Once you’ve fully burned out, “the pit” is where you go to hang out for a while. And it really is not fun. (Which is, I know, diminutive, but… it’s a hard place to be.)
What does the pit look like?
It looks like: I try to sit in front of my computer and write, and no words come out. I just keep going to my email or Facebook or YouTube, because I can’t even produce one creative thought.
It looks like: I can’t make my body do the things I used to be able to make it do (even just a week ago, or a few days ago).
It looks like: I am twice as tired after work as I used to be. I can’t do anything but lay on the couch and watch Netflix.
It looks like: I can’t wake up early anymore. All my body seems to want to do is sleep.
It looks like: My focus is gone. I’ve been flitting from attention to attention, and nothing is sticking.
It looks like: I can see the book, but I just can’t write it.
It looks like: I have no desire to write words at all.
The symptoms of the pit can mimic depression (and for those who are chemically cycling into depression, it’s likely that the pit will be a depressive episode). But it’s different from depression in that it’s directly related to the way you previously expended your creative energy. It likely won’t be fixed by supplements or medication, and it can sometimes last much longer than you expect, because most of us try to work through our burnout.
The pit is the burned out bottom of your energetic gas tank. And some of us have burned so hot and so hard that there’s also now a hole in the tank that has to be refilled. But at the very least, our body will shut off the fire because there’s no more creative fuel.
It will be impossible to produce, and (even for Achievers) no ability to get tasks done at the normal rate. In addition, many people will get physically sick at the top of the slide, so it’s very possible, too, that your burnout will come with symptoms that will actively knock you out of commission.
The characteristics of the pit are lack of energy, extreme lack of willpower, lack of drive, and lack of retention. Unfortunately, though, what does not stop is the inertia of the system that got us into the pit. So we may still have deadlines, or may still try to write books.
But the books will never get written. The deadlines will never get met. Because: pit.
Very little work happens in the pit. And most of that is stuff that literally can’t not get done. Like taking kids to school, or showing up at the day job, or getting groceries, or hygiene.
But there’s no inertia out of the pit until the burnout machine has been halted.
The only way out of the pit is to rebuild it into a gas tank, and to start to fill it. You can’t “to-do-list” yourself out of the pit. You have to self-care yourself out of the pit. (That’s the ladder–that’s next week.) Your energy pennies are depleted. You have no ability to make the spoons you need to measure out the energy from your tank. (If there was any energy in there to begin with.)
The key for me in understanding the pit (and the ladder) is to know that the expectations from the system that got you down there have to be dealt with. New expectations have to be formed. The longer you hold on to those old expectations, the longer you’ll be in the pit.
Inertia has to change, in the pit, or it will keep you down there. To learn more about The Pit, watch the QuitCast.