The 'recovery plan.' Are you practicing these 3 critical habits in work and play?

Building different formats of interruption and rest into our routines matters for long-term high performance — and just being happier.

Warmup

The point of this N2L (Not Too Late) community is to keep us learning and pushing to master new things—no matter what our age—in the interest of longevity and wellbeing.

But today I’m going to talk about something I really wish I’d practiced a lot earlier.

Recovery.

Not just recovery from exercise. As many of you know from my new book, NOT TOO LATE, I didn’t discover the power of regular movement until I was approaching age 50.

But also recovery from work. People. Our pastimes and routines. Recovery from what I call the “cycle of sameness.”

Right now I’m recovering from a difficult half marathon obstacle race a week ago. So, a quick reminder that Spartan Race, the world’s largest obstacle course racing company, is offering a FREE RACE of any length in 2024 or 2025 to people who purchase a copy of my new book, NOT TOO LATE.

This offer is good even if you’ve already purchased the book. And if obstacle course racing isn’t your jam, give the code to someone who might like to give it a go!

(Click the button below to get your code; available while supplies last.)

Summary

• Burnout is real. We know this. It hurts performance, health and happiness. Let’s start with that as a fact.

  • It’s also on the rise globally with nearly 42% of people in the workforce reporting “burnout,” according to a 2023 report by the Future Forum.

• Burnout can come from some obvious sources:

  • A health crisis adds a massive layer of stress and fear to our days

  • A make-or-break work sprint requires a spate of 70-hour weeks

  • A relationship we want to fix demands extra hours and mindshare

  • A long endurance race necessitates months of preparation that taxes our body

• But burnout also can come from what I call the “cycle of sameness” – the sneaky inertia that grips us as we become trapped in our routines without interruption.

• The good news is, as I’ve learned a little later than I would have liked, there are basic recovery tactics we can practice at different times that scientifically have been shown to at least soften the edges of burnout, if not help prevent it all together.

Let’s get it done.

Post

As always, I want to level-set with some definitions. (Source: Oxford University Press.)

RECOVERY

“a return to a normal state of health, mind, or strength.”

“the action or process of regaining possession or control of something stolen or lost.”

The second definition particularly interests me for the sake of our journey today, hence why it’s in bold.

I recently was a guest on the Janice Dean podcast to talk about NOT TOO LATE. Janice is Fox News’ senior meteorologist and someone I’ve known for about two decades.

In addition to her on-air job, Janice also is a prolific book author, spouse of a New York City firefighter, mother of two children and has been open about what it’s like to live with multiple sclerosis.

At some point, I asked Janice about her own writing process, and she told me she was taking a hiatus:

“There is something to be said for taking a break and saying, OK, I’m going to take a breath. Not that I don’t have other things on the horizon that I want to achieve— but OK, I’m taking a beat for a moment…. You and I are very similar in that we have all theses ideas we want to achieve, and it’s like go-go-go-go-go, and you want to get to them as soon as you can. But there is also something really important about taking a break for a moment.”

What struck me most was how I felt after hearing her say that.

Relieved.

Because the past two years had been a nonstop ride of change and go-go-go-go-go.

• I’d left one big job at a brand I loved, Consumer Reports, to take another big job at a tech start-up called SmartNews.

• Just before that happened, I’d sold my book proposal for NOT TOO LATE, which was due in 18 months.

• Simultaneously, I was training seriously for obstacle course racing and traveling the country for competitions.

• And then there was the rest of life: a marriage, chores, friends, family, taxes, doctors appointments, cars that needed repairing, appliances that broke, a sweet dog to walk and play with.

On one hand, this injection of newness — all choices I’d deliberately made — was a recovery period in itself. Chronic boredom, after all, is a health hazard, one associated with anxiety, depression and the risk of making mistakes.

But these new, challenging pastimes had freed me from the cycle of sameness and inertia I’d felt approaching age 50. I could now throw a spear and lift my bodyweight up a 17-foot rope. I was working with cutting edge LLM technology and brilliant engineers.

And I was never bored.

In fact, going back to the recovery definition of “regaining possession or control of something stolen or lost” — I was excited again to wake up in the morning.

Still after 730 days, I realized I’d been walking on a razor’s edge. Had anything gone unexpectedly wrong or awry in my world, or in the worlds of those I loved, I suspect the entire ride might have derailed.

So when Janice said “take a breath,” my body chemistry changed.

And I began to think about the different forms of recovery. And how we can strategically use them to perform and feel better as we cycle through work and play.

The recovery plan

Quickly, before we get to the plan, let me say I believe these are ageless tactics even if we think of burnout as being more for people in midlife. Here’s why.

Back in 2000, I co-authored this story for The Wall Street Journal about the Really Early Midlife Crisis hitting young dot-commers.

They were suffering from anxiety, exhaustion, elevated levels of stress hormone cortisol and trying to find a way back to a more normal state. Many were taking sabbaticals in their 20s and 30s.

Data from the Covid-19 pandemic suggests similar negative health impacts for this age cohort (and younger) due to stress of a different nature.

The Harvard Business Review refers to recovery as a skill, because “knowing how and when you can best recover from stress requires both knowledge (of what works for you) and practice (actually doing it).”

Here are three skills I’ve been thinking a lot about.

1. Micro-breaks

Micro-breaks, as the name suggests, are short-term departures from your routine.

At work we often think about this in terms of taking a 10-minute walk outside. Or stepping away from our screens for 30 minutes to drink water, see a live human being (a what?), or listen to a song we like.

Interesting fact: according to HBR, micro-breaks taken earlier in the workday contribute to greater recovery.

You also can take micro-breaks from social routines. If you’re at a party and the talk is getting monotonous or heated, ask if you can get a tour of the house. Or help with the dishes. Or go play with the hosts’ kids. Or step out of the restaurant to get some air. (Pretend you need to take a call.)

Micro-breaks also help in relationships and negotiations. If a long, challenging conversation is stuck, letting both people take break to get something to drink, take the dog outside, be alone for a moment, and reset, can give enough recovery to see a path to resolution.

During strength workouts, short rest periods between sets of exercises also are a form of micro-breaks. They help your body recover so it can adapt and perform better. (More details on this in the Cooldown.)

There’s also short-term and active recovery, where after a hard workout you engage in a different low-intensity activity (stretching, walking, swimming) the same day to increase blood flow and help muscles and tendons rebuild.

Hot and cold therapy may help too — such as cold plunges or saunas to reduce inflammation and encourage healing. (Picture at the top of this page is a poor man’s version of the cold plunge: just a cooler with a bag of ice and water! The laptop is a metaphor. Don’t put it in ice water unless you really want to take an indefinite recovery period from your job. Thanks to my male model who braved the cold for this shot.)

See below in the Cooldown section for a deeper dive on the pros/cons of hot and cold therapy.

2. Cross-training

I’m a deep believer in cross-training for all aspects of life.

It has protected me for six years as I’ve worked to become a better obstacle course racer. Running is core to the sport, but my coaches make sure I’m also cycling, hiking and rowing to build respiratory fitness and give my body a break from the repetition of running.

But cross-training also is beneficial beyond the physical. David Epstein wrote a well-researched book called “Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World” about the power of having cross-domain skills.

• He examined many of the world’s most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors, forecasters and scientists.

• In most fields, particularly those that are complex and unpredictable, generalists who juggle many interests — not specialists — are most primed to excel.

To that end, I know that my ability to get everything done these past two years was in part a function of the power of cross-training — because it let me recovery mentally from each activity. My physical training helped balance my periods of writing. My writing sharpened my decision-making, which helped my leadership. My leadership then let me a more focused competitor.

3. Sabbaticals

Sabbaticals from work are a luxury. Valuable, yes, but you can only take them if circumstances and your financials permit.

So, I want to think about sabbaticals in a broader sense.

How can you get a sabbatical from your routines? Can you change up the restaurants you eat at? The people you see? The number of hours you watch TV? The type of books you read? The podcasts you listen to? The newsletters you read (but not this one.) The route you walk?

Taking a recovery period from something or someone can make you see it/them with fresh eyes when you return.

How can you get a sabbatical from your processes? Do you always approach a problem at work by going to a similar group of individuals? Do you create your presentations in the same format? Do you park in the same spot? Do you tune out in the same meetings? Do you have knee-jerk responses to certain individuals so you don’t really hear them?

Can you disrupt those processes and recover from them so your mindset is fresher?

How can you take a sabbatical from your physical training and not freak out that you’re losing ground?

Yeah, this one is personal. I finished my race in Utah last Saturday so burnt out and exhausted that I didn’t want to open my coach’s email with my new training plan for the month.

That’s because I’m so Type A, that if something is in my plan, I’m going to either A/ Do it or B/ Feel so awful about not doing it that I should have just done it. (Yep, I’m still a work in progress.)

As always, my coaches were one step ahead.

Their plan: “NO PLAN. Take a week of recovery.”

Cooldown

Longer term, I’m moving slowly in terms of what things I add back into my life that I put on hiatus while writing the book: social engagements, volunteer work, random asks for my time.

At each turn, I’m asking — if I didn’t really miss it, do I need to add it back? Each “no” will leave me better conditioned to … eventually … pursue something else new, bold and interesting.

To aid your own recovery, here are some interesting reads/listens I’ve found.

Short Read: A solid Harvard Business Review story that delves more deeply into the science and practice of work stress recovery.

Short Read: More here from Runner’s World on how long you should specifically rest between sets during your strength workouts to achieve different goals.

Medium Read: In this article, UC Health in Colorado does a good job laying out the basics of the different kinds of general recovery needed in athletics, the needs of younger and older athletes, and overlooked pieces of recovery (such as nutrition.)

Long Listen: Peter Attia’s podcast on the pros and cons of hot and cold therapy is a good scientific breakdown about these tools of recovery.

Thanks for reading. Let me know your own recovery tips. And as always, find something you love. Dig in. Stick with it when things get hard.

Wendy