Web3 can be an unpredictable place. On the high days, you might be selling out an NFT drop or meeting your besties IRL at a conference. And on the low days, you may be watching your crypto portfolio tank alongside a market that had, just previously, been at all-time highs.
Yet, Web3 is still worth it — and that's not just hopium. In the following conversation between top-selling NFT artist Elise Swopes, psychotherapist and Eve Wealth mental health researcher Kate Rosenblatt and Alyte COO Roisin Ryan, we get honest about the realities of Web3 burnout and share a few practices to stay grounded throughout the ups and downs.
Edited excerpts:
Surprisingly enough, burnout wasn't really a legitimate condition until 2019. The World Health Organizations defines burnout as this cluster of symptoms that arise from mostly like chronic workplace stress that you haven't been able to manage. You're sort of negative about your work, you start to kind of lose your professionalism. But I will say the one thing that the WHO doesn't really talk about in their proper definition is the physical symptoms of burnout, which I think can be one of the first signs and symptoms for us that we're maybe struggling with some burnout. That could be changes in our appetite, changes in our sleep if we're a little more stressed out or a little more frustrated, like easily frustrated, maybe some headaches, stomach aches. Those are just some things that, even though those aren't technically in the definition of burnout, that's definitely something to keep in mind.
My story started several years ago before I got into Web3. And it's really important because it's actually how I ended up in Web3. Several years ago I was working at a large company. I had a fairly senior job, significant responsibilities and demands and just working crazy hours. There was this deluge of work. It was really unreasonable that one person or even a team could kind of get through this amount of work. So there's really kind of physical demands of working 16 hours, days on weekends. But it was beyond that physical stress. There was also sort of a lot of emotional or mental stress because it was quite a toxic workplace and I'm sure that probably resonates with a lot of people. I don't know anyone who hasn't worked at some point in their lives in a toxic workplace with either a boss, or extremely challenging leadership that leads with fear and activates that fight or flight response. Even though you're in an office where the worst thing you can do is get a paper cut, you sometimes feel like there's a line in the room and your fight or flight responses is activated, there's no psychological safety and so on.
So I just got to a point where I was just physically, emotionally, mentally drained and unbeknownst to me, I had an underlying health condition that got exacerbated by stress. And I think a lot of us do actually have conditions that get exacerbated by stress or stress itself causes problems with the body. And I just got to a point where my doctor said, if you keep doing this, you're not going to be out of work at all. And that just really forced me to sort of rethink what I was doing, who I was working for, and I basically had to rethink everything and change my life.
I look back at that time as a very dark period, but really it actually forced me to change my life in positive ways. So in a way I'n weirdly grateful for this experience. I took it upon myself to put some boundaries around [work]. I don't really like the word self-care because I feel like sometimes it can be said in a very toxic way. But self-care for me is about doing that deep work, putting in place boundaries and really going inward and making sure that you are taking care not just of your physical body, but your emotional and spiritual body.
So, having done all this sort of work on myself, I actually became a Kundalini yoga and meditation teacher. But beyond that, I realized it was the work system itself that was really problematic. I was working in organizations that just had ludicrous demands on my time and weren't really respectful of my whole life and also just of my own kind of emotional and spiritual well being. There was a values conflict there.
I had a friend —her name is Mel — and I actually see that she's on here today. Mel is the CEO and founder of Alyte, which is a Web3 company I work at. We've known each other for several years and we really bonded over the fact that we had both worked in these dysfunctional workplaces. Mel was working on this Web3 idea and I just knew I wanted to work with her because she was creating a company that had a very different way of viewing our relationship with employees. So we are now working on what we hope to be the first B Corp Web3 company ... We're also creating a product that where we believe fitness is not endlessly striving to be better and putting more pressure and again, more toxicity into what we're doing. Instead, we're trying to build wellbeing that comes from connection to our complete selves and to also those that we love.
Now, working at a company where I'm actively involved in building the culture. I have so much more passion, but I'm also so much more productive because the conversations that we have around how we organize our day are all about being the most productive so that we can all free our time up, so that we can go and focus on the important things outside our lives. So it's that real respect for we're not going to have endless meetings that waste time because I would rather go and go to our daughter's soccer match or something like that. So we're really mindful of the time that we use in our work day, and I don't think we are actually getting any less done. In fact, I think we're getting more done because we're more motivated, we're more passionate about what we do. And I just sort of wish more organizations were working in this way. It's sort of better for everyone. It's a real win/win situation in my mind.
Coming into Web3 was extremely exciting. I got into NFTs and I was really lucky. Luck — I like to say — is preparation X opportunities. I have videos of myself crying thinking about how I'm never going to have to do another content creation gig again. Realizing I can now make my own art, I can do whatever I want. It sounds exciting, and making these huge sales.
But as time went on, obviously things shifted quite a bit and I started realizing there was this kind of cycle that was repeating itself that I had not anticipated happening again. Granted, I had this amazing vision of what Web3 would be, which is more patience, more pacing, more choosing of your own destiny in some way, which I think it still is in many ways. But there's also this strange guidance of who purchases your art and what you have to create and who you have to be, and who you have to present yourself as and what you have to consistently do. And that's a lot of pressure. And I was seeing a lot of these inconsistencies and troubles in Web2. They caused me to be anxiety ridden and depressed and start self medicating and becoming addicted to Xanax and Adderall and going to rehab and having the storyline that I talk about in my Ted Talk, Child of the Internet. But coming into Web3, I was thinking, I'm going to bring those lessons here.
I want to help people. I want to show people that we don't have to go at this super fast pace to be successful, because success is very personal. And that's something I've learned along the way — the hard way, unfortunately. But. Also, fortunately, because I have this perspective and this story to share.
Coming into Web3 has been exciting because I've had this monetary success to help other people. I haven't taken out any of that money [from NFT sales] for myself. I never got to show out and pop out and purchase big things. I just reinvested back into everyone who I thought was doing really important stuff because I felt like if I was going to be someone who also found success in Web2 — I'm doing fine in my regular Web2 USD life — then with the NFTs, I felt like I had a wonderful opportunity to support others and create that new economy. So that's what I did.
I also created Sunrise Art Club, which is my creative impact agency, off of a bunch of sunrise photos that I captured for two years straight with my iPhone. Waking up at five a.m. was this choice that I made to start choosing my own emotions, deciding myself before the world got to choose.
So again, coming into this space, I really just wanted to help people find meditation, help people find awareness and presence in this really fast paced environment that is fascinating.
For more insights, listen to the full conversation with Elise, Kate and Roisin.
Read More: How To Beat Web3 Burnout
This is not financial advice. If you don't want to spend money investing in crypto or Web3 — you don’t have to. The intent of this article is to help others educate themselves and learn.
