High Performance Habits for Aid Workers

Avoiding burnout and maximizing impact during a humanitarian disaster and in your daily life

We all have passion. But passion is dangerous. Passion can get you killed.  What if we had access to a new personal operating system that could put us on the next level of performance, to better serve disaster affected people and also make us happier, healthier and more effective?

What if we had a way to become a ‘next level’  humanitarian performer? How do we become professionals who have the mindsets, strategies and tactics to advance the humanitarian principles and mission, in even the most challenging situations while also sustaining that performance over time? 

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There is a strong and proven set of approaches that make the individual performer better. The disciplines of athletics, medicine, and entrepreneurship are advancing a set of approaches  that can be used by those of us in the humanitarian aid field, to keep individuals performing at their best over time. At the same time, these Social Sector professionals can also maintain energy, tranquility and zest for life, despite working on tough humanitarian challenges in natural disaster and conflict zones. 

As a humanitarian response professional, I lived and worked in international disaster zones like South Sudan, I lived for years in a state of pure dedication to the field. I loved, and still love the humanitarian principles and am deeply committed to the humanitarian movement. This pushed me into a wonderful place of being able to contribute my professional skills to humanitarian response operations in Liberia, South Sudan, Indonesia and elsewhere. But this intense dedication led to burnout. Periods of all-out work and dedication ended with ‘crashes’ where I had to take periods away from the field to recharge and rest. After recovering, I would gladly jump back into the boom-to-bust cycle, where I would return to  the high, unsustainable intensity of work, which would then inevitably end in another burnout crash. 

After experiencing this whiplash for years and taking a hard, clear eyed look at myself and at our field of humanitarian response, I knew I had to change. In recent years I have discovered, adapted, and developed a set of mindsets, strategies and tactics to turn myself into a next level humanitarian performer. These approaches allow me to work even more intensely on response projects that matter using the right technique, while also building in periodic recovery each day, week and month to sustain this performance over time. 

The basic formula for this is to  work intensely with the right approaches, then take time away to rest, recover and sharpen the mind and bod, before taking on more intensity. 

Brad Stulberg has defined this approach as Intensity + Recovery = Performance. Simply working with unstructured intensity will create the kind of burnout that I and many of our fellow humanitarians have experienced. This is a pattern we often repeat in our field. You may recognize some of these ideas from the workplace wellness movement. But I’ve always found the idea of  improved performance and doing better, as a more compelling focus, than simply reacting to stress with self care. 

As humanitarians we often set up a false tradeoff between being healthy and happy, or doing our best life saving critical aid work. This is not true. We must strive to work with the right techniques to maintain complete intensity, when it is most effective and necessary. Here are a few quick wins to change the way that you organize your days at the office. 


These include:

Batching - Do as much of the same type of task at the same time.. For humanitarians, this includes scheduling meetings back to back, and setting aside specific times of the day to check email. Then closing the phone or browser so that you have the mental space to do real work that matters. 

Pomodoro - This technique has you set a timer for 22 minutes, when you begin focused work. Take a quick break by walking around every time the timer rings. Repeat several times then take a longer break. 

Circle of control - As humanitarians we often think our projects are impacting the overall outcome of a situation. Not so. Do this exercise: draw a circle on a piece of paper. Put inside everything that you directly control. Put outside the circle everything that is outside of your control. All we can do is work on controlling and making pure what is inside the circle. 

Deep work - Cal Newport writes about the concept of learning how to focus without distraction, on tough tasks. Deep work lets you quickly master complicated situations to get better results, bringing flow and fulfillment. 

There are so many more great approaches in this area of study, but these are a few of the key techniques to take control of your day and perform at your best, even if the security situation is  worsening, or your standard work deadlines are pushed up. 

Of course you can’t always control your day. This is an emergency after all, and the pace of security events or other changes can always happen. But I’ve noticed that even in critical response environments, we still have the power to control parts of our day. Don’t give away your idea of control, if some parts are out of your control. Control what you can. Batch and use pomodoros when you have the chance. Use your team to share responsibilities and the ability to create periods of deep focus, even in the midst of deep chaos. 

Recovery for humanitarians
Once we master this and other ways to create intensity, we must then learn how to rest. 

Rest and Recovery (R & R) is built into some humanitarian cycles.Yeah, I remember those R and R days. Not really much recharge, more of a party filled whirl of travel, beer and beaches. Fun, but not restorative.  We squander these with unhealthy behaviors like partying rather than actually resetting our minds and nourishing our bodies. 

The party cycle is needed sometimes but adding in some true recharge is also essential. True recharge means setting your ‘out of office’, and not checking your email. It means getting away from digital devices, spending time outside and mixing in the lay-about at the beach with some movement (walking, running, whatever). Beth Kanter has some practical tips on starting the recharge and wrapping it up the right way.  

Making it work for you
The personal humanitarian peak performance formula is simply a concept. Take these principles and adjust for your context and your own specific needs. My formula won’t work exactly for you, but you can use the ideas, as well as other resources on Social Sector Titan to help design your ulitmate work and life package where you achieve your highest contribution to humanitarian principles over the long term, while also living a fun and adventurous life. 

Happy Trails!


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