Last year, we finished more burnt out than ever before. At the end of 2021 we said; ‘OMG that was crazy. Let’s not work like that again’. But we did. In fact, even harder. 

McKinsey coined this ‘the great exhaustion’. Summer holidays (for the land down under) have eased the pain a little but the KPI’s are mounting upon our return. For those working remotely, people are reporting working more than 3 extra hours per day post COVID. 

In 2019 Harvard released a report urging industries about the rate of burnout. This was before COVID was even a thing. And now Deloitte tell us that 77% of people are currently experiencing burnout (2022 report).  So, it’s not a surprise that people were telling us; ‘they don’t have time to give feedback’. 

I don’t think feedback is a time issue. I think it’s a prioritisation issue. Tim Ferris’ The 4-Hour Work Week says we can live a happy and successful life by doing only 4 hours of work a week. It’s a bit tongue in cheek but he makes some great points about how inefficient we are with our time. And when we avoid the tough stuff, we create more work for ourselves. 

Tim says that; “A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.” Notice he didn’t say; ‘the number of conversations’. He said uncomfortable ones.

We all have the same amount of time, it’s just that we value some things more than others. And we avoid the things that make us uncomfortable.

We work harder when we are remote. We need to work smarter. And stop spending time ruminating about the things that could be better. We’d rather think about and talk about someone for 1,114 hours than talk to them for 27 minutes. Let’s get our time back. We can’t go on like this. It starts with us.

If you want to hear more about why feedback feels so hard and what you can do about it you should come to my next online event Embedding a Feedback Culture in 2023. Check it out here.