I sit on my porch in the warming spring air. Birdsong wafts on a gentle breeze, trailing off into the lengthening rays of sunset above me. It’s April in New England; winter has barely broken, but this evening, summer feels just around the corner. The change goes so fast once it starts; the world is becoming green and bright again. We’ll be lighting our grills soon, stacking buns and plates onto overloaded arms, celebrating graduations and holidays. Long, busy days lie ahead — like our industry, as the days warm up, so do our schedules of show after show after show. And while we eat and play and celebrate jobs well done, we can’t forget the coals in the grill that are smoldering away. They can be rekindled, sparked back into life with care and a breath to cook again, or they can go dark and cold… or worse.
Let’s talk about burnout.
We’ve seen burnout in our colleagues, maybe felt it ourselves. Too much stress, too many tasks, too much of everything piling on until it’s just too much “too much.” We tend to think in binaries — hot/cold, sick/well, productive/idle — but human behavior and our psyche are rarely so simple. Burnout doesn’t happen all at once. It’s (usually) not an explosion; it’s mostly a cooling on the way to cold. There are signs along the way, like fewer “good morning” greetings and less engagement beyond the required task. There’s detachment and heavier sighs, a resignation to the work rather than excitement for it. There are signs we can catch early, signs that tell us that a little change, like rearranging the coals or the seating chart, could bring in some fresh air and reignite the flame.
But sometimes you don’t plan for the change. Someone knocks over the grill, and embers fly everywhere. Danger. Fire. The worst-case scenario. Now there are outbursts, conflicts, missed deadlines, and accusations. Nothing tears through a company like a negative rumor, or worse, an unfortunate truth. The fire may go out, but the burn scar remains — charred grass, melted chairs, singed hair, and broken trust — until we tend to it.
Recovering from a fire is complex. So is recovering from burnout. Healing burn scars on skin or across a landscape takes time, patience, pain, and work. Healing from burnout in a person or a company is much the same. We cannot focus only on the blackened aftermath or the cost of recovery; those are obvious before the smoke has cleared. We also need to address the environmental hazards or institutional failures that allowed the first spark to grow into danger. Smokey the Bear didn’t say, “Only YOU can clean up the charred wreckage of a forest fire!” He calls on us to prevent them. By addressing our shortcomings and establishing internal structures and processes that support success rather than merely fending off failure, we can build teams that collaborate more, operate more efficiently, and experience less stress. We can prevent burnout by keeping the creative fires lit and protected from wind, rain, or the errant football.
Then, we can let them cook.
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Before matches (invented c. 1826), before lighters (c. 1662), and even before civilization itself (c. 4000 BCE), humans managed fire. Evidence of hominids controlling fire dates back more than 1.5 million years, with burnt bones and tools found in ancient hearths. Controlling fire was essential to our early life and evolution — cooking food, clearing fields, and protection from predators and the elements alike — and it separated us from the rest of the animal kingdom. Early hominids wrapped leather and tinder around a spark and carried it across continental migrations, coaxed it back to flame with a puff from their lungs. Before bow drills or striking flints created fire on demand, the spark they carried in that bundle was literal life. Burnout meant something far more serious, far more fatal. Today, we don’t have sabretooth tigers waiting in the darkness, and winter storms are easily managed with an electric blanket and microwaved soup. The ember, wrapped safely and tucked away, is no longer essential to our survival. Heat and light are at our fingertips with Zippos, Bics, and a plug in the wall. We have a new spark to care for — the creative and caring spark of humanity within each one of us. We carry it in our hearts, and it grows each time we open it and give it breath, making it glow. It combines with others’ sparks and grows into the fires around which our greatest stories and the finest meals are shared. The physical flame is essential to human history. This creative flame is essential to our humanity. Never let it burn out.