From burnout to beauty

I was running a workshop with creatives at Droga5 the other day, and we were talking quite passionately about disability and beauty. I can’t really say more about it, but suffice to say things got philosophical. Beauty, I argued, was more than how something looked. It’s how something was made.

That idea wasn’t originally mine (which ideas are truly original etc?), it was born out of this thought by investor and mathematician Jim Simons:

“Be guided by beauty. I really mean that. I think pretty much everything I've done has had an aesthetic component—at least to me. Now, you might think, "Building a company that's trading bonds? What's so aesthetic about that?" What's aesthetic about it is doing it right. Getting the right kind of people, and approaching the problem, and doing it right. And if you feel that you're the first one to do it right, that's a terrific feeling. It's a beautiful thing to do something right.”

And even though our specific conversation was about a client brief we were working on, it signals something greater. At least for me. But first, we need to talk about something I’m hearing from so many people in our industry. That’s right kids, we’re going there again. Let’s talk about burnout.

We don’t talk about Bruno burnout

Or rather, we do, but kind of as a very normalised thing. Oh, you know, so and so is a bit burnt out. Or everyone at agency XYZ, who is doing “really good work for top brands”, is on the verge of being signed off for mental health reasons. The stories pile up, redundancy round after redundancy round. And we don’t talk nearly enough about its implications.

Let me be more precise. We talk plenty about the fact that people are burnt out. We even talk plenty about where that burnout comes from, as we all become a bit more psychoanalytically literate, which broadly I consider to be a good thing. But there is one thing we don’t talk about: what happens next.

We’re due to organise a panel on burnout with the Salmon Crew, so this has been on my mind. But also, it’s now been over a year since I was made redundant, then shortly after lost my mother, and have been picking up the pieces ever since. So it’s a sort of ‘anniversary thing’ which, similar to how you reflect more on things when your age ends with a 9 (19, 29, 39, etc).

So, what happens after burnout? A moment of restoration, of course. A sense of what we don’t want to do next, sure. Every burnout episode carries lessons for us, though sometimes our bodies and minds take a bit to learn them. But one thing I now keep going back to is the idea that what comes after burnout is, in fact, the beginning of designing your own version of what’s beautiful.

From burnout to beauty

Look around and you can get a sense of something crumbling, and we’re all trying to make sense of what it is. This is a broad strokes picture of what I see.

Either employers are doing well and demanding people to return to the office like the last five years were a whole lot about nothing. Or they’re not doing well and are slowly managing it by announcing another redundancy round.

Actually, there’s a third scenario here, which is the employers who might be doing well, but then get caught up on the allure of AI making everything 10x more efficient, fire people, replace their jobs with AI, then one year later realise actually people did a lot of important jobs, least of all reassuring customers when they needed it the most, and boom you’re hiring again. Yes, this very long sentence is about Klarna, who seem to be discovering the second order effects of trying to save money where it needs investing instead.

The point is, safety is a very precarious feeling right now. But in the middle of all this, some signals start to emerge. You stop taking for granted the things that once felt ‘normal’ to you, and instead start thinking from first principles about the sort of life and work you actually want to spend time building.

Covid-19 showed us that the idea of commuting for 3 hours a day to spend all day in meetings perhaps was one version of reality, but not the only version there is. It seems now we’re going through something similar but more about the nature of employment itself, and the false illusion that we’re ‘safe’ just because we have a salary. It’s a sad state of affairs, but the best we can do is work with what we’ve got and craft something better. Hence: beauty.

Beauty isn’t just how something looks, it’s how something is made. And if something is made more in your image, then it is by definition beautiful. Because it may not work for everyone, but it works for you.

I know people who work 100% remotely in Kent, with an employer who’s based in the US, and this works brilliantly for both parties. This is beauty.

I know people who make a living turning a decade of experience into workshops to solve client problems, and it works for them. This is beauty.

I know people who prefer to have a diversified portfolio of clients, not a single employer, as it gives them the sense of autonomy and resilience they need to keep growing in ways they never thought possible. This is beauty.

I know people who now make a living delivering keynotes worldwide, and consulting with some of the world’s greatest brands, after experiencing two harrowing decades trying to fit into the ad agency world. This is beauty.

In my case, I’m now actively building a business that makes its money three ways: through consulting, through products, and through a membership. Who knows if it will work, but you know what this feels like? Yep. Beauty.

What unites the examples above is that, one way or another, they were born either of feeling burnt out by a system that was meant to protect them, or by burning themselves out trying desperately to make things work anyway.

And what emerged wasn’t more of the same, it was something that fit their minds and lifestyles much more appropriately. Much more beautifully. And this, I believe, is something we don’t talk nearly enough about.

How burnout, as horrendous as it feels when it happens, can be a powerful precursor to beauty. How, in nature, burnt soil can become extremely fertile afterwards, if managed carefully of course. Every time we feel something burning out within us, this becomes the kindle to something else.

The task is then to have the courage to let go of what is ‘normal’ or ‘expected’ or (feels) ‘safe’, and focus on designing something that feels a bit, or ideally a whole lot more, like you. Something we can’t yet determine what it is, but that will definitely not be boring. Beauty is many things, but boring it is not.