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Writer's pictureLauren Howard

I Couldn’t Keep Up

Written By: Lauren Howard



I couldn’t keep up. 


I was talking with a woman I adore about a recent role she left.


That was how she described it. 


She has been THROUGH IT in the last few years. 


I could tell there was something bugging her as soon as we logged in. She just wasn’t light and positive like normal.


She told me the story of losing a job recently because she just didn’t have the stamina to keep up with it. 


Something didn’t sound right. 


She kept saying that SHE didn’t have the stamina, which would not have been unreasonable. 


I know this person. She is all fire and stamina. She is a master class in motivation and bouncing back.

But the reasons she gave for why it didn’t work didn’t have anything to do with capability. 


She started telling me about the expectations of the role. The red tape. The hoops to jump through to get something done. The approvals on approvals on approvals. The endless redesigns to make each rung along the way happy. The scrapped projects after days of work because the tenth approval didn't sign off.


How is that a her problem?


She was confusing stamina with tolerance for busy work and management by committee. 


How could she say that she couldn’t do the job? She literally did the job twelve times to do it once. 


She crushed that job. Her problem was with the unnecessary filler and administrative nonsense that it took to do that job. 


The invisible emotional labor that benefits no one. 


It feels bad to lose or leave a job, but that not being the job for her is not an indictment of her. Part of deprogramming for toxic ideas of professionalism is losing tolerance for things that don’t serve anyone. 


She wasn't getting paid to manage every stakeholder throughout the company. She was getting paid to create and then jump through hundreds of hoops that were not in her job description. 


Low tolerance and low stamina are not the same. This is not a flaw in her professionalism. It's a flaw in the system and deciding not to fight that is a choice you are allowed to make.


The mental gymnastics that we have to do create work that you have to do just so you can do the work that you're paid for. That leads to burnout more than the work does.



 


Founder & CEO at elletwo



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