Serial Entrepreneur and host of one of Europe's top business podcasts, Secret Leaders with over 50M downloads & angel investor in 85+ startups - here to share stories and studies breaking down the science of success - turning it from probability to predictability.
Work Till Your Teeth drops?
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Work Till Your Teeth Drops? Read time: 7 minutes Hey, welcome back. Last week, I talked about how England's World Cup loss was a leadership lesson, why Heights supplies the England squad, and what happens when fear replaces belief at the worst possible moment. You can read that (and all past issues, here) Before we dive into the letter. Read books they said. Start a business they said. Invest they said. Share your content online they said. Build up your brain to get smarter and wiser they said. Well here we are. So wise I had to get 2 wisdom teeth out at the ripe old age of 40. Basically, David Attenborough in a 40 year old's body, exploding with so much wisdom, I am now recovering from a pretty traumatic day yesterday. But does that mean I won't send my newsletter? No. Why? Because we do hard things. And for classy snaps for the gram, obvs. I did want to talk about this for a moment, though, because it connects to today's topic more than you'd think. Regular readers will know I do a word of the year. My word this year is "health." I've done a lot with it so far. Built muscle. Lost fat. Improved my VO2 max. Had a full body MRI. Blood check ups. All good stuff. The kind of health investment that's easy to talk about and fun to share. But not all health related prevention is fun or braggy. Last year my dentist told me two of my wisdom teeth would need to come out. Not if. When. Sometime in the next one to three years. Could flare up at any moment. So health, for me, also meant being bold, brave, and choosing to do it on my own terms. I looked at my calendar. After my 40th extravaganza, after key content shoots for Heights, after the Wimbledon final, but before my kids' birthdays. There was exactly one week that fit the bill. That dreaded week has been in my calendar since January. Yesterday was the day. And I'm writing this from bed, on painkillers, face like a hamster, grateful it's done. It's never too late to pick a word for the year, by the way. This is just a reminder that a commitment to yourself is a commitment. Even when the commitment involves someone pulling bones out of your jaw. That's who we are. Which brings me to today's actual topic. Because the wisdom teeth thing connects to something I've been wanting to write about for a while. The relationship between doing hard things for your health and the much harder thing most ambitious people refuse to do. Resting. The Trap I fell into this trap for years and I still catch myself drifting back toward it if I'm not paying attention. The trap is believing that exhaustion means you're doing something worthwhile. That the tiredness is proof you're working hard enough. That if you're not running on empty, you're probably not giving it everything. I built my entire identity around this for a long time. Being the person who works the hardest. Stays the latest. Sacrifices the most. Exhaustion was my scoreboard. Without it, I didn't know how to measure my own value. So I wanted to go deeper. What Burnout Actually Costs You Most people think burnout costs you sleep. Maybe your mood dips for a while. Maybe you're tired and then you recover. That's not what happens. What actually happens is a slow, compounding erosion across almost every area of your life:
And the most dangerous part is that burnout doesn't usually end with a dramatic collapse. It ends with apathy. You stop caring about the thing you used to love. You show up, go through the motions, and feel nothing. That slow fade is worse than any breakdown because you can live in it for years without recognising what's happening. I Lived In That Fade For A Long Time Years ago I hit a wall that I've talked about before. Six months where I couldn't sleep. Couldn't focus. Couldn't feel joy. I thought the answer was to push harder. Work more. Prove that I was still capable. Everything I did made it worse. Every extra hour I put in drained me further. And I kept going because the story I was telling myself said that stopping was the same as failing. That rest was something you earned once the work was done. And the work was never done. That thinking nearly destroyed me. And it's the same thinking I see in so many founders and ambitious people I meet. This belief that if you're not exhausted, you're not trying hard enough. That being busy is the same as being productive. That running on four hours of sleep makes you impressive rather than impaired. The WHO Calls It What It Is The World Health Organisation now defines burnout as an occupational syndrome. A specific pattern of chronic workplace stress that shows up as:
Recovery from this isn't a long weekend. It's a sustained, deliberate process of rebuilding your nervous system. Sleep. Time in nature. Boundaries that you actually enforce. Support from people who won't let you get away with "I'm fine." What I Changed A few years ago I started taking rest seriously. Not as a performative thing. Actually seriously. Some of the things that made the biggest difference:
The thing that surprised me is that I didn't become less productive. I became sharper. More creative. More present with Melissa and the girls. Less reactive when things went wrong at work. The quality of what I produced went up as the number of hours I worked went down. Rest wasn't the prize for finishing the work. It was the thing that made the work good. The Connection To The Wisdom Teeth This is why I shared the wisdom teeth story at the top. Because health, real health, is about doing the things that are good for you whether they feel good or not. Getting an MRI is health. Getting your wisdom teeth ripped out is also health. They're both prevention. One is easy to brag about and the other involves lying in bed with ice packs on your face feeling sorry for yourself. Rest is the same. Building muscle is the sexy side of health. Going to bed at 9pm when your inbox is full and your to do list is long is the unglamorous side. But the unglamorous side is where most of the real gains are. The word of the year doesn't distinguish between comfortable prevention and uncomfortable prevention. It just keeps asking the same question: does this move you closer to health or further from it? And sometimes the honest answer is that the healthiest thing you can do today is stop working and go to sleep. The Question Nobody Asks Themselves If you're running on empty right now, sit with this for a minute. What are you trying to prove by staying tired? Because there's usually something underneath the exhaustion. A belief that you haven't earned the right to rest yet. A fear that slowing down means falling behind. A story about what hard work looks like that was probably handed to you by someone who burned out themselves. I carried that story for years. It took a six month breakdown, a dietitian appointment, and the entire journey of building Heights to finally let go of it. And I still catch it creeping back in when things get busy. The old pattern never fully disappears. You just get better at catching it before it takes over. If You're Feeling The Early Signs Your body will tell you before your mind does. Trouble sleeping. Brain fog. Shorter temper than usual. Getting sick more often. Losing interest in things that used to excite you. If any of that sounds familiar, don't wait for it to get louder. Small shifts now prevent big breakdowns later:
You don't need to earn your rest. You need to stop treating it as optional. A commitment to your health is a commitment, whether that means getting in the MRI scanner, getting your wisdom teeth pulled, or just going to bed when your brain is telling you to keep working. That's who we are. We do hard things. And sometimes the hardest thing is stopping. See you next week. Dan P.S. Here's an X-ray of my wisdom teeth before being removed so you can see how inevitable it was and cos by this point - I'm here for your sympathy 😆 |
Dan Murray
Serial Entrepreneur and host of one of Europe's top business podcasts, Secret Leaders with over 50M downloads & angel investor in 85+ startups - here to share stories and studies breaking down the science of success - turning it from probability to predictability.
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