Wicks Eventually Burn Out

Step Away From Your Model Once in Awhile

What if your business was a standard on-line business?  Would you go to work everyday?  Would you skip a few days in a row and allow the technology to drive the business response activity?  If you designed the on-line business model well enough, you might be able to step away from the model more often.  Did you know that is the same thing that holds true for a brick and mortar business model?  If you designed it well enough, you would be able to step away from it for short periods of time without loosing step in volume production.  It is possible.

The business owners who design their model to require their full time, over-time presence are the business models most susceptible to causing job burn-out.  Your body, your presence is much like a wick.  You can eventually burn out.  You ain't that tough.  Your mind and body will reach some of its natural limits and begin to irritate how you think creatively, constructively and beneficially.  You may not notice this change in your leadership style because we have this wonderful ability to adapt.  However, the destructive activities will begin to erode the wonderful work we do without us first noticing the patterns of destructive work that is being cleverly done.  Our mind and soul will naturally protect us from seeing job burn-out in ourselves but the activities we perform will slightly suffer.  Wicks eventually burn out.  The flame on the candle, quits.  It usually stops suddenly.

I do not practice what I preach.  I flirt with job burn-out in my career.  I give more than necessary to what I am dedicating myself to do in my business world.  It has become my strongest habit to perform.  I work hard on controlling that habit.  I will 'press' my 'go' buttons constantly and keep doing a lot of what I think I need to be doing to make my business life happen well.  It is a deepened part of my business life conditioning.  I can do business 24/7.

Restraint and balance are as important to business success as completing your current idea you are working to introduce.  You do not need to feel guilty for taking a break from the action.  Taking a break from the action is a time to allow your mind and body to rest and restore itself.  Rest and restoration are vital to success.  Make sure you have learned how to employ those success elements in your business developments. They are as important to your business success as your keys are to the locks on the front door.  You will need them on a regular basis.  You will need to re-freshen your daily business work with some restful activities.  If you do not perform adequate rest, your wick will burn out.  All wicks eventually burn out.  Yours is no exception.

Burn-out can be ugly.  I have watched couples get divorced over job burn-out.  I have watched children become forgotten over job burn-out.  I have watched excellent business leaders destroy their wonderful leadership over job burn-out.  I have watched customer service spiral into some of the poorest levels of human respect caused by job burn-out.  I have watched business leaders completely ignore their required sensitivities due to too much energy devoted to preventing job burn-out from surfacing.  Job burn-out is real.  It is debilitating as well.  It can destroy a great business model, and does.

Wicks eventually burn out.

Burn-Out Can Get Ugly

You have heard the phrase that 'he is burning the candle at both ends.'  Some people are wired with that ability.  They have an inner source of great energy.  They have a love for doing a lot of productive stuff.  The combination leads them to become most satisfied when they are burning the candle at both ends.  It is at that point they are the most happiest.  You have met some of these leaders.  They will wear you out just watching them perform their business and life duties.  I am one of those people.  I will wear out many who try to keep pace with what I do each day.  It is when I am the most satisfied.  I find candles that have two wicks on them before I go to work each day.  It is a constant in my productive world.  It is a daily habit that I have employed since I was a young child.  I am one of those people who have a natural 'go' button.

The amount of production I can muster up each day is alarming.  I am a serious threat to a casual performing boss.  Just the simple nature of how much production I produce will reflect badly upon how they manage their day of work activities.  I will do what is necessary to be done, in high volume, and also clean up what has been left undone that needs to be done.  All of it in one day.  I will do it cheerfully and without fanfare.  I have 39 years of great experience in owning business models and leading them with my management efforts.  Those 39 years have helped me to develop some very good critical thinking procedures that allow me to multi-task and kill several birds with one stone in my efficient work habits.  My actions of work productivity will easily threaten a casual boss.  I like being productive.  I am the most happiest when I am productive.  Even with all of that being true...I will and have burned-out in my leadership of business performance.  I have quietly destroyed my love for performing what I do best with dangerous levels of job burn-out.  Wicks eventually burn out.  The flame of good production will quit burning and the candle will sit idly by waiting for someone to restart its life.

Wicks eventually burn out.

Deception is a monster.  When the art of production finds its end of happiness it begins to develop some rough edges to manage.  Those rough edges are usually very small and hard to detect.  They erode the work a leader performs and become part of the leaders daily habits.  Rough little edges are tolerable enough to become regular components to the style of production a leader will permit.  These components formulate a little bit of the style a good leader includes in their management process.  Usually this kind of roughness is not enough to hurt the efforts to succeed.  A leader allows rough edges to exist because they do not create enough harm to destroy.  Unfortunately, rough edges eventually become part of the leaders management style.  Deception is a monster.  The seeds of deception are beginning to take hold.  The first stages of burn-out have begun.

The leader who has full blown job burn-out usually does not know it.  An outsider can see it clearly, but the inner circle of the leaders sphere of influence has the same lack for identifying it as the leader does.  Each of them have watched the burn-out develop in tiny little increments over a long period of time.  The style of management has worked its way through each change as if they were natural steps that needed to be made along the leaders trail.  Job burn-out is very deceptive.  It works much like cancer.  The person who has job burn-out usually does not know it until it is too late.  They have destroyed the best elements of their business model and the repair may be to much to handle to keep it afloat, comfortably.  Job burn-out is serious business.  It can and does destroy a lot of really great business models.  Wicks eventually burn out.

Get some help.  Go find some really good reading material on the subject of job burn-out.  Try to identify what signs will begin to surface to help you identify how job burn-out is taking over.  Learn how to identify it.  Get to the point in your management style that accepts this possibility and do something constructive about properly managing it.  The future of your business model will need your support on this piece of work.  It is a duty you must constantly perform.  Do not allow job burn-out to become so deceptive that you do not recognize its signs until it has totally destroyed your business model and the relationships that surround it.  It will do that kind of damage.  Wicks eventually burn out.  When the candle looses its fire, it usually means everything else is on fire.  Pay close attention to job burn-out.

Until next time...