gap

One of the greatest things I’ve learned while researching burnout was the “Gap-stress”.

This is probably an invented term, but the concept is simple: It’s the stress caused by your expectation about what you need to do for a job/task, and what you are capable of doing.

If you look at the wording, you should know it’s no coincidence that I’ve used the word “Expectation”. Why? In some cases, we have broad requirements for a task or a job.

When this happens, we fill in the missing pieces by adding our view of what should be done, what should be considered success.

We might not even confirm these beliefs with the stakeholder, we might assume we’re on the right track.

In these cases we are, effectively, our own worst enemy. We build a fake requirement in our head that we cannot satisfy, we fail to deliver, and we feel bad.

To fix it we do need to speak with people, ask for confirmation and move forward. If there are missing pieces of the puzzle, ask again until the picture is clear and there are no fake gaps.

Can it still happen if everything is clear? Yes, in that case we should discuss topics like “Why are we assuming that one person can do all this?” or, why do we think that person has all the skills required because that might not be true”