One straw. That’s all it takes to break a camel’s back when the load gets too heavy. But job-related burnout doesn’t happen all at once. It’s a slow fuse that sparks and sizzles all the way up to the bomb of a broken spirit and body. Burnout stems from work-related stress leading to chronic fatigue. Combined with doubts about your value and competence, burnout often leads to serious health risks.
How to recognize burnout
Signs of burnout show up in day-to-day interactions and activities. Some include, but aren’t limited to
- Unexplainable headaches
- Slipping motivation to get up in the morning and improving productivity through the day,
- Feeling disillusioned with your job and irritable toward colleagues and customers
- Or feeling cynical or extremely critical at work indicate burnout.
These anxieties and stresses create negative spillover into personal life and relationships.
The roots of the burnout trace back to
- Unrealistic or unclear job expectations
- Poor job fit
- Extremes in activities – remarkably monotonous or insanely busy
- Work-life imbalance, and
- Lack of control or social support.
Many employees experience burnout at some point in time, but most often managers suffer from it. Those most prone to suffering job burnout are those who try to be everything to everyone, professionals in a helping position, and those who identify so strongly with work their life-work balance disappears risk burning out during their career.
What to do about it
Self-Assess
First, take a moment to breathe. Seriously, right now pause and take three deep breaths. Clear your mind of stressful thoughts and walk through a simple self-assessment. For the next 20 seconds, take an honest look at yourself at work, at home, in your position.
- Write down what your true interests, skills, and passions are.
- Identify habits that create friction in your mind.
- Evaluate morning routines, mealtime activities, and evening exercises that prevent you from loosening the bow-string.
- Ask yourself whether all these habits are necessary or good. Decide what you want to change and change it.
Baby-steps are encouraged! Starting honest-self assessments early prevents or more easily reverses the effects of burnout.
Adjust Your Attitude
As humans, we are agents who can act, not just be acted upon. If cynicism dominates your attitude and you snap irritably at work, adjust your attitude. Name 3 things you’re grateful for each morning. Each night, name at least 2 things that went well, or at least weren’t a disappointment that day if things really seem that bad. This attitude adjustment clears your mind and softens mental reactions to tough situations.
Develop Relationships
An 80-year-long study conducted by Harvard researchers found that happiness impacts health and well-being more than anything else and that close relationships form the foundation for happiness. Cultivating rich relationships brings your situation around 180 degrees.
Learn to Delegate
I know, delegation is hard. But learning this skill opens up time for you to focus on bigger, better things. It takes a lot of trust, so get to know your employees and their skills. Give qualified employees the assignments you believe they’ll handle well and allow them to roll with it. Communicate to them that it is now their pet project so they don’t need to constantly check it off with you until the very end of it. Allowing them to gain a greater sense of responsibility and accountability leads them to become more valuable employees. Most things in the office don’t require perfection right away. Well done will do.
Leave the Perfectionist Behind
Perfectionism manifests itself in various ways. You know those interviewees who, in response to the question, what’s your greatest weakness, say “I’m a perfectionist. I can’t rest until things are perfect”? As a quick response looking better than the real answer this seems great, but obviously they don’t realize what perfectionism truly entails. In reality, it’s a fast and sure path to unhappiness. Perfectionists tend to focus more on avoiding mistakes rather than a healthy striving for excellent results. Perfectionists are apt to experience burnout, perhaps faster than a lot of other people because of their negative mentality, intolerance for human mistakes (particularly in themselves), and expectation of everything else in the world to hold to the same standard. Shift your focus from the nit-picky perfect results to the long-term success of your employees, clients, business, and yourself.
More information about the perfectionism and its effects are found on this page of the American Psychological Association’s website.
Find and Use More Efficient Tools
You can only be as good as the systems you use. So, if you want a better office workflow, find better systems! Office managers wearing many hats benefit the most from this. Take a little time to research what systems fit your office needs and make your life easier. Whether it’s for record keeping, scheduling, time tracking and payroll, getting better systems and tools takes a load off your back.
It’s all about change
Changing yourself, then your environment prevents and reverses burnout. As Michael Jackson put it so well, “if you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change.” Altering yourself empowers you to improve the environment around you. You’ll have the energy and purpose to create better situations for yourself, family, and the rest of the world.