Reshid Dervishi on
Time, fatigue and the burdens left outside the picture of success.
Success is easy to describe through what is visible. The job is finished, the company has grown, the name is better known. It is much harder to describe what we spent getting there. Time, peace, relationships, and the ability to be present in our own lives rarely appear on a balance sheet. Yet their absence can become the most important part of the result we achieved.
For years, I associated endurance with strength. You can handle one more problem, one more responsibility, one more difficult year. Later, I began asking more often at what cost. Not every struggle deserves the energy we give it. Not every problem is ours to solve. And not everything we can endure is also something it makes sense to continue.
The burden of responsibility is not the same on every side. An owner worries about securing work and meeting financial obligations. An employee tries to carry the tasks assigned to them. A manager stands between expectations that are often misaligned. Each person feels their own pressure from within and sees another's from outside. That is why our burden feels like a fact, while someone else's easily becomes an excuse we are unwilling to hear.
There is also success we no longer want. A person reaches a goal they fought for over many years and notices that they no longer recognise it as their own. This does not always prove the earlier choice was wrong. Perhaps their needs have changed. The difficulty begins when they keep living by an old decision simply because they invested so much or because changing would look like defeat to others.
Experience has weight even when it has helped us. We carry decisions, people, mistakes, and conversations we have not yet resolved within ourselves. Life's baggage is not a subject confined to business, but business often adds its share. Sometimes another piece of advice is not what is needed. What is needed is room to say what we carry and be understood without an obligation to offer a solution immediately.
Here are essays on fatigue, time, sacrifice, and changes in our own measure of success. They do not ask us to abandon ambition or work. They invite us to include in the reckoning what is missing from the final photograph. To examine whether the result leaves room for the life we want to live, rather than only the responsibilities we have learned to endure.
Selected reading
For years, I considered endurance one of the more important human qualities. You can keep going a little longer. One more problem, one more project, one more obligation, one more difficult year.
Endurance and the moment we need to examine its cost.
Read essayI’m coming to realize more and more that much of what I write actually comes from things I’ve carried inside me for a long time.
The experience we carry and the value of a conversation in which we are not alone.
Read essayIt is hard to admit that we have succeeded at something we no longer want. We can spend years building a business, career, position, or life we were certain we wanted, investing time, money, energy, sacrifice, and much of ourselves.
Changing a goal when the person who set it has changed.
Read essayThe heaviest burdens in a company are often not the ones discussed in meetings. They are carried in silence. Behind closed doors.
The burdens of owners, managers, and employees behind visible behaviour.
Read essayThe ability to endure is not always a reason to continue.
A Decision We Make While Exhausted
Time and presence also belong in an assessment of results.
Mastery Shows in Attention to Detail
Another person’s pressure deserves understanding before we call it an excuse.
Changed needs can also change the meaning of an earlier goal.
A Choice Limited by Everyday Expenses
And not every responsibility we can carry is one we should accept.
In preparation
Questions of fatigue, presence, and our own measure of success connect this topic with the manuscript Do Not Lose Yourself While Building a Life. The connection lies in the room work leaves for the person and their life.
Explore the booksSkill is developed through repetition, but repetition itself can preserve the same omission.
Read essaySometimes we expect a new job, apartment or relationship to remove a dissatisfaction that we have not yet clearly understood.
Read essayFormally, we can choose another job, but such a decision looks different when the income already covers only basic needs.
Read essayOn days of exhaustion, it can be more difficult to keep your attention on the whole problem. Then a simple request can act as additional pressure, and a quick response as a way to complete the request as soon as possible.
Read essayA business result may look good, but the way we arrive at it puts a serious strain on life.
Read essayWe easily get used to having to produce something every hour. And we begin to evaluate talking, walking or reading according to the benefits that we will show later.
Read essayIf the day starts immediately with messages and other people's requests, it is easy to continue responding before we have looked at our obligations.
Read essayThe list of things we would like to learn or experience can be longer than the time we have.
Read essayWhile working on an important goal, failure, withdrawal and the pressure of new obligations can alternate.
Read essayA full schedule can seem to confirm that we are doing well. However, the number of meetings and messages does not in itself say what was completed or who was helped by our work.
Read essayAn opportunity can be valuable even when we cannot accept it right now. If we already have obligations that demand our attention, the new promise also means a change in the time we give to them.
Read essayThe call to continue may be well-intentioned, but still fail to account for what we can manage today.
Read essayResponsibilities at work and to people close to us easily fulfill every free hour. If we constantly leave rest for the moment when everything is done, it may happen that we don't plan it at all.
Read essayThe finished result shows little of the work that preceded it. Negotiations, corrections, rejected proposals and repeated attempts often remain invisible to people who only see the final version.
Read essayThe desire for security, recognition or progress can help us organize ourselves for a long time.
Read essayA new experience can change what we want, what we can do or what we expect of ourselves. This does not always happen neatly, nor does every change bring more security and satisfaction.
Read essayA bench can be a simple place where we stop without the obligation to produce something immediately.
Read essayThere were times when I thought I was behind everyone. Other people's visible successes seemed finished, while I saw my own work through questions that I had not yet resolved.
Read essayVisible success can easily take over a whole conversation about life. Income, work and recognition take their place, while relationships wait until there are fewer obligations.
Read essayI have spent many years trying to achieve what I envisioned. Such work makes sense, but it easily becomes a demand that every result confirms my worth as a human being.
Read essayA single list of signs of success can hardly suit different people. Work, income, free time and family obligations have different importance in different periods of life.
Read essayTiredness may appear while we are doing something important, but it does not in itself prove that we are making progress.
Read essayA good idea and initial excitement are not enough to get the job done. There comes a day when we don't feel like working, but there are deadlines, agreements and obligations to other people.
Read essaySometimes we work out of a desire to create something, and sometimes out of fear of disappointing others or losing our position.
Read essaySometimes you need a break from responsibilities and people. Stepping away can help us see how tired we are and what we can no longer handle in the same way.
Read essayWe can be good at a job that no longer interests us. It's embarrassing to admit, especially when we've invested years into it and others expect us to continue.
Read essayWhen we work towards one goal for a long time, the rest of life easily becomes something we will arrange later.
Read essayThe schedule sometimes seems quite bearable, but the day still exhausts us. An unfinished conversation, an unclear relationship or an obligation that we put off for a long time follow us even while we are doing something else.
Read essayThere are days when I would give up on everything. On such a day, even meaningful work seems like a burden to be freed from.
Read essayThe phone allows us to respond quickly, but easily turns any time of the day into a possible continuation of work.
Read essaySome fatigue has little to do with hours worked. It comes from weighing people against results, speed against correctness, and what is popular against what is necessary. Leaders also need room to pause.
Read essayThe most dangerous lie of our time is not that life is hard. The most dangerous lie is that you still have time. Time does not disappear suddenly. It slips away quietly. In procrastination. In “tomorrow.” In plans without action.
Read essayThe weariness we see in a person isn’t always just about work. Responsibilities can pile up, along with worries about the family, the pressure to be available, and events they don’t talk about.
Read essayMy mind is sometimes my biggest battlefield. I return to the same decision and imagine several things that could go wrong, even though none has happened. It helps to separate an assumption from a fact.
Read essayIf you want to see the world more clearly, sometimes you have to take a step back. In the constant rush, it’s easy to lose perspective. Everything becomes urgent. Everything becomes important.
Read essaySometimes we just don’t feel like doing anything. We’re not machines. Sometimes the body gets tired, sometimes the mind, and sometimes the soul.
Read essayOur days fill with meetings, messages, and other people’s urgency. It is worth looking at the calendar and deciding which commitments deserve our time.
Read essayWe were born to live. But then we agreed to turn life into a schedule, obligations, deadlines, pressure, meetings, loans, proving ourselves, and an endless race for something that is never enough.
Read essayI used to think that strength lay in enduring everything. In being available to everyone. In getting as much done as possible.
Read essayI think we’re losing the ability to take a break. We know how to change locations. We know how to go to the beach, to the mountains, or on a trip.
Read essayThere are moments when we have had enough of the pressure, obligations, and expectations. Exhaustion deserves attention, not a final judgment of ourselves.
Read essayThere are times when a person must speak up in order for others to recognize them. But there are also times like these, when many believe they recognize a person the moment they see what kind of car they’re getting out of.
Read essayWe open a text, a message pops up, we check the news, and move on to a video. I wonder how much of all that we actually understood, and how much we merely got the impression that we were informed.
Read essayWhen we add commitments, meetings, and plans, it’s easy to forget to check what we no longer need. Our schedule fills up, and there’s less and less room for what’s important to us.
Read essayBurnout is not the same as ordinary exhaustion. We cannot reduce it to a few days off, nor can we assign the same recovery time to everyone.
Read essayWe’re sitting at the same table. The conversation continues; a child says something to us, and then the phone rings. A business message has arrived.
Read essayWinning work used to be simply good news. We land a project, agree a major contract or find a new opportunity, and for those first few minutes we enjoy it.
Read essaySometimes, after a day’s work, I feel like stroking a stone and talking to it.
Read essayThe strangest part of recovery is often not the exhaustion but the guilt that arises when, for the first time, a person can no longer live at the pace to which they’ve accustomed themselves over the years.
Read essayThere comes a moment when a person no longer knows whether they’re really doing too little or whether others have simply started expecting too much.
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