Disclaimer: This series is inspired, among other things, by the findings of the “Loneliness at Work” study prepared by Symetria. All interpretations and conclusions are the author’s own and do not represent the official position of the report’s authors or of any organization. The article does not refer to any specific company or professional situation. It describes systemic mechanisms typical of complex organizations.
Today’s guest is Tomasz Tomaszewski. Tomek has 15 years of experience as Head of Product and Product Manager of AI products (including SentiOne, Benefit Systems, PoslaPress, and Tutlo.com). He runs the newsletter Product Craft and the school Product Academy.
At the beginning these are small things.
One meeting after which you have to stay five minutes longer to “clarify.” One decision that should have landed somewhere else, but somehow did not. One tension that is easier to take on yourself than to pass further, because it would have come back in a worse state anyway.
Everything looks temporary. Something to handle.
Except that such small things multiply. First slowly. Then faster. Until at some point someone realizes that they regularly collect what has nowhere to stop. Without a contract. Without a name. Without a formal assignment. That is how the tension absorber appears.
Where the absorber comes from
This role grows out of an arrangement of dependencies. It appears where responsibility circulates faster than decisions are able to close. Tasks flow downward. Priorities multiply. Calendars swell. The rhythm of meetings speeds up, and the rhythm of resolutions stays in the same place.
In such an environment, tension looks for the point of greatest absorbency. It stops at the junction of processes, teams, and expectations. Always there, where someone still has the capacity to understand several versions of reality at once.
This is a mechanism known from research on cognitive overload and the costs of attention in knowledge work, described among others by Gloria Mark in analyses of work fragmentation and constant interruptions.
Why the system tolerates this
From the organization’s perspective, this arrangement works. Tensions do not escalate. Differences between departments are smoothed. Contradictory expectations are translated into a language that can be processed further. Things “move.”
The absorber serves as soft infrastructure. It reduces friction. It puts together what formally has no owner. Thanks to that the system keeps local stability, even when the whole starts to wobble.
In the literature on work design, Sharon Parker shows that such informal stabilizing roles appear spontaneously where the architecture of work does not keep up with the real load.
The price paid in silence
The cost of this role grows slowly. First, fatigue with context rises. Then tolerance for ambiguity falls. Every decision starts to weigh more, because it carries other people’s tensions, unclosed matters, and missing resolutions from other levels.
Over time, isolation appears. It is hard to tell others what this work consists of, because formally “nothing much is happening.” There is no project titled “keeping meaning in the chaos.” There is no ticket for “assembling contradictory expectations.”
Research by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer shows that a long-lasting load of this type hits a sense of meaning and progress at work fastest, which directly increases the risk of burnout.
The absorber’s loneliness
This loneliness has a specific form. It comes from the lack of a place where one can safely set down what one is carrying. Responsibility stays on one side. Agency circulates somewhere else. Conversations shorten to a minimum, because the cost of introducing someone into the full context is too high.
William Kahn described a similar mechanism in research on people withdrawing from full presence at work. When the environment stops giving support for a meaningful engagement, people narrow their presence to what is necessary.
The long-term systemic effect
When absorption becomes a standing element of how things work, the organization enters an emergency mode that looks like normality. Stability is local. Long-term resilience falls.
People performing this function gradually limit initiative and reflection. What remains is caution and the management of tension. Decisions become conservative. The capacity for real change shrinks, even if the language of transformation still dominates communication.
From the perspective of social identity theory as described by Turner, such a state favors a further narrowing of perspective and a retreat to smaller frames of identification that give a sense of control.
Why companies do not notice this
- Because absorption works. This mechanism did not come from nowhere - it solves real problems. Tensions are intercepted locally before they manage to manifest higher up. Meetings happen, decisions somehow land, conflicts do not escalate. The system sees continuity, so it assumes stability.
- Because the cost is spread over time and through the body. Burnout, depression, and withdrawal do not appear in one quarterly report. They grow slowly, in individual people, often those who are most responsible. The organization notices the problem only when someone disappears, gets ill, or stops delivering.
- Because people’s resilience is sometimes mistaken for the maturity of the system. The longer someone carries tensions without open opposition, the easier it is to take that as proof that “the model works.” Silence is interpreted as calm. A lack of escalation as consent.
What can be done about it
- Start treating overload as a signal, not a private problem. When one role constantly “collects” the chaos, that is information about the architecture of work, not about that person’s capacity.
- Reconstruct the paths of tension, and not only the decision paths. The question is not only “who approves,” but “who carries the consequences of unclosed matters, delays, and contradictory expectations.”
- Introduce places where tension can be legally set down. Without irony, without heroism, without a narrative about being “resilient.” The lack of such a space always ends in an individual cost.
- Agree that not everything can be smoothed. Absorption makes sense for a moment. Once it is fixed in place, it turns into a standing psychological and health load.
- Recognize taking care of oneself as an element of professional responsibility. Not as a benefit. As a condition of a long-term capacity to work in complexity.
Closing the series
At some point this stops being a story about an organization. What remains is the body. What remains is the head. What remains is a fatigue that does not disappear after a weekend or after a holiday. What remains is a tension that no longer has anywhere to discharge, because for a long time it was put off “for later.”
The role of tension absorber carries with it a specific kind of loneliness. Not one that comes from a lack of people around, but from a lack of a place where one can safely put down the weight of what one collects. Decisions pass through one person. Contradictory expectations pass through one person. Chaos is filtered at one point. From the outside it looks like competence. From the inside it starts to resemble a constant muscle tension, a shortened breath, and a sense of being in a continuous watch mode.
For a long time it is possible to function this way. The system rewards it. Recognition appears, trust, the label of “handles it.” Rarely does a question about the cost appear. That cost is paid later. In a drop of energy. In a flattening of emotions. In difficulty feeling satisfaction even when something closes. In a burnout that does not always look dramatic. More often it looks like indifference, cynicism, a need to minimize risk and to avoid everything that could add another layer of tension.
Depression in such roles rarely arrives suddenly. It develops slowly, under the cover of responsibility. As a fatigue that “will pass.” As a lack of joy that “is not a priority right now.” As a conviction that just this one more quarter, just this one more project. The nervous system endures overload for a long time, and then starts demanding attention in a way that can no longer be ignored.
That is why this series does not end with a conclusion about organizational architecture, but with a conclusion about the limits of a human being. That no system should rest its stability on someone’s mental health. That taking care of oneself in such roles stops being a “soft topic” and becomes a condition of further functioning - both of the individual and of the whole structure that relies on them.
If something is to remain from this, let it be one thing: loneliness, burnout, and depression at work are rarely a problem of character. More often they are feedback about how long the system made use of someone’s capacity to endure tension. In that sense, taking care of oneself is not an act of weakness or an escape. It is the last place where the cost can still be stopped before it becomes irreversible.
Comment from Tomasz Tomaszewski
Michał describes the tension absorber as someone at the junction of processes, teams, and expectations. Reading this, I thought: this is literally a description of my work as a Product Manager and Head of Product.
The work of a professional absorber
A PM by definition sits at the intersection of business, tech, and design. They often translate one side to the other. They assemble contradictory expectations into something that can be delivered. They fill competency gaps, because we do not always have all the right people on board. That is our potential superpower on teams - and at the same time a trap.
The problem starts when that absorption becomes invisible. When the organization treats the PM as a bottomless well. When “handling it” stops being an ad hoc rescue of a situation and becomes the only mode of work.
What does it look like from the inside?
I had such a period of work at SentiOne. Sales promised clients features that did not exist. Dev asked about priorities that nobody had set. The board changed direction every two weeks. And I glued all of that together.
From the outside it looked like we were “handling it.” Clients were served. Except that I was spending 70% of my time putting out fires and translating one side to the other. There was not enough time for discovery, conversations with users, thinking about the product. I was doing the job of an absorber, not of a Product Manager.
This is also a problem for the product. When you are overloaded, you start choosing what is easier, not what is right. You take shortcuts. You have no time for discovery, so you guess. You have no energy for a hard conversation with a stakeholder, so you go for a compromise that weakens the product.
Signals that you have fallen into the absorption trap
At the beginning they are single, even small signals. Some you notice only after a time. Others you will not want to admit to, still others you will take as unimportant.
For me it looked like this:
- My frustration level rose - I got irritated faster, it was easier to throw me off balance
- People started asking “is everything OK?” - or said outright that I was not smiling as much as I used to
- I started counting the days to the weekend - “only 3 days left,” “only this sprint left”
- I closed myself in my silo - “that’s another team’s problem,” I reacted more sharply to other people’s mistakes, I stopped helping
What can be done about it?
First: catch the signals. The sooner, the better. If you do a cyclical review of your career (I have such a quarterly ritual), it is easier to notice them before they turn into burnout. A great barometer is the people on your team. I simply asked them for honest feedback. From the side it is usually easiest to see.
Second: start building systems instead of relying on “handling it.” A way of working based on people and acting together. If something works only because you are pulling it - then it simply does not work in the long term.
Third: a conversation with your manager. That sounds banal, but it is often the hardest. It is not about complaining, but about showing the organization that something is not working - or that it works only thanks to the heroism of an individual. I treat this as a “mirror method” - the organization can look at itself in it.
But no excuses
I could end in the tone of “organizations are bad, PMs are victims.” But I do not think that. Yes, systems can be dysfunctional. But that is why we are leaders: to take responsibility - not only for the product, but also for ourselves and for our surroundings.
The problem is when such a fight becomes the only part of our work. Because that leads exactly where Michał describes - to burnout, isolation, and the sense that nobody sees how much that “handling it” costs.