Finding Your Opposite World to Beat Burnout

[00:00:00] Rachel: What do you do to really switch off from work? Well, often we go to the gym or play a musical instrument, but often we bring aspects of our work life into these hobbies that we’ve got, like being really competitive or being goal-driven or having to be perfect when we learn a new skill.

[00:00:17] Back in October last year, I spoke to Nick Petrie who research has been out. And what he found was that a loss of the activities that people do outside of work don’t actually recharge their batteries, because they have too many things in common with that day job.

[00:00:32] So in this quick dip, I wants to bring you a section of my conversation with Nick, where he lays out the concept of the opposite world, places we go or identities we take on that. Help us rejuvenate and find flow.

[00:00:46] And this episode with Nick was one of my most popular. So if you want to hear it in full, you can find it in episode 188 on our website. But here are my highlights on how we can discover our opposite world and beat burnout in the process. This is a you are Not a frog Quick dip, a tiny taster of the kinds of things we talk about on our full podcast episodes. I’ve chosen today’s topic to give you a helpful boost in the time it takes to have a cup of tea so you can return to whatever else you’re up to. Feeling energized and inspired for more tools, tips, and insights to help you thrive at work. Don’t forget to subscribe to you are not a frog wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:01:28] Nick: Sometimes it takes people burning out. I’ve seen before they go, you know what? I need to do this. I need to prioritize it. Um, one example that we learned from the interviews, which seems to be very popular with people and seems to be helpful for them. I was interviewing, um, an executive at one of the big technology companies, and he was saying, this is, he was saying this is a, uh, very intense culture. Um, people who survive here for three or more years are considered veterans. And I was like, wow, that’s pretty intense. I said, how did you, how long have you been here? And he said, 10 years. I said, well, how did you last 10 years without burning out? He says, well, I didn’t. I did burn out. I said, oh, well, so how are you still here? He said, well, I made some changes.

[00:02:12] And so he told me about a se series of changes, but the one that stuck in my mind the most, I said, what was the biggest thing you did? And he looked at me down the zoom line and he summ me up and he said, dancing. I said, what do you mean dancing? And he said, Argentinian tango to be precise. I was like, okay, well what do you mean by that?

[00:02:31] And he said, well, what I discovered after I burned out is I have this work ethic and I just couldn’t switch off. I’m always on and I’d go to work, I’d be in my head solving problems. Then I’d come home in the evenings and I’d have dinner, but then I’d still be up in my head logic solving problems. Then I’d do some emails and I sort of really still in work mode. Then I burned out. So he said, I realized I needed to do something to, to just switch off my work identity.

[00:02:57] And what I discovered, I tried some different things, but I discovered Argentinian tango. And he said in Argentinian tango, it is the opposite of my work world. He said, in Argentinian tango, you need to be in your heart and you need to be in your body. Two places I rarely am during my workday, I’m up in my head in logic. Second, the currency in Argentinian tango is the opposite of my work. He said, no one cares about where you work. No one cares how much money you make. No one cares what your job is, even if you have a job. The only thing they care about is can you dance?

[00:03:32] And so he said, the music’s going. I’m sweating, I’m moving. I’m with my partner. There’s all this community there. And then I get to the end of the night and I’m just sweating and I feel great, and I go home, sleep well. He said the next day I wake up and I just, I feel really recharged again to go back to my other world. He said, it’s like it’s my opposite world. I was like, huh, that’s really interesting.

[00:03:56] And so we kept interviewing people when we heard this over and over again. People who had learned to perform really full on at high levels and do it sustainably, they had this opposite world they went to. Interestingly, we heard it from, uh, one person I interviewed, I said, what’s your opposite world, do you think? And she said, um, It’s going to the gym. I said, okay. She goes, but strangely, when I go to the gym and do the workout and I come home, I collapse on the couch afterwards and I just feel exhausted.

[00:04:25] I said, that sounds strange. What? Like, tell me about the gym. And she, she named the gym. It is. And I said, oh, what’s, what’s that like? And she said, well, you go along, basically you are competing against everyone else in the gym, ’cause you can see your metrics, how fast you are going, how fast they’re going, how long they’ve been going, what speed you’re doing. You basically compete against them. I was like, how different is that from your work world? And she, she thought about, she thought it’s exactly the same.

[00:04:50] And so I said, what’s, uh, what do you think your opposite world might be? And she thought about, for a moment, she said, deep water, ocean swimming. When I do that, my mind just goes silent for 40 minutes. There’s just the creatures on the floor and the, the water on my body, and I’m just silent. She goes, that’s my opposite world.

[00:05:09] So one thing we’ve discovered is rather than logically trying to convince people, you should switch off, Hey Rachel, you should take more breaks, it is to sort of get them excited about something they want to go do. You know, an activity, an active recovery that they enjoy that is really different, but they have deprioritized. And when we do this in workshops, we hear from a lot of people, I used to have something but I stopped doing it because I’m working too much, because I’ve got kids.

[00:05:38] And the big takeaway a lot of ’em get is it’s a priority. It’s not a selfish thing to go do your opposite world. It’s actually a priority for your, your work, your performance, your health, and for your company.

[00:05:50] Rachel: Is there something about flow there as well? So doing something that, that, that gets you into that thing that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi talked about in flow?

[00:05:58] Nick: That, that seems to be the pattern which happens. Um, when people are in there, they’re just completely absorbed by it and their id, their old work identity, which follows them around all the time, I am a doctor, I am this, I’m a nurse. Just it’s not there. It gets a rest. You get the rest from that identity and now you’re a dancer, now you’re a deep water swimmer.

[00:06:20] So, but it’s gotta be something you like doing, and it’s gotta be the opposite. It can’t be like I go to the gym and compete, you know, it feels different ’cause it’s physical. But no, your mindset is the same mindset you’ve got at work.

[00:06:33] Rachel: I love that because I’ve been thinking so much about identity and how we shift our identity away from what we do, because while it’s so highly fused with what we do, then when we say, no, I’m gonna take a break, I’m not gonna do that, whatever that, that starts to sort of rock our wealth and rock our values. But what you are saying is if you start to find you start to have breaks from that identity, it’s just gonna start to loosen it up a little bit. Bit like, like loosening a, a tree or a, or something like that, right?

[00:07:02] Nick: Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. Well, yeah. Mean you asked about causes um, earlier, one of them is bec you become very unidimensional. I am a doctor, I am a researcher, I am a banker, and you’ve just got this one identity. What we found that really helped people was they started to have multiple identities, you know, multiple hats I wore.

[00:07:25] For me, coming back to New Zealand, one of the hats I started wearing was I became a rugby coach of under 11 year olds rugby. Doesn’t really seem like a big deal, but to me it was because for, for a 90 minutes a weekend and in two practices, I just, I was not thinking anything about work. I was just thinking about this coaching thing and rugby and sports, which is something I love growing up that I had put on hold because it was a waste of time, ’cause here I off, I’m off in America doing this thing. So I just having a portfolio of, um, identities, hats that you wear seems to be very healthy for people.

[00:08:04] Rachel: There’s a slight alarm bell going off in my head here because a lot of the time when people say, well, I’ve got this really awful, difficult, busy piece of at work and I, I really cannot leave. I’m not gonna leave. You’ll say, okay, well what are you in control of? Well, I’m in control of what I do outside of work. Or say, well, what can you give up? Or whatever, just so that you can chill and rest.

[00:08:23] But actually, what then happens is you give up everything that you need to replenish or you give up your other I this other identity stuff. So that is a very interesting consideration that it might not be about giving that up. It might be about working out what you are doing outside of work. ‘Cause actually some people are incapable of sitting still. You know, you say to ’em, just go sit in a field with a book. They’re like, oh, that won’t replenish me. But it’s much better say, yeah, going and, and coaching a team than the whole competitive long event or, the problem is, I can think that a few doctors might go and coach a team, but then get really competitive with that team and then that’s what we’ve gotta do. So you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta know yourself quite well, haven’t you? And think what is gonna, what is it? What sort of hobby or other world, opposite world.

[00:09:08] I love that phrase the opposite world. ’cause I think people don’t like the word hobbies, ‘Cause it doesn’t sound, doesn’t sound important enough. Does it really? And when I think of hobbies, I think of like making model airplanes, which absolutely nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t sound important enough. But op and op, an opposite world where you can get into flow and rejuvenate where you are not in that competitive identity of the, the working harder and harder and harder. Because sometimes we can do that because I know people that sort of set up charities or sort of, I don’t know, run religious organizations or run this or run that and that’s just more hard work really.

[00:09:43] Nick: Agreed. You’ve gotta think what is genuinely opposite, I think. And when you think opposite, I think what I’ve learned is what’s the opposite mindset from your work one?. So, one, um, leader I was speaking to, he said he’s quite an extrovert. And so at the conference I was doing the speech at and he was saying to the big group. He said, I’m an extrovert. So people sort of naturally think my opposite would be to be an introvert, be on my own. And he goes, no, but it’s not my opposite is to be around people, but in a social environment. And so I said, well, how’s that opposite? He goes, people don’t need anything from me. I don’t feel like I’m serving people when I’m in that social environment with friends.

[00:10:23] So you’ve gotta identify what is the core opposite part that needs to shift? If you’re going off run a charity, if you’re going off to do fundraising, Is that still being the responsible one who is serving everyone, putting yourself at the service of everyone? That’s probably the part you need to do opposite.

[00:10:43] When I, I wrote a LinkedIn post on it and it got the most interactions, comments, likes of any post I’ve ever done. And the final question I’d ask is, what, what’s your opposite world? And hundreds people wrote their opposite worlds below it. So it was good little research tool I went through and categorized, like, do they fall into different buckets? And they did.

[00:11:03] So the six buckets that you might consider, in order of popularity really, physical activity, artistic, crafts, music instruments, painting, that sort of thing. Nature was third. Home tasks, um, renovations, doing something to your house, that sort of thing. Animals was the fifth one. Doing things with animals, with pets, on the farm. And the sixth one was volunteering.

[00:11:36] And so that’s a sort of good place to start if you’re like a lot of people would go, I just don’t know. The second thing to do is think about when you were younger, before you got so busy in life, what did you used to love to do, but you’ve stopped doing because work, family, other commitments became too important?

[00:11:55] Rachel: That’s a very interesting question and I, again, a lot of us when we were younger used to love competitive sports or. Music to a high level because that’s what we’ve done. And so it’s, I, I think that’s quite difficult to actually pull out which bit that we used to love to do is the achievement based bit and what is, what is a hobby, but it’s doable. And I think actually people just need to go, go and try it, right? Book yourself to an evening class making pottery and see like that or go, go sing in a choir or you know, go play tennis. Just work out what, which bits build you up and which bits don’t, right?

[00:12:32] Nick: Yeah, it, it, you’re dead right. It is an exploration. Um, that’s what I had to do. I had to, you know, I learned about this and I thought, this is really good. And, you know, I started teaching it and then I’d think, Nick, what’s your opposite world? And I was like, Well, I don’t have one because I gave up things because I was focused on work.

[00:12:51] And so I, you know, when I came back to New Zealand, I explored, that was the thing, to try something. So I tried mountain biking because I live in a mountain biking town. Sort of. It was quite good. I sort of liked the people I was with, but it wasn’t me. Um, I tried guitar and then I was like, this is actually really frustrating. Then I stumbled across, um, coaching and then later I’m like, that’s so obvious. That’s what I did growing up and loved it. Um, sports was a thing, was sitting right in front of me. So I think it does require experimentation in those different buckets.

[00:13:25] Rachel: Nick, it is been such a pleasure having on the podcast. Now, you mentioned you, you, you blog a lot on LinkedIn and how can people find you if they want to find out more about your work?

[00:13:34] Nick: Yeah, that’s the best way. Um, just Nick Petrie on LinkedIn, The insights, the opposite world, all the other things we’ve found are on there.

[00:13:43] Rachel: Great. Okay. So if you wanna find out more, then I really encourage people to have a look at that. And con, presumably people contact you through LinkedIn if they, if they want to.

[00:13:52] Nick: Yes.

[00:13:52] Rachel: Great. Nick, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. We’d love to get you back another time ’cause I’m sure there’s much, much more we can talk about. So will you come back?

[00:14:00] Nick: Yes. Very happy to, Rachel.

[00:14:02] Rachel: She said putting you on the spot, but brilliant. Thank you so much for your time and have a good evening.

[00:14:07] Nick: Thank you, Rachel. Thank you.