think about the calls that you get during the middle of the day whether it’s an emergency call for a family member that’s going into the hospital or a call from your kid’s school that says your kid’s sick and you need to pick him up. Everything gets interrupted. To think that it’s binary and that you can just shut off a side of you is it’s impossible.

That research that you mentioned in the book. Neglect was the one thing, I guess, I’d never really thought about, but it makes sense.  If you feel appreciated, you will dig in extra hard because you feel appreciated. If you don’t feel appreciated, and you’re still being asked to dig in extra hard, it just feels like a death march.

It was interesting. You get these engagement surveys as a leader. Everyone has to take the engagement survey. HR is telling you, what we’ve got to get 100% participation on these engagement surveys. As a leader, you get your engagement survey for your team. I remember seeing collectively where our organization was in terms of appreciation and hearing that appreciation was really low. I think a lot of the time people think appreciation is simply saying thank you or paying a good wage to someone.

I think one of the things we fail to understand is everyone wants to be appreciated in different ways. For some people, it’s public recognition. For some people, it is the one-on-one recognition. For some people, it is being able to have, let’s say, growth opportunities, going to a conference. Maybe for some people, it’s just flexibility, like show me appreciation for putting in a ton of work by saying I’ve got the next couple of comp days to be able to take off and do whatever I want. It’s adjusting our style and adjusting how we reward and appreciate someone based on what they need and not what we assume they need.

Burnout: Adjust your leadership style and reward people based on what they need, not what you assume they need.

How Burnout Affects People Physically And Mentally

Too often as you say, we just apply a one-size-fits-all all. We thank people almost mechanically which is great. It’s better than not doing it, but at the same time you have to understand what really will matter to them. You talked about how burnout was affecting you physically. What are the ways that burnout typically tends to affect people? It’s not just physically.

There are a few ways that people will start to notice little signs of burnout. For sure, there’s a physical side of it, which is we talk about a lot of headaches. You’re sick often, and you just cannot recover from an illness as quickly. You are extra tired. There’s a component of there’s increased fatigue. There’s also the challenge from a cognitive perspective, you feel like there’s, let’s say there’s brain fog, which we talk about a lot of that. I think a lot of that came up during COVID, but there also can be signs for us around heightened levels of stress.

When you think about stress, there’s so much science around stress leading to inflammation in our bodies and what does inflammation do with our bodies? It just gets a little harder for us to be able to manage the day-to-day. Small signs start to pop up, whether that’s the GI issues that we talked about, or those headaches that we talked about. I think a lot of the time high anxiety starts to increase for people, or they might notice they’ve got high anxiety when it comes to to burnout as well. For me, how that manifested was I had always felt like anxiety was my superpower.

I felt like I managed it really well, and I would use anxiety to be able to help propel me forward. When that anxiety started turning into panic attacks, that was a very different situation. When your chest gets really tight, when you feel frozen in that panic. A lot of people that I talk to talk about how their panic attacks, actually drove them to the hospital because they thought they were having a heart attack, but in fact, it was a panic attack. These are the types of things where it can get to the point of hospitalization.

I’ve talked to a number of people who’ve been hospitalized because of their burnout. My goal in sharing the book and talking about these challenges is that I just don’t want people to end up in that spot. Let’s try to find and see the signs earlier so that we can address them sooner. We’re not in a spot where the recovery is taking so long because we’ve ingrained all these really bad habits into our day-to-day system.

Are there certain types of people that are more prone to burnout? You talked about just using your anxiety as a tool of power, but it works against you when you let it go too far. Are there other types of things that tend to lead people to burnout?

I was very curious around this piece as a part of the research for the book of what are the types of personalities that are most prone to burnout. What came up in the research are folks that lean toward more of like neurotic behavior, people who are perfectionists, people who are introverts, which I thought was a fascinating piece of the research. I think what ends up happening when you think about some of those core components.

Where you have a high sense of perfectionism, you’re a high achiever, you are also an introvert, meaning you process alone, and when you’re in burnout, you start to close in. When you’re dealing with stress, you start to go inward instead of reaching out to other people. That creates a faster or accelerated behavior around burnout because we’re not able to find avenues to process a lot of the internal struggles that we’re dealing with. I think my challenge was I felt really alone. When you think about there’s research actually that just came out from LinkedIn that shows directors and above are like 70% less likely to take a vacation.

There’s this mentality of, “I have to be available. I have to be here. I have an expectation of my team, as well as the upper management to make sure that I’m able to do what I need to do. I signed up for this job. I signed up for a leadership role. These are the things I need to do.” What happens in that situation is because we have to make sure we’re taking care of our team and being a shield, as well as managing other people’s expectations, you have to go inward. You feel forced to go inward because talking to your peers about your struggles is really scary.

That, for me, as well as for so many others, is the cause of continuing to struggle with that burnout and it becomes chronic and habitual because there’s no outlet for it. I think I shared a little bit in the book, as well as my story of the fact that when I started posting about my burnout story on LinkedIn, in the first two weeks, I got like 3000 messages from people. Just sharing their own challenges with me.

This is a topic that resonates with people, that’s for sure.

It’s a struggle because so many of us feel alone in that struggle. Typically, I’ll get on a call with someone and we’ll start talking about how things are going and what’s going on. They’ll share with me, there’s two things that typically happen. One is there will be a lot of emotion and it will be tough for them to share what’s happening. I would say 99.9% of the time, they’ll say, “This is the first time I’ve told anyone about this.” Burnout, I feel like we hear about it so often, we read about it so often, but we’re not talking about the impact of it enough.

Let’s come back to your story. You hit that moment, you hit that invisible wall, you decide to leave your job, you come home, you tell your wife, “I’m fried,” then what?

I think I said I’m fried for probably, I don’t know, two years before I hit the go button, to be honest with you. I knew that I wanted to take a break. I knew that I needed to do something different. I started working with a financial advisor. I had a therapist at the time and an executive coach. I had a team of people who were helping me figure out what I was doing with my career, but also how do I make sure that logistically I had the finances and a good game plan in place?

I felt like I had the plan. The challenge is the emotional hurdle to execute the plan is a whole nother story. Like I would say it probably took me maybe two months to pull together the plan, but it took me sixteen months to actually hit the go button at that point because there’s so much of internal struggle and challenge. Society doesn’t tell us that we should take a break. Like it says keep calm, carry on.

Like you’re supposed to be like a duck, like you’re super calm above water and you’re just treading underneath. It was against everything that I had learned. Ultimately, you think that my parents are immigrants who came to America. There’s an American dream. Taking a step away from being an achiever felt very opposite of everything that I was and I had been conditioned for.

It must’ve been really an unsettling period for you to take that leap.

I think it was at a point where I felt like I didn’t have a choice, that I had to do something different because it wasn’t serving me, it wasn’t serving my family. At the end of the day, I don’t think it was fair for me to do that to the organization and to my team. When you’re burnt out, you’re not able to be there and serve the people that you need to serve in the right way. It was my responsibility to take a step away to recharge myself and decide what I needed to do next.

What were some of the early steps that you took to give yourself that space to rest and reflect on what you wanted to change?

A few things that I really focused on was, I knew I wanted to take some time off. Initially, my plan was I’m going to take 90 days. I needed to understand that 90 days is a quarter, a quarter feels like a natural transition. For me, I needed to understand how I wanted to spend that time to truly maximize that time. I met with others who had taken sabbaticals before. Other leaders that I had worked for who had taken some time off. I asked them a few key questions but the most important question for me was, if you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently?

The first thing that they all said was they wish they had taken more time. Most of them only took, let’s say, a month or two months, and that was it. The second response that I got was that they wish they had been more intentional about the time they took off because they felt like they just hung out or maybe they went on a vacation and then they started finding another job. For me, what I wanted to focus on was how do I structure this in a way that gives me permission to be in the moment and what does the science says about managing and curing burnout.

How Laura Structured Her Career Break

I read all the books and like to try to understand all of the research on it. What it came down to was I did a month of play, I did a month of pause, I did a month of plan, and then I allowed myself a month of pursue, which is really about a growth mindset and experimentation. That was really how I structured it.

When you said to your family that you wanted to take a break even from them, how did they react?

They were like, “You do what you need to do.” Honestly, it was an interesting piece. I’m an introvert and for me, how I recharged, it meant that I needed to be alone, but I needed to find also, as a mother to a young child, I was like, I want to also use this time to spend with her. We tried to find ways to blend between family time and quality family time, as well as alone time and solo time for me.

You took a cruise with your daughter.

I did, yeah.

What came after the cruise?

In play, Disney is the most magical place on earth. We fell in love with Disney, I don’t know, maybe that a year before or so. I’d never been before as a child. It was my first time ever going. Took me like 38 years to get there but we went and having experiencing that joy with a small child is just so phenomenal because it allows you to see just wonder and magic through their eyes. We did a week at Disney and then we went on a cruise. The reason I chose the cruise was because they have childcare.

To be honest with you, that was one of my big reasons in choosing the cruise was where can we go that’s going to be enjoyable, but also where I could drop her off and I can have a reprieve because it’s just as important for me to have the time too. We had a wonderful time just exploring and that was such a fun experience together. I came back and I needed to understand what can I do that’s play at home because I cannot always just be gallivanting across the globe. Although that sounds fun, but I need to be able to find ways to have joy here.

We did things like puzzles and going to parks and going to museums and those types of things. That was also very fulfilling and playful. My month of pause was about mindfulness, slowing things down, and really being thoughtful and intentional about how I was spending the time. I went on a meditation retreat. I wasn’t able to meditate for like three minutes. We were going like 3 to 4 hours during this time. It was amazing, to be honest. The benefits of it have changed me forever. I went back in August and did another nice little refresh.

It’s one of those such powerful experiences that it’s permission to be in the space that you’re in and allow yourself to listen to yourself, which we just so often cannot when we’re in our day-to-day world. There’s so much stimulus that’s happening and being thoughtful about like, I’m going to spend this time and being a container that allows me to hear myself is such a powerful thing to do. I learned that practice there. I continue to practice meditation and mindfulness and journaling. That was my entire month of pause. I did a month of plan, which was, now I feel rested and ready and I’ve reflected on everything so I’m ready to hit the go button but I got to figure out what I want to do next.

Just coming back to the meditation for a minute, I tried meditation maybe, I don’t know, 6 or 7 years ago, I was using one of the big apps that everybody would know the name of, and I just couldn’t do it. Maybe I just didn’t give it enough time, but I just found it to be not really delivering any benefit and just a time suck. I guess, you talked about you struggled before you did this. When you’re forced like, “Nothing else is going to go on. You’re going to be meditating whether you want to meditate or not.” It does force you to give in to the moment. I think that’s what I’ve always struggled with.

Meditation is really tough, I think, in our day-to-day lives as well, like incorporating it into our day-to-day lives. A lot of the time people think meditation. I was talking to a friend and she was like, “You’re not thinking about anything when you’re meditating.” I was like, actually, what I’ve learned in meditation is that all of those thoughts will come up, but it’s the act of letting them go and then starting over. The two most important lessons that meditation has given me is one, to be able to begin again over and over and over again.

That means that anytime I screw up, meaning in life, I can always begin again. Like the nothing is really a failure. That’s one thing that meditation taught me. The second is the practice of self-compassion. I have a really strong inner critic. I have a panel of inner critics, unfortunately. The self-compassion practices felt really hokey to me at first, but I have felt the benefit of them and that has been really impactful. What I’ll do is I’ll drop off my kiddo at school and then I’ll do a five-minute meditation before I leave the parking lot just to resettle me into the day and get me ready for what’s next.

Actually, I’m a data person. JR, you might actually appreciate this piece to see the benefit of it, but I bought an EEG band. It monitors my brain waves. That gives me data of like, this is impactful. Not only do I feel better but I can see the difference in my brain waves while I’m working versus before I meditate, what I’m doing in the meditation, and how I’m getting out of the meditation. I can see all the data. To be totally honest with you as a data person, that has actually been what has fueled me to continue because I cannot deny the data.

Now it’s good that you’ve kept it up. Like I said, I’ll have to give it a try again. You’re going through this whole experience. When did you stop and think to yourself, I got a book here?

It started as a cathartic experience for me, I kept saying to people, “I have to get what’s in my body out.” That’s really what I need to focus on is to get it out of my body and onto a piece of paper and whatever I do with it, I do with it. It started as a cathartic experience. When I, honestly, in plan and pursue, when I was talking to people about what I did during my career break, they kept saying, “I had taken a break or I’m thinking about taking it.”

I never thought of it as a structured approach. That’s when I was like, maybe if I share this with people, it can be helpful for them, because so many people go into a break and sometimes it can be almost debilitating, like to get out of it. One of the things I talk about in the book is it’s like battling your sea monsters, because many of us have, maybe not all, but many of us have an inner critic.

When you’re not working, and when everything is quiet, that voice gets really loud. That’s where I wanted to try to work. There was how to prep people for a break, give them the tools in their toolbox so that when the voices come up that tells them they’re not good enough, that they’re not worthy, that they’re not going to find another job again and that they’re able to pivot through it quickly.

Why Laura Uses Water Metaphors In Her Book

You use water metaphors in the book, sailing, deep dives, sea monsters, why water?

I have always been drawn to water. Water for me is fascinating.

You’re not living in a place where that’s very useful.

I live in Iowa right now, but actually, the addition of water came in the editing process for the book. I was in Kansas City. My parents escaped Vietnam on a ship and they came from Vietnam to the Philippines and then came to the U.S. Water has always been just a common thread in my life but I happened to be in Kansas City. My dad was telling us a story about their preparation to leave Vietnam. I talk about this in the book of preparing your barrels. What he and my grandpa did was they found these giant plastic barrels.

In order to escape, you had to discreetly fill these barrels with gas, with fuel, and get all of your materials, and then escape at night in the dark. He was telling us that story. As he was telling me that story, it was the first time he had shared it, by the way, which is crazy to think about. Honestly, I think there’s two things that come from that, which is one, I never sat down to listen to the stories until I was in this pause. That is on me. We’re so busy with our lives that we don’t sit and we don’t listen. Using the time to listen was really important.

The second was it sparked something in me, which was this is a part of my story, this is my family’s story. I have to find a way to weave it in. As I dug more into the water analogy, one of the most important things that I think about water is, that water is so powerful, but yet it flows. It has a metaphor for in terms of like renewal and rebirth. There’s so much in there that I think about a career break, an intentional pause is about a rebirth for us of recognizing what do we want.

How do we want to show up after this? The ability for us to continue to flow. There’s this quote that I love at the end that is by Heraclitus, which I don’t know if I ever say correctly, but it’s something along the lines of, “No man can step into the same river twice for he is not the same man and it is not the same river.” I think it’s so important that like we recognize we are going to continue to evolve and that’s the beauty of life.

That one really stuck with me when I read it in the book. I hadn’t heard it before, read it before, and it’s a very simple metaphor, I guess to talk about just how we’re constantly changing the world around us is constantly changing. No two moments are ever the same.

There’s something special in that too. Which is, yes, like don’t let that pass you by at the same time. At the same time of that like allow yourself to evolve and change. It’s interesting for me being two, basically what, almost two years out from my break and from writing the book. I’m different now than when I wrote the book as well. There’s so much that I was telling my editor, I was like, “If I could rewrite it, there’s so many other things that I would want to have included because I’ve continued to change and evolve and learn.” I feel like that comes up for a lot of authors, like from who I’ve talked to where they’re like, yes, things will continue to change. Where you were and where you’re at now are different, but that’s the beauty and benefit of it.

Either a second edition or a sequel to the first book.

Indeed.

Got that looking forward to. You took a full-on break. Not everybody necessarily can do that. What are some of the practical considerations that you need to take into account before you quit your job and huff and walk out and then try and figure things out?

Don’t rage quit. That’s definitely one for sure. Like be prepared. Have a game plan and action. There are a few ways that I talk about a break. What I took, which initially started actually as a voluntary leave of absence. Many organizations will have a leave of absence program whether that’s a medical leave of absence or a voluntary leave of absence, which basically gives you twelve weeks within a leave up from an organization and then you can choose to come back or what that looks like. That’s definitely one piece. There are some companies that actually have a sabbatical program.

Burnout: Don’t rage quit. Make a game plan in place before you leave your job.

There’s sixteen percent of global organizations that actually have a sabbatical program that you just may or may not know about. It’s definitely check with your HR to see if you even have a sabbatical program. That typically is where you work somewhere for five years or so, and they give you a month off or two months off, it depends on whatever the program is. There’s obviously the resignation approach, which is, you decide to quit and you are going to take this time off for that. There are also so many millions of people who have experienced layoffs and layoffs have become such a normalized part of working these days.

I talk about how do you take advantage of this time if you were laid off to be able to take it as an intentional break as well. A lot of the time, especially when you’ve been laid off, there’s an emotional rejection component that happens and arises. You have to go through some of this mourning process and be able to remind yourself and rebuild your confidence. Much of the play, pause, plan, and pursue model is all about getting you back in line with yourself and recognizing here’s what you bring into the world.

When you do finally get ready to go back in, re-entry can be just as hard, if not harder, than taking a break in the first place, right?

Yes. I think about it as, and going back to like the water analogy, if you’ve ever been on a boat, and you get off and you’re on land again, you can still feel the water. You can still feel it in your body and you’re like swaying still. That’s how it feels like when you’re going through a reentry. I think some of the most important things that you can do in that reentry is to prepare yourself for what are the internal battles that you’re going to face as well as the external ones. I talked to a lot of clients about let’s say the interview process and how to really nicely navigate the questions of what have you been doing during your time off and how you pivot into.

How does that benefit an organization as well as benefit you? I think there are other areas of not only are you going through the interview process, let’s say you land your first job and you’re really excited. It’s very natural to throw everything you’ve learned out the window. You just are on the fast track to burnout again. For those of us who’ve experienced burnout, the number one thing that we keep playing that record player that keeps repeating is, “I don’t want to burn out again.” When you start your first hundred days in an organization, I talk a lot about it as sustainable success.

Yes, you have to find those early wins. Yes, you’ve got to understand the stakeholders and the dynamics of an organization, but also you have to figure out how to set boundaries early and define what success for you looks like different than it did say five years ago, or definitely before your break. It’s all about this intentional thought process of how do you find a new role that makes sense for you. How do you start a new job in a way that’s going to be sustainable for you? Just set up systems that allow you to continue really good healthy habits.

When you were going through your plan into pursue stage, what did your planning suggest to you that you should focus on? What did it suggest to you that you should change?

A few things that, for me, I needed to understand was what do I want to do next? I built a career exploration matrix that basically outlined 50 things that I had explored wanting to do. I wanted to align that then with what are my core strengths. Does it align with my core values? Basically, what’s the startup cost and what’s the revenue potential for what that would look like? For me, when I was going through reentry, a few things that I really had to define, one is the core value exercise is really important.

That’s basically going through and understanding what’s important to you at the core, not what society has said, not what your boss has said about your core values, but like you as a person. The other thing that has really been helpful for me is anti-goals. A lot of us talk about goals, and sometimes it’s like deciding what you want for dinner but you’re like, “I know I don’t want Mexican food, but I don’t know what I want for dinner aside from that, because I just had Mexican last night, so I just don’t want it again.”

Sometimes it’s about setting up the anti-goals. What are the things you don’t want? Sometimes that becomes an easier list than it is to understand what your goals are. I always articulate, what are the things that I’m not going to want anymore? That could be working 80 hours a week, traveling 50% of the time, all of these things, like whatever those might be, writing those down to get me really clear on what do I need to make sure I say no to.

Laura’s Current Work: Coaching And Consulting

What did that end up suggesting to you that you would want to do? I mean, you’re obviously doing some coaching. What else is in the current mix that you’re pursuing?

The top three that popped up for me when I was going through the exercise really was I’ve always wanted to have my own agency. Like I always wanted to do, starting in the agency world and having clients. I had this desire to have my own shop basically one day. That rose up pretty high on my list. I opened up my consulting shop, Solle Solutions, which basically is a data-driven digital marketing shop. The other side to it was I wanted to make sure that I could continue to manage people and impact people’s lives.

For a dozen-plus years, I had been managing teams. To go from managing large teams to basically having no team, I knew was going to be a challenge for me. That’s why I explored coaching. I got certified to be a certified executive coach and I wanted to make sure I was coaching people to help them continue to grow their careers. That was definitely a core component of that as well. As we talked about, the book arose a little bit differently. What happened for me post sharing the book journey has been my coaching has gone a little bit a different path.

Initially, the coaching was going to be on how to help people manage teams more effectively, and grow their teams. Understand how they can help improve their management skills. As I started to share more of my burnout journey, now it’s more about how do I help high achievers not get in a state of burnout and be able to bring that to their team a little bit differently as well so that I can have this ripple effect. At the end of the book, I talk about that a little bit in terms of how can you be the leader that you honestly wish you had and being able to be a model for your teams. Now I’m helping people do that which has felt really good to be quite honest.

Sounds like it. What are some of the systems that you’ve put in place to keep yourself from reverting?

I still incorporate play, pause, and plan into my weekly plan. I have a planner that I use. I basically have a bullet journal that I’ve created for myself for many years. In there, I have a schedule of like, “What am I doing? That’s for play this week. How am I incorporating pause into my daily routine?” From a planning perspective, I typically do a burn-down report every Friday, which gives me a view of how did the last week go. What did I learn? What am I grateful for? How am I planning into the next week? I think the break honestly gave me more clarity on how my body was reacting to stress. Before I would just keep pushing forward and ignore a lot of the symptoms.

Actually a couple of weeks ago, one of the things that I recognized was like, my play tank felt low. I’d been working a lot we’re working on like promoting the book and I’m actually adding a ton of resources as a part of the book as well. There’s been a lot of work that’s been going on behind the scenes. I was like, “I just need to do something that is purely for play.” I said, “What could that possibly be?” My daughter and I decided that we were going to go bowling for the afternoon and we did. It was the best time, to be honest. It’s low cost, it’s down the street, and it was just a really nice way to refill the play tank. It’s such a simple thing. Throwing a ball down a lane, but there’s something so fun about that.

Do you find the weekly process that you go through to be helpful or does it sometimes feel constraining too?

For me, it’s about the intention setting for the week and being okay if things veer off course. I think sometimes we think about a to-do list as being so rigid. We have to do these things. What I’ve really learned in my own journey has been using it as a direction, it’s directional. As long as I can be aware of if I’m spending my time doing what is ultimately achieving the larger level goals that I’m working to achieve, then that is good. If I’m spending my time in a ton of busy work, for example, or where I’m not having an impact, where it’s just about hours and it’s not about impact, then I have to revisit that differently. For me, it’s more of an awareness of am I putting my energy and efforts in the right places.

The book is coming out about a month after we’re recording this. What does the next year look like for you in an ideal world?

With the book, what I’m launching is a complete online portal called Career Compass. What we talked about a little bit earlier is a career break is the beginning of a new journey but it’s for sure not the end. We have to continue to put these practices in place. Career Compass is really focused on, yes, career breaks, but also getting people, landing them their next job that is more in alignment with who they are. Getting them to successfully go through the first hundred days as they’re transitioning into that role and then having sustainable success.

By the time that we’re recording this, it will be fully launched and it’ll include an online community. It includes care packages. Actually, I want to send people a quarterly care package that has all of the P’s in it. You’ll have an activity for play and activity for pause and an activity for plan. We’ll have weekly group cohort sessions. Basically group coaching is where people can find support with other people. That was my biggest learning in the last year has been the amount of people who feel alone in their burnout and just getting people on a call together, and connecting with each other is really impactful.

Burnout: A lot of people felt alone in their burnout during the pandemic. Getting people on a call together is impactful.

In an ideal world, I want more human connection. That’s really important and we’ll be launching actually in-person events. Once we get enough people into the community, we’ll be able to see where everyone’s located. We’ll actually start launching in-person events where we can connect with each other in person, which would be so beautiful because that’s where the power of connectivity really happens as being able to share stories. At the end of the day, these are really wonderful professionals who can also be great networks for each other as well.

Sounds like a lot of exciting stuff coming up.

I’m super pumped. It’s going to be a really great year ahead. I’ve been really grateful and fortunate that this message has resonated with so many people over the last year and a half that I’ve been sharing it. I’m thrilled to be able to share more of it now in a book form and then honestly through an online program.

Any last advice you want our audience to take away?

Final Advice On Burnout And Rest

I think the key piece of advice I’d want to share is to take the rest before you think you need it. I think a lot of the times we push ourselves to the point of exhaustion and then Friday comes and we’re just horizontal and we’re just vegging out for the weekend. Like, take a break before you need it because that might mean a Wednesday solo time walk where you just go take a walk around nature and just recharge yourself. Let’s not put ourselves all the way and empty where our battery is so drained to 0% like take the time sooner.

I know you don’t describe yourself as a particularly sporty person, but if you think about when you’re out doing some physical activity, if you get to the point where you’re dehydrated, it’s too late. It’s the same way with burnout. If you wait until you’re approaching that point of burnout it will take a lot longer to recover. In the same way it takes a lot longer to recover if you let yourself get really badly dehydrated.

That’s a really great analogy. If you want to keep drinking, keep sipping the water. I think that’s the key.

By the way, that’s a water metaphor for you. There you go.

Look at you, love it.

Thank you for doing this. This is great. As we talked about earlier in the conversation, it’s a topic that resonates with pretty much anybody. I mean, everybody’s feeling some sense of burnout. The question is, when does it just become crippling? That’s the point at which you have to do something.

Thanks, JR, for allowing the space to have the conversation too, because so often we just keep chugging along and we’re not taking the time that we need and having the honest conversation of, am I taking care of myself? What do I want to do next in my career? What would that look like? What would my life look like? How do I make it happen?

Thank you again, and good luck with everything.

Thanks, J.R. Appreciate it.

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I want to thank Laura for joining me to discuss her journey into burnout, the breaks she took and what she learned from that journey, and how she’s changed her professional course since then. Again, her book is called Career Break Compass. If you’re ready to work on your career journey more generally you can visit PathWise.io and become a member. Basic membership is free. You can also sign up on the website for our newsletter,and  follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Thanks, have a great day.

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• Career Break Compass
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About Laura Nguyen

Laura Nguyen is an experienced marketing executive and entrepreneur with an extensive background in data-driven marketing, digital marketing and communications for Fortune 500 companies. She is the founder of Solle Solutions, a marketing consultancy. She is also a certified executive coach, helping mid-career, high-achieving leaders go from burned out to balanced through her coaching program and online community.

Laura received her Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science at Truman State University, and her Master in Business Administration from Rochester Institute of Technology. She lives in Des Moines, Iowa, with her family.