Burnout at work
My career took on a classic case of burnout at work
What you call burnout at work can often get confused with daily life. We label it life stress in our mind and continue pressing along. We tell ourselves it’s just a stage we’re going through that’ll eventually pass once we get somewhere or achieve something.
Usually after many years, you look back and realize, that phase of burnout never went away. It just became your normal life.
What does burnout feel like?
Burnout at work is a weary, depleted state you can get stuck in towards your job.
For anyone that has experienced burnout in the workplace, you unfortunately can relate too well. When you’re experiencing burnout, there’s a piece of your mind that’s continuously wondering “will I ever overcome this and find myself again.” Burnout is like losing the essence of who you are. You lose the version of you that had the strength to get you where you are. The person that overcame obstacles, thrived and was your powerful best self.
What does burnout feel like compared to regular stress?
Regular workplace stress is something that can arise based on day-to-day circumstances that you face. This type of stress will usually dissipate as you overcome or deal with those circumstances. Burnout at work is different. You experience it even when there may not be any immediate stress present.
It’s common to try and overcome burnout by trying to manage your stress levels. If you’ve been dealing with a burnout state for a long time, you can get very good at trying to manage stress in your life. We can do this in a misdirected attempt to eliminate burnout.
Unfortunately, managing stress doesn’t eliminate the root cause of burnout.
What does burnout feel like compared to a normal healthy state?
When you’re in a normal balanced work state, the effort you engage towards your job invigorates you. As you complete tasks, overcome challenges, and build knowledge, this lifts your spirit and you feel strengthened. As humans we are designed to seek and feel fulfillment through our capacity to work.
However, when you are in a state of burnout, you are no longer lifted by your effort and your capacity to work.
Where did my burnout from work originate?
On many occasions I had found myself obsessed with answering this question. How do I pinpoint where burnout started in my job? I kept on thinking, if I could answer this question then I could resolve the issue and find myself again.
Is burnout from work something that occurs simply because we get weary as the years pass and our limited excitement and energy goes away? Was burnout at work just a matter of time?
Or
Did I have a healthier attitude towards work and a better life balance at one point in time? Was this healthier state lost or forgotten along the way?
Attempting to manage burnout
When I’ve tried to deal with the symptoms of burnout at work, it was always with one of two strategies.
- Strategy #1
I try reinvigorating myself and attempt to push through. I adopt the attitude that, if there’s a resolution to burnout it’s on the other side of a monumental amount of effort. My attitude is that, if I want to overcome this, I must tap into some superhuman like state.
- Strategy #2
The second strategy is to try and pull back. I think, maybe if I can recuperate and recover then I will be in a more balanced physical and mental state. I will then be able to face the challenges of burnout in the workplace.
I’m personally pretty good at using both above strategies. I have cycled through them many times and given them an honest attempt to try and overcome burnout at work. The problem is that these strategies don’t work.
What happens is, you attempt strategy 1 and when it either doesn’t work or stops working, you switch to strategy 2. When that doesn’t work, you move back to strategy 1. You can keep perpetually cycling through the two strategies. Through the whole thing the real problem never gets resolved.
If you research some of the standard methods of overcoming burnout, the common themes usually involve improving your general wellbeing practices. The common themes are:
- Start Exercizing
- Eat a balanced diet
- Meditate
- Journal
- Take up a hobby
These are wonderful things to integrate into your life. However, on their own they don’t get to the root cause of burnout. It’s important to take care of yourself but trying to come up with a strict meal regimen or taking up an art class for example can easily be a failed Strategy 1 coping mechanism.
My burnout epiphany
As I further pull back the layers on my own burnout from work, I’ve become aware of the functional system I adopted in my career. It was a system that let me succeed in my business but ultimately failed me years down the road.
When I first started my business, I became hyper focused and vigilant to get the business off the ground. I was running my engine at a high RPM and tapping into my full energy, focus and resources. Luckily, this started producing results and success. I doubled down and continued with more of the same positive effort for continued results and to further grow the business.
Like many young adults, I established myself and made my mark along the professional landscape by trying to prove myself in the world. This takes considerable effort, but I found a way and made it happen. Humans can be an incredibly resourceful and adaptable species.
However, you can’t rely on maximizing your resources or running your engine at a high RPM forever. I made the mistake of applying the effort that got me in the door to my everyday mindset. Day after day. Year upon year.
That led to burnout at work.
Being hardwired for burnout
You can’t manage burnout from work by simply taking your foot off the gas and expecting to become reinvigorated. Remember, that’s Strategy #2 of a cycle of that never solves the real problem of burnout.
The reason slowing down or dialing things back doesn’t overcome burnout is because the system we often adopt for success requires us to be in a hyper-driven go mode. As soon as we take our foot off the gas, the part of our mind that’s wired for succeeding starts sending off alarms. DANGER, FAILURE, FINANCIAL RUIN!
So, we switch back to Strategy #1.
How to heal burnout?
For me, I’ve had to change my operating system.
Figuring out how to heal from burnout is a delicate journey. I find that our instincts to “fix things” come from the place that’s hardwired to create the burnout. In figuring out how to recover from burnout, you’ve got to go against those instincts to some degree. It’s the instincts that have created the burnt-out state of mind.
In my life, I made the drastic decision of stepping away from my business. I decided that I needed to find another career path. I had to get away from the work operating system that was creating burnout in my life. This was a drastic but necessary decision if I was ever going to find a way how to heal from burnout. I couldn’t fix my car while it was on the racetrack metaphorically speaking.
This was a monumental decision for me. I had dedicated so much effort and time in my life to create a successful enterprise. Part of me felt like I was committing self harm. This goes to show how broken a mind frame I was in. I had trained myself to care more about my work than my peace of mind. If I were going to switch to putting peace of mind above all else, I had to actively make decisions contrary to the part of me that was business oriented.
Unfortunately, the career-success-or-bust, “hustle” mentality is the norm in our society. We don’t celebrate those with a balanced life. Peace and balance aren’t something that’s outwardly noticed or idolized. We love to talk about how busy we are or how crazy things are at work. Those are the characteristics that get noticed on social media and are the work colleagues that get admired.
It’s important to work hard, challenge yourself and have expectations that require you to dig deep and cultivate a strong effort. However, to build long-term contentment at work, this must be built on a foundation of peace and balance.
Avoiding burnout in the future
In my mid thirties as I change my career and life pattern, I seek to build success in a different way than I did in the past. My old pattern was to frantically try and stuff or maximize each day with as much work output as possible. The idea being if I could streak these types of days together is succession then I would obtain career success.
As I learn how to heal from burnout in my own life, my new career objective is more of a slow burn approach. I want to structure my work life around having a long-term horizon for success. One that’s not so attached to quick gratification. It’s important for me to engage in projects and activities that’ll excite me over many years or decades.
I want to avoid getting caught up in defining success or failure in what happens today or in the next month. If I can view success as something prolonged and spanning over an entire career, I will be less reliant on me having to redline my engine daily.