1. How people in top jobs look after their mental wellbeing

Earlier this year Naomi Osaka withdrew from the French Open because of mental health concerns and was followed by Simone Biles at the Olympic Games less than two months later. Mental health doesn’t discriminate and can affect anyone. We spoke to four business leaders about burnout, stress, anxiety, and how they deal with it.

For Malusi Ndlovu, Director: Large Enterprises at Old Mutual Corporate, looking after his mental wellbeing has meant building simple rituals into his day. ‘I monitor my mental state deliberately at a specific time each day. If you’re not aware of it, there’s more risk of burnout. In addition, know that it is OK not to be OK. As long as you acknowledge it. Breathe and keep moving.’ 

2. Burnout and the importance of doing nothing

Even pre-Covid-19 workplace studies showed that employees report being stressed a lot of the time by politics, artificial intelligence and pressure to master new skills. If left unchecked, the consequences of prolonged stress include fatigue, insomnia, high blood pressure, vulnerability to illness, mood disorders, increased mistakes on the job, decreased productivity and a loss of overall vitality.

Countering the stress and temptation to be at our computers 24/7 requires a change in the way we think. Resilience is not how you endure – it is how you replenish and recharge. It’s about resting and doing nothing in a meaningful way. 

3. What we can learn from the ongoing pandemic fatigue

Everyone has had their own experience of the pandemic and lockdown, and people around the world appear to be feeling a collective kind of lethargy that has been manifesting as a lack of motivation and curiosity, listlessness and numbness. Organisational psychologist, and the best-selling author of Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know, Adam Grant posits that the general malaise being felt around the world can be described as ‘languishing’.

But Dr Rob Pluke, a counselling psychologist based in Pietermaritzburg doesn’t believe South Africans are feeling quite the same way. ‘Numb, yes, but in a complicated way that is, at least, on the fringe of depression and anxiety. Young and old are struggling with a very real sense of chronic frustration, loss, despondency and anxiety. When you add the recent looting, people are shocked, grieving, very uncertain, fractured, internally conflicted and afraid of the future.’

We need to start recognising our shared humanity – and not falling victim to me/not me binary thinking, he says. ‘The world needs to start seeing mental health as an “us” thing. We are relational, communal beings, and communities carry and propagate markers of good and bad mental health. So, an organisation that stigmatises others’ mental health problems is engaged in rigidity and denial.’
Browse our Beyond Work section for more on the interplay between work and wellbeing, how to fit downtime into your day and great reads to help you to unwind.