Feeling drained? You’re not alone.

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There comes a time in every visionary’s quest when the spark begins to dull. While you once woke up buzzing with energy for the tasks ahead, instead you feel lifeless. The luster has waned. And yet, you must carry on because business, and technology in particular, does not sleep. 

Many of the leaders I’ve worked with have shared this slump, and in many more I’ve witnessed it though they didn’t name it. What can you do when the tasks required of you outstrip the energy you have for them?

Some people choose to ignore it. This used to be my preferred strategy. My first brush with burnout was shortly after launching People-Friendly Tech (then called Entrepreneurial Technologies). Sales had started out promising and then tanked over a period of months as the economy spiraled toward the Great Recession. I pushed hard - working nights and weekends, spending every spare minute at my laptop. Pretty soon, there was no joy left, but I kept going. It felt a little dangerous to examine closely, and so I’d push right on through, convincing myself that no one else could tell that I wasn’t quite the same. Perhaps you have done this. It’s ineffective and exhausting.

So what works better? This week I’m breaking down strategies to stay out of burnout, and to fix it when it strikes.

What’s your (real) motivation to innovate?

Innovation is exciting, it’s impactful, and it can be deeply satisfying. But it’s not a guaranteed path to success. If you want to lock in a stable career path with regular advancement, be consistent, follow all the rules and be slightly above average but not so much that you threaten anybody. Does that sound like a description of an innovator to you?

No, to innovate, you must take some risks. Risks with the product, but also risks with your career. Innovators tend to move around a little more often than average, taking a new post either because they slayed the big dragon and were hungry for a new challenge, or because the board started giving them less room to move. When you innovate, you are going to make some people uncomfortable, and if those are people of sufficient influence, they can in turn make your life uncomfortable in an effort to induce you to color within the lines. If you’re starting your own business, while you may not have a boss to please, you probably still have a need to please a board and/or investors, and failing that, the market. None of those entities are guaranteed to be impressed by risk-taking.

For many leaders, this is understood and an accepted tradeoff. It’s the price of admission to do something that matters. But it’s important to be clear about this tradeoff before you start. If your motivation is personal glory, or career advancement, there’s nothing at all wrong with that. Those are sane, valid goals. But keep in mind that pushing the envelope isn’t the most straightforward way to get there.

Let’s say you have come to terms with all of this and you want to innovate anyway. It’s in your blood and you would find your career boring if you didn’t have an outsized impact. Great! You’re our kind of person. Your mission is to consciously nurture and protect that spark within you that yearns for more.

Find sustainable motivation

Once you’re sure you understand your motivation, you will want to make peace with the fact that anything worth doing is likely to be a long road. You will not be able to sustain the spark of innovation if you try to hold your breath and sprint to the end. You need a way to call up energy for the process at any time, because you’ll likely need several infusions of go-go juice along the way. 

That initial push to launch something is akin to a Celsius energy drink. It makes you feel invincible for a short period of time, but after a while you build up a tolerance to the caffeine, and it takes more and more to provide the same shot of energy. This isn’t particularly healthy long-term (ask me – I kicked a pretty intense caffeine habit earlier this year.).

To sustain for the long haul, the motivation can’t be an external pressure layered on top like a launch date. It has to come from something more enduring. And that lies in the problem that fascinates you.

Everyone who innovates knows the feeling: the brain tickle of a problem that you just can’t let go. This is your go-go juice. This is what you can come back to again and again. Who are you trying to help? How will their lives be better when you succeed? That kind of motivation sustains and doesn’t burn out.

For me, my reason 18 years ago was the same as it is today: seeing the impact we have on the businesses we work with. Watching a piece of custom software revolutionize a process for them was, and still is, a greater high than any KPI.

Pause task mode to dream

While motivation from purpose may not burn out, it can get swept to the side by the never-ending march of tasks and decisions. That’s why it’s important in the midst of Task Mode to pause and allow time to reconnect with that vision. Constantly executing takes a lot of energy. If you’re a visionary, your natural state is the flow state of visioning something new. If you cut yourself off from that for too long, you’ll become tired and resentful.

Dream a little. Make it about what could be, not how to do it. Remember the curiosity you felt in the beginning, and find something new within your area to learn about. You’ll nearly always emerge with a refreshed sense of the possibilities.

There’s another key component here: if you are a very achievement-oriented person (and many leaders are) you need to occasionally give yourself a chance to dream without considering whether or not it will earn you kudos from a particular person or group.

Here’s why it’s a useful exercise: just like innovating to advance your career is a messy proposition, innovating in pursuit of a gold star from some specific person or group is an exercise in futility. It will keep you from pushing the envelope to do anything truly useful or transformative. So, let go of that for a moment. What would you do if you were doing it purely for the joy of making something special? The answer may not be entirely practical, but thinking about it will energize you and provide ideas that you can finesse into your real-world situation.

Let yourself disconnect occasionally

Sometimes, despite focusing on the purpose and taking time to dream, you still lose the spark. This issue often stems from being too engrossed in the Big Push for too long. The outside world starts to fade away and your focus narrows to only that one topic. This is acceptable for a day or even a week, but isn’t sustainable long-term. I can feel this happening when my life outside of work starts to feel like the interruption instead of the reason I’m doing all of this. The cure is simple: close the laptop. Put away the phone. Reconnect with life outside of my work goals.

Like me, you will probably resist this at first, sometimes quite strongly. Our brains are adaptable, and they morph to fit the circumstances. If you have focused intensely on work or even one specific goal at work, your brain has adapted to that and will treat any other topics that try to gain attention as interlopers. You must make a conscious effort to overcome your own defenses on this, as they’re keeping you stuck in the unhealthy pattern. It will not feel good at first. You may have intense anxiety about it, but you need to let something else matter and remind yourself of what’s truly important.

I find disconnecting is effective and restorative even in short bursts. And keeping it short in duration allows me to do it more frequently. I’ve noticed this pattern in the leaders we work with as well. Those who make time for a life outside of work maintain the patience and energy necessary to see things through.

There’s another advantage to disconnecting as well. You cannot brute force your way to inspiration. No one comes up with the next big idea while white-knuckling their mouse or rage typing one more email. You have to give space for the inspiration to occur.

Protect the spark

Purpose fuels you, dreaming restores you, and stepping away gives your mind the space to ignite again. The leaders who sustain their spark aren’t the ones who push the hardest without pause; they’re the ones who know when to feed it, when to protect it, and when to let it rest. In the end, innovation is less a sprint than a long, winding path—and the brighter you keep that spark, the further you can go.