When Pushing Through Stops Working
The invisible support systems behind high performance – and what happens when you don’t have one.
Do you ever look at some leaders and wonder how they do it? Answering emails at all hours, staying on top of multiple, complex situations, and somehow still taking on the BFT 8 Week Challenge? We tend to think of their endurance as just an admirable personality trait.
And sure, they work hard. But what this misses is the system that often makes their effort possible in the first place. Many of these ‘I don’t know how they do it’ leaders have an entire hidden ecosystem.
To borrow a phrase from Annabel Crabb’s The Wife Drought,
‘Being able to go to your job and concentrate on your work to the absolute exclusion of all else is something that our system assumes [everyone is] able to do equally.’
Men at the top usually have stay-at-home partners. They are not thinking about meal prepping or planning or lunch boxes. They are not navigating children crying at drop-off or the mad dash to leave the office to arrive on time for pick-up. No wonder they can get to the gym regularly.
Meanwhile, women at the top can afford to outsource tasks like childcare, laundry, cleaning and meal prep. And I don’t see them planning their days around bus timetables.
I don’t begrudge anyone their support (even if I am slightly envious of it). But we do need to recognise that “putting in the effort” is not a neutral phrase. It is made possible by invisible support that I rarely hear mentioned in success stories.
“Drop your standards”
When I first burned out as a single mum, people kept telling me to “drop my standards”. The house doesn’t have to look perfect, they’d tell me. I know they meant well, but it felt like a complete misunderstanding of my experience. I wasn’t talking about optional extras.
Before my burnout becomes acute, it looks like this. My child is fed and clothed, taken to daycare and picked up. My fuse is shorter, but her needs are essentially still met.
And because of that, nobody notices or cares that my life is shrinking. I go to bed straight after she does, barely staying awake through bedtime stories. With no time or energy to prepare nutritious food or exercise, see friends or do any hobbies beyond work and parenting, my health declines and my resources deplete fast.
Hitting the wall
Sooner or later, this approach fails.
For me, that happened on a Sunday. I had enough energy to push my daughter on her trike to the playground across the road. Once there, I realised I couldn’t stand up. I sat down on an orange cylinder. Then I realised I couldn’t sit up. I slid down onto the floor, ending up flat on my back in the playground, unable to move.
After a while, I got us the hundred metres home and fell into bed, unable to get up again.
Not to fill my little girl’s drink bottle. Not to make her lunch.
At this point, language of “putting in the effort” or “dropping your standards” is absurd. This is no longer about optimising or trying harder. The body is clearly saying: stop.
Keeping it quiet
On Monday morning I opened my laptop and got on with the week’s work like nothing out of the ordinary happened the day before.
Because I don’t want to be labelled the weak one. The difficult one. The one you can’t trust with high-profile or complex work.
Or worse, the one who can’t take care of her own child.
And so the system continues, just as designed. We absorb the strain privately. The crash is invisible.
The privilege of pushing through
Pushing through isn’t universally available. It’s easier if you’re healthy. Wealthy. Have support.
It’s harder – perhaps impossible – if you’re also dealing with chronic illness, mental health issues, solo parenting, or other factors that make life more difficult.
Endurance does not come down to willpower alone. To frame it as a personal failing, rather than a structural one, is to ignore other people’s lived reality.
The stop
At a certain point, to keep pushing is not a virtue, but a cause of long-term damage.
Maybe after you crash, you use sick leave, get signed off work for a bit, or reduce your hours. Maybe you have to stop work entirely and rely on savings or benefits. All this can feel embarrassing, like a personal failure. I’ve certainly felt that way.
But work will expand to fill whatever space we give it. Organisations replace people who leave. The systems carry on. Bodies and brains do not.
If yours are giving you information that they are no longer coping, this is reality, not weakness.
What next?
If you find yourself here, you don’t need to fix your entire life this minute.
You might start with something smaller. Admitting you can’t push anymore. Accepting that this is not a personal flaw. Not comparing yourself to others when you don’t know what invisible support they have.
Use sick leave if you have it. Reduce hours if you can. Let something visible drop. Ask for very specific help.
Our culture quietly relies on certain people – often women – to absorb impossible strain, and then applauds those who benefit from that system.
You can’t choose not to break. But you can stop pretending that breaking means you failed.
P.S. Thank you for being here. This was a personal post, straight from my heart. If you enjoyed it, please give it a like. And if you know someone who is pushing through and could do with hearing that they are not alone, I’d love you to share it with them.