🎙️ Podcast Link 🎙️

It’s Friday, and, given my life currently, it’s a great time to talk about pushing to, and beyond, your limits, and managing as best you can the associated risk of burnout.

For a while now, and likely for a while into the future, my professional career has been largely focused on two amazing, potentially once-in-a-lifetime opportunities: one in the strategic research space, and one in the global impact tech translation space.

So if it appears I’ve been slacking off and not doing much, I haven’t! It’s just that the majority of what I’ve been focusing on for a while now hasn’t been in the public domain much, if at all.

In my new Hacking Academia video, I talk about:

✨ those periods in your life when you deliberately and consciously choose to go all in on an amazing opportunity, that has a statistically very low likelihood of coming off – and all the pschological, time and energy burden that entails, both for you and your collaborators / team members. This is a different situation to the ad-hoc challenges that life and careers periodically throw up.

✨ the conditions under which this is even feasible, professionally and personally: a relatively stable situation in both, supportive and understanding professional peers and family and friends, ability to delegate and offload to some extent. And the need to be aware that if any of that changes you may need to stop.

✨ that some risk mitigation and burnout risk management can and should be done, but ultimately, growth is pushing beyond your boundaries and with that comes risk, highs and lows, and unpredictability.

✨ unless you’re all in, the tension and compromise involved in maintaining some of your core activities and having some sort of fallback position

✨ the exhilaration of chasing something really amazing, and the joy of getting “into the zone” and becoming incredibly prolific

✨ the analogy to peaking in sporting endeavours: as a planned, deliberate activity, it’s possible to peak for a sustained, but not indefinite, period of time

✨ the downsides: hyperfocus can make context-switching difficult, especially for those more “mundane” everyday activities; switching from grand ambitions and visions to nuanced and delicate personal interactions (e.g. in any leadership role) can be challenging; and the increased risk of missing things or bad decision making, which can be remedied by sanity checks with peers

✨ the recommendation to watch out for these opportunities – they’re incredibly exciting, exhausting, and amazing learning and growth experiences.

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Full Video Notes

Today, I want to talk about two related topics: pushing your boundaries and flirting with burnout. The reason I’m choosing to speak about this now is that it’s something I’m living through at this very moment. I’ve been living it for several months and will continue to do so for the next few months—or even a year.

The situation is this: there are two really big things happening in my professional career right now. One of them, without going into too much detail, involves putting together a proposal for a major national and internationally relevant center of research in an area that’s very close to my heart. This effort requires an enormous amount of work—hundreds of meetings, discussions with researchers and industry partners, and countless hours of focus. It’s consuming a huge chunk of my time and energy. It’s one of those rare opportunities that only comes around every few years, and we have to seize it now; otherwise, we may not get another chance for quite some time.

The other big thing I’m working on is a tech translation project. This is probably the best opportunity I’ve had in my two decades of research to translate a technology into widespread deployment—something that could potentially benefit billions of people on a daily basis. I’m incredibly excited about this, but it’s also taking up my best time, energy, and focus.

Both of these opportunities have low chances of success. For the research center proposal, the acceptance rate is around 10%—a one-in-ten chance. For the tech translation project to achieve its maximal impact, the odds might superficially appear even lower. Of course, I’m pursuing these because I genuinely believe we have a much better chance than the baseline statistics suggest. Nevertheless, these initiatives demand sustained, intense effort from me and many others over a long period, with the real possibility that they won’t meet their original goals. This creates a significant emotional and psychological burden, not just for me but for everyone involved.

Managing the Risk of Burnout
These are not externally imposed challenges—they are opportunities we’ve chosen to pursue with full gusto. That makes this a very specific type of situation: a consciously chosen, high-stress, high-stakes pursuit. It’s different from the unexpected challenges that arise in a career, which can also be stressful.

When it comes to pushing your boundaries, everything is relative to what you’ve done before and what you’re comfortable with. If you want to grow professionally and achieve bigger things, you need to take risks and push beyond your comfort zone. Growth is often painful and unpredictable, but it’s necessary if you want to keep evolving.

Since these challenges are consciously chosen, there’s room to plan ahead and mitigate the risk of burnout. A common mistake among high performers and academics is refusing to let go of control. That’s not sustainable. You need to delegate responsibilities, transfer tasks to others, and say no to things you’d normally agree to.

To do this effectively, certain prerequisites must be in place. First, you need a strong network or team that can shoulder some of the load. Second, you need good relationships with those people so they’re willing to support you temporarily. However, you can’t offload everything. You’ll still need to maintain core activities while focusing on these high-risk, all-consuming projects.

The only exception to this might be a complete career shift—like leaving academia entirely to do a startup. But for most people, including me, that’s not the situation. Maintaining core activities also serves as a backup plan. If the big initiatives don’t succeed, having a Plan B is essential. Of course, the more you focus on the risky ventures, the more your backup plans will be compromised. Balancing these priorities depends on your personal circumstances, risk appetite, and level of financial and career stability.

The Experience of Pushing Your Limits
I’ve been through similar periods a few times in my career. Although it might seem like vanity, I often compare these experiences to “peaking” in athletics. Athletes deliberately build up reserves to push beyond their limits for a short, focused period. This is different from simply trying to do your best all the time.

In academia, the joke is that everyone is constantly pushing themselves, but sustained maximal effort isn’t realistic. What I’m talking about is a deliberate, time-limited peak—lasting a few months to a year or so—where you prioritize one or two big goals above everything else.

When you do this, it’s incredible to see how productive and prolific you can be. But it’s only possible if your personal life is in a relatively good place. If you’re dealing with major personal challenges, the added strain of a professional push can become unmanageable. Even if everything is going well, unexpected personal events can derail your plans, and you need to be mentally prepared for that.

Challenges and Lessons Learned
There are downsides to this hyper-focused mode. One of the biggest challenges is context switching. When you’re deeply immersed in pitching a grand vision or tackling a high-stakes project, it can be hard to switch gears and deal with routine tasks like people management. You may also find yourself less patient with things that would normally not bother you.

To mitigate this, it’s important to stay self-aware and seek feedback from trusted peers. They can help you spot blind spots or bad decisions that you might miss while in the groove of intense focus.

Once you’ve been through a few of these peak periods, navigating them becomes easier. Experience gives you a better understanding of pacing—knowing when to push through fatigue and when to take a break. You also gain perspective on how to handle the emotional ups and downs.

The Value of High-Risk Pushes
High-risk pushes aren’t all-or-nothing. Even if you don’t achieve your original goal, there are side benefits: new skills, unexpected perspectives, or pivots to exciting new directions. That said, these efforts require a huge emotional and psychological commitment, and we need to better support people in academia who take them on.

If you’ve never attempted one of these high-risk pushes, I encourage you to look for the right opportunity. These aren’t things to do lightly or regularly, but they’re worth it when the timing is right. Unlike tasks with high odds of success—such as finishing a PhD—a high-risk endeavor is psychologically and pragmatically different. It’s exhilarating, challenging, and unpredictable.

While you’re in the middle of one of these pushes, take time to reflect. Appreciate the unique experience and the excitement of the journey. It’s not just about the outcome—it’s about the ride itself.

I hope sharing my experiences has been helpful or relevant. These are particularly topical for me right now, and I’m doing my best to avoid burnout in this current push. Thanks for listening, and I hope some of these insights resonate with you.