In the event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure

"In the event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, please secure your mask before helping other's with theirs."

Back in a previous career, this famous line by flight attendants was my seminary professors’ favorite. Self-care was always a major topic among caregivers and putting your own mask on first, was a popular metaphor. It's not surprising then that self-care is a major theme when it comes to dealing with overwork and burnout, no matter what profession you're in.

Jennifer Salopek in her article “Hold Out Against Burnout” interviewed CEO's of major associations.[1] Their common theme was that you don’t do yourself, your organization, or your employees any good if you burn out because you think you are indispensable. Yet, every one of the people interviewed admitted how hard it was to put that into practice. As a rural library director, the rewards of taking care of myself aren’t always as visible, as the rewards of overworking are. I’d like to think people would appreciate it if I was less irritable, but lately I’ve been so irritable, I irritate myself. So, maybe even I might notice the rewards of a little extra oxygen.

Salopek offers several simple suggestions to start working to avoid burnout. They include making sure you go home on time at least once a week or having at least one day a week when you only work an 8 hour day. (She also suggests a monthly massage, but that would require a raise for most of rural librarians.) They seem like simple suggestions, yet unless I put it on my calendar, I know it’s not going to happen. I’ve actually started crossing out one day a week on the calendar, to keep myself from over scheduling.

Salopek also suggests not just looking for things to delegate, but considering outsourcing. I was actually able to do this recently with our payroll. Payroll itself didn’t consume enormous amounts of time, but paying Social security taxes and filing the quarterly 941’s did. I found myself spending days trying to fix the mistakes and teach myself how to deal with payroll taxes. Finally I was able to convince the board that paying an expert to do what they were trained to do, would free me to do what I’m trained to do.

Outsourcing some tasks definitely works, but my experience with payroll also taught me two other lessons. The first is that making the job of library director manageable isn’t going to happen over night. It’s a long term project. I’m not going to delegate, outsource, or find volunteers tomorrow. The immediate goal is to keep myself from burning out, while I work on the long term goal of redesigning the organizational flow.

Salopek’s suggestions help with that long range planning. She suggests at the end of each day thinking about what you could have delegated, how much time you spent on which jobs, what you did well, and enjoyed doing. These questions are the seeds for develop longer range solutions to the problem of too many hats, not enough heads. Salopek writes “build systems to replace the administrative decisions you make” and “be process driven, rather than effort driven.”[2] A former director suggested I keep a notebook of what I did everyday. I’ve only had fair success at this, often going for weeks without writing anything in it. Some days, most days actually, it feels like I can either do the work, or I can write down what I did. Yet, to get beyond spinning plates, I need to not just do the work, but take the time to think about what I do, how I do it, how well I do it, who else can do it. All of those questions are necessary to start designing a system that flows, that replaces all those “administrative decisions,” and that is “process oriented,” as Salopek suggests.

But here’s the second thing outsourcing payroll taught me, and Salopek’s article confirms. “Leverage your own special skills,”[3] she writes. As I analyze and imagine new ways of being a director, running a library, organizing the tasks at hand, this suggestion really resonates with me. My skills are what got me into this job and I want to be sure they are what keep me here.

[1] Salopek, J. "Hold out against burnout." Association News. Aug. 2009. 48-53.
[2] Ibid. p. 53.
[3] Ibid. p. 53.