Burnout is a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. It occurs when you feel overwhelmed, emotionally drained, and unable to meet constant demands according to Helpguide.
Today, we’re taking on more and more than we can chew and forgetting to exhale and the medical field is now recognizing burnout as a medical condition that can’t be ignored. There’s an art to ensuring you don’t burnout and this blog posts delves into the reasons and how to prevent burnout.
3 Common reasons for work burnout
You Overwork for fear of Losing Your Job:
The fear of losing your job makes you overwork because you equate overworking to keeping your job. This fear could have stemmed from experiences you had at a previous job, which you have now brought into your current job or the culture of your current workplace gives grounds for that fear. Ideally what you should do is to start looking for employment elsewhere as staying on this job isn’t sustainable and would only lead to health issues.
No Work Life Integration:
Your job does not offer or support flexibility in any form. This could be very stressful as you find you can’t relax on the job because you’re stressed about home life and when home you’re stressed about work life. There is an imbalance and this would eventually lead to burnout.
You Find Your Job Boring:
If your job isn’t challenging and it’s monotonous, you’ll get bored and this can lead to burnout because you find yourself trying to do ‘busy work’ for the length of time you’re in the office and that in itself is very tasking mentally.
You’re on the way to burning out when this happens
Frequent sick days
You find yourself calling in sick a lot more than usual and you’ve ruled out any major health diagnosis, more than likely this is due to work Burnout and could eventually lead to health diagnosis such as depression; high blood pressure, etc.,
Irritability and Short Temperedness with Co-workers
You do need to pay attention when you find yourself getting irritated and impatient with your co-workers on the simplest things. Find out what the root cause is and address this. Don’t let it linger as this could lead to a workplace outburst or meltdown that could be damaging to your career.
You have to Give Yourself a Pep Talk To Get Ready for Work Daily
When you find yourself having to give yourself a pep talk each time you have to go in to work, chances are you are experiencing burnout.
3 Ways to Nip Burnout Once and For All
Gain Clarity on Work Responsibilities
If you’re not sure what your job responsibilities are, speak up and discuss with your manager and/or Human Resources Rep. Sometimes gaining a little more clarity can sort out any misunderstandings and undue stress you may be experiencing.
Request a Flexible Work Schedule
Sometimes tweaking your start or end times could be all that you need to allow for work life integration, so ask. The worst thing that could happen is your boss says no and that should be a cue to start looking for employment elsewhere. You probably don’t want to stay at such an inflexible work environment.
Delegate tasks
Holding on to tasks that could easily be done by someone else is another source of burnout and a quick remedy to this is delegating. Make it your duty to review your ‘To Dos’ and delegate to junior team members or a colleague who is more suited for that task. Delegating shows leadership especially when you assign to a junior team member it serves as a confidence boost to that junior staff and frees you up to attend to other tasks that can’t be delegated.
What other things do you do when you start experiencing burnout symptoms? Do share your comments below. I’d love to read them.
p.s. You can find more productive hacks to prevent workplace burnout here.
p.p.s. Related Article here.
Till Next Time,
