The week that breaks you, and the one that does not

Most people in this work can name a brutal week they came through fine, and a week that looked easier on paper and flattened them. The difference is usually not how hard the work was.

Demands and resources

The standard model researchers use splits every job into two lists. Demands are the things that cost you: the hours, the driving, the animal who will not settle, the owner who texts at 2am. Resources are the things that help you meet them: knowing what you are walking into, being able to reach somebody, having any say over your own schedule.

Demands on their own cause exhaustion. Missing resources cause something different, which is the quiet checking-out where you stop caring as much as you used to. And the important finding is that resources buffer demands. The same punishing week harms somebody who has support far less than somebody who does not.

Which is worth knowing because demands are often fixed

You often cannot make the work easier. The dog is the dog and the schedule is the schedule. But the resource side is more changeable than it looks.

• Knowing the plan before you commit is a resource. Read the whole thing before accepting rather than after.
• Being able to reach the owner is a resource. Agree how to contact them before the sit starts, not during a problem.
• Predictability is a resource. Two long sits you saw coming cost less than two short ones sprung on you.
• Somebody to talk to about the hard ones is a resource, and it is the one people cut first.

And if none of that touches it

Sometimes the honest answer is that this is more than a scheduling problem, and that is worth taking seriously rather than pushing through. Talking to a professional is a reasonable thing to do, and not a last resort.