#thirdmetric

At Inbound 13, the world's largest marketing conference hosted by Hubspot, Arianna Huffington shared some words of wisdom with conference attendees. People often measure success by money and power, but there is a third metric of success: our well-being.

We have to find ways to renew ourselves to be creative. Over the past few months I’ve hit the ground running in the startup world. There’s so much to do in so little time, and almost everything needs to be done on a last minute deadline.  Most leaders make their biggest mistakes when they’re tired. According to Huffington, “Burnout is the disease of our civilization.”

Our lives are so outbound at the moment, we need to make them inbound. We have to decide what to put our energy into, and sometimes it’s more effective to drop projects.  

“The worst things in life are usually the best because they open doors,” Huffington said. “Life only makes sense when you look back.”

She thanked a breakup in her life for happening, or else the Huffington Post may have never been created. That immediately resonated with me. If my previous relationship never ended, I would probably be a starving PR intern trying to get by in New York City at the moment. Instead, I took a leap of faith, packed my life into two suitcases and dived into the startup ecosystem in Boston. Best. Decision. Ever.

Most of the time I notice people are “on” working because they can. It’s important to take breaks from work; a culture of burnout will never sustain creativity.  

Sometimes we have to lean back in order to jump higher.

What do you do to prevent burnout?